Former CIA Director John Brennan dissociated himself on Friday from the forthcoming Justice Department watchdog report on alleged government surveillance abuses.
During an appearance on MSNBC, Brennan emphasized “the FBI was taking the lead” on securing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to wiretap onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, a process that was scrutinized in Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s recently completed investigation into possible surveillance abuses.
He acknowledged the CIA may have known something about Page if his name “came up in some type of Intelligence Community report,” adding, “That would have been immediately shared with the FBI.” Page was an American citizen suspected of being a Russian asset as part of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, called Crossfire Hurricane, but he was never charged with any wrongdoing.
Brennan, who was CIA director during the Obama administration, was interviewed after it was revealed an FBI lawyer is under criminal investigation for allegedly altering a document related to the wiretapping of Page. This lawyer was later identified as Kevin Clinesmith, who left the bureau two months ago after being interviewed by Horowitz.
Earlier in the day, Fox News aired an interview in which President Trump claimed that high-level officials were “spying” on his campaign and invoked Brennan’s name, among others. Former Rep. Trey Gowdy has suggested Brennan’s emails with then-FBI Director James Comey regarding the use of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s unverified dossier could be a focus of Horowitz’s inquiry.
The leaks about the FISA report that have come out so far, which claim Horowitz found no abuse of power by top officials out of bias against Trump, are based on sources familiar with a draft of the inspector general’s findings. Urging caution at jumping to conclusions before the final report is publicly released, tentatively on Dec. 9, Brennan said he would reserve judgment on any specific official’s behavior.
“This report, supposedly, that Horowitz is going to come forward with, if there was some type of modification, the question is when was it done, why was it done,” Brennan said, referring to the situation with Clinesmith.
“And so the IG reports usually will take a very close look and use a microscope to look at these things, but I think we just have to wait for it to come out to determine exactly whether or not there was any wrongdoing whatsoever or whether or not there were just some things that happened that, you know, might not have been exactly the way they should have taken place,” he added.
