House Republicans refer Obama CIA Director John Brennan for criminal prosecution

WASHINGTON − Repub­li­cans on the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee on Oct. 21 referred for­mer CIA Direc­tor John Bren­nan to the Jus­tice Depart­ment for crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion, alleg­ing Bren­nan made false state­ments in his 2023 tes­ti­mo­ny before Con­gress about the Trump-Rus­sia inves­ti­ga­tion.

“John Bren­nan lied to Con­gress,” Com­mit­tee Chair­man Rep. Jim Jor­dan, R‑Ohio, said in a post on X in ref­er­ence to the Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma appointee. “Today, we referred him to the Depart­ment of Jus­tice for crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion.”

House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee Chair­man Jim Jor­dan has for­mal­ly referred for­mer CIA Direc­tor John Bren­nan for crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion, alleg­ing that new­ly declas­si­fied evi­dence con­tra­dicts Brennan’s past con­gres­sion­al tes­ti­mo­ny regard­ing the Steele dossier—a col­lec­tion of dis­cred­it­ed intel­li­gence reports about for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s 2016 cam­paign.

In a let­ter to Flori­da Attor­ney Gen­er­al Pam Bon­di, Jor­dan stat­ed that recent­ly declas­si­fied mate­ri­als from the Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence — released by Trump-appoint­ed offi­cials — con­firm that Bren­nan “false­ly tes­ti­fied” dur­ing a May 11, 2023, hear­ing. Bren­nan had claimed at the time that “the CIA was not involved at all with the (Steele) dossier.”

Jordan’s let­ter alleges that Bren­nan in fact sought to include infor­ma­tion from the Steele dossier in the Intel­li­gence Com­mu­ni­ty Assess­ment (ICA), a clas­si­fied CIA report on Russ­ian inter­fer­ence in the 2016 elec­tion. “As the new­ly declas­si­fied doc­u­ments demon­strate, Bren­nan eager­ly want­ed to include infor­ma­tion from the Steele dossier in the ICA — a fact Bren­nan him­self doc­u­ment­ed in writ­ing,” Jor­dan wrote.

Bren­nan has long denied any wrong­do­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rela­tion to his lead­er­ship role in the mul­ti-agency inves­ti­ga­tion into Russ­ian elec­tion inter­fer­ence. He was not imme­di­ate­ly avail­able for com­ment. The Jus­tice Depart­ment also did not respond to requests for com­ment.

The Steele Dossier and Its Fall­out

The Steele dossier, com­piled by for­mer British intel­li­gence offi­cer Christo­pher Steele, con­tained a series of unver­i­fied claims sug­gest­ing ties between Trump’s 2016 cam­paign and the Krem­lin. Though it was shared with the FBI near the end of the 2016 race, many of its alle­ga­tions were lat­er dis­cred­it­ed. Still, a sum­ma­ry of the dossier was ulti­mate­ly added as an appen­dix to a broad­er intel­li­gence assess­ment on Russia’s inter­fer­ence — an assess­ment ordered by Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma after Trump’s elec­tion vic­to­ry.

Since Trump’s reelec­tion in 2024, the dossier and the sur­round­ing inves­ti­ga­tion have remained a polit­i­cal flash­point. Trump and his allies have accused for­mer intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment offi­cials of weaponiz­ing the U.S. gov­ern­ment against him — an accu­sa­tion those offi­cials firm­ly deny.

A bipar­ti­san 2020 Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee report con­clud­ed that Rus­sia did attempt to influ­ence the 2016 elec­tion but found no evi­dence that votes were altered.

A Deep­en­ing GOP Effort

Jordan’s refer­ral is part of a broad­er push by Repub­li­can law­mak­ers to revis­it the actions of Oba­ma-era intel­li­gence offi­cials. Bren­nan joins a grow­ing list of for­mer offi­cials under scruti­ny, includ­ing ex-FBI Direc­tor James Comey, who was indict­ed in Sep­tem­ber on charges of lying to Con­gress and obstruct­ing a con­gres­sion­al pro­ceed­ing.

Comey has plead­ed not guilty and moved to dis­miss the case, call­ing it a “vin­dic­tive pros­e­cu­tion.” His defense team cit­ed pub­lic remarks by Trump — who has fre­quent­ly labeled both Comey and Bren­nan as “crooked” and “dis­hon­est” — as evi­dence of polit­i­cal moti­va­tion.

Fol­low­ing a July report from Fox News indi­cat­ing that the DOJ was inves­ti­gat­ing both Bren­nan and Comey, Trump reit­er­at­ed that the two for­mer offi­cials might “have to pay a price” for their actions.

Democ­rats Push Back

Democ­rats have dis­missed Jordan’s refer­ral as polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Mary­land, the rank­ing Demo­c­rat on the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, crit­i­cized Repub­li­cans for what he called an attempt to “please their boss Don­ald Trump.”

“Instead of work­ing to end their shut­down of the gov­ern­ment, low­er health­care costs, and meet the needs of our peo­ple,” Raskin said in a state­ment, “Com­mit­tee Repub­li­cans are dredg­ing up old tes­ti­mo­ny from Trump foes, even when the statute of lim­i­ta­tions has already run. The alle­ga­tions of lying are flim­sy, slip­shod, and con­tra­dic­to­ry.”

As polit­i­cal ten­sions rise, the refer­ral marks anoth­er esca­la­tion in the years-long clash between Trump allies and for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cials over the ori­gins of the Rus­sia inves­ti­ga­tion — a con­tro­ver­sy that con­tin­ues to shape Wash­ing­ton near­ly a decade lat­er.