Former CIA Director John Brennan said last week that he has no reservations about speaking with U.S. Attorney John Durham for his so-called investigation of the investigators.
Brennan, who has emerged as a vocal critic of President Trump, also lambasted Attorney General William Barr and acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell as they too peel back secrets from the Russia investigation as they look for any misconduct.
“Well, it’s clear that I am in their crosshairs. Ever since Donald Trump was inaugurated, I have spoken out against what I think has been the corruption, the incompetence, the mischaracterizations that he and individuals around him have made to the American public, and I will continue to speak out,” Brennan said during a Friday interview on All In With Chris Hayes on MSNBC. “And yes, John Durham, who is a well-respected individual from the Department of Justice, many years in the business, is conducting this investigation — I guess it’s an investigation — and looking at what happened during those last months of the Obama administration and the first year or two of the Trump administration.”
Trump has hammered President Barack Obama over what he has dubbed “ObamaGate” (actions Trump and his allies say Obama administration officials took to undermine his campaign and presidency) and stated on Sunday Morning Futures on Fox News that “John Brennan was one of the architects, in my opinion.”
Brennan said he has not yet been interviewed by investigators, but noted he welcomes the opportunity because he believes “that for too long the American public have been misled” by the Trump administration. “I have nothing to hide,” he said on Friday.
“I’d like to think that John Durham and the other DOJ and FBI investigators will continue to honor their oath of office and to carry out their responsibilities without any consideration of the political interests of Donald Trump,” he added. “I feel very good that my tenure at CIA and my time at the White House during the Obama administration that I was not engaged in any type of wrongdoing or activities that cause me to worry about what this investigation may uncover.”
Durham, selected by Barr last year to lead an investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation and into the actions taken by law enforcement and intelligence officials before and after Trump’s election, is looking into whether Brennan took politicized actions to pressure the rest of the intelligence community to match his conclusions about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s motivations, according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal.
Sources said Durham has been interviewing CIA officials this year, zeroing in on the National Intelligence Council, a center within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence which oversaw the collaboration between the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency in putting together the 2017 assessment.
The 2017 assessment concluded with “high confidence” that Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016,” and Russia worked to “undermine public faith” in U.S. democracy, “denigrate” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “harm her electability and potential presidency,” and “developed a clear preference” for Trump. The NSA diverged on one aspect, expressing only “moderate confidence” that Putin actively tried to help Trump win and Clinton lose.
“I wouldn’t call it a discrepancy, I’d call it an honest difference of opinion between three different organizations,” former NSA chief Adm. Mike Rogers told the Senate in 2017. “It didn’t have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources.”
Durham has interviewed Rogers, according to the Intercept, and is also reviewing Brennan’s handling of a secret source said to be close to the Kremlin, according to the New York Times. The prosecutor wants to know what role that person’s information played in the assessment.
The Senate Intelligence Committee released a bipartisan report in April defending the tradecraft which went into the assessment and claiming they’d unearthed no evidence of political pressure.
Durham is also scrutinizing Brennan in relation to British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier, looking for answers on why former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe insisted upon it being part of the assessment, how allegations from the dossier ended up in the assessment’s appendix, and whether Brennan misled others about the dossier’s use.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz criticized the DOJ and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and for the bureau’s reliance on Steele’s flawed dossier. Footnotes declassified by Barr and Grenell show the FBI knew Steele’s dossier might have been compromised by Russian disinformation.
Daniel Hoffman, a former CIA station chief in Moscow, told the Washington Examiner that Brennan should have sounded the alarm about the Russian disinformation effort.
“I don’t blame Comey as much as I blame Brennan. You know, Comey is your domestic law enforcement guy, but Brennan is supposed to be a professional CIA analyst,” Hoffman said.
Hoffman said Brennan should have made it clear in 2016 that the intelligence community believed the Russians might be seeding Steele’s work with disinformation, Steele had been working for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and Steele “looks like he’s got a real ax to grind” against Trump. All of this, Hoffman said, should have led the intelligence community to have a “low level of confidence” that Steele’s dossier “reflects the truth.”
“What I just said, you could’ve said in 2016 when this thing came out — and John Brennan didn’t want to do it,” Hoffman said.
