House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday to refer former CIA Director John Brennan for criminal prosecution, alleging he lied to Congress.
The letter states Brennan lied twice in a transcribed interview before the committee on May 11, 2023, as well as in a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing in 2017, although that hearing is beyond the five-year statute of limitations. All three instances were in relation to the CIA’s involvement with the Steele dossier, a series of reports containing accusations about President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, which were delivered in 2016 to the FBI by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele.
“Brennan’s testimony before the Committee on May 11, 2023, was a brazen attempt to knowingly and willfully testify falsely and fictitiously to material facts,” Jordan wrote in the letter. “We therefore make this referral for the Department to examine whether any of Brennan’s testimony warrants a charge for the violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001.”
The letter cites declassified documents compiled by the Trump administration that claim that the Intelligence Community Assessment findings that said Russia “developed a clear preference” for Trump and “aspired to help” him win the election were false and accuses the Obama administration of fabricating the findings in an effort to undermine the Trump administration.
In the Judiciary hearing, Brennan claimed that “the CIA was not involved at all with the [Steele] dossier,” whereas a 2017 report drafted by HPSCI, which was recently declassified, shows this statement to be false. The report says that “the CIA officer who served as the lead author of the ICA told HPSCI that he drafted Annex A “in coordination with [the] FBI,” after Brennan said the CIA was not involved.
House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) slammed Jordan’s letter, calling it “flimsy, slipshod and contradictory.”
“Instead of working to end their shutdown of the government, lower healthcare costs and meet the needs of our people, Committee Republicans are dredging up old testimony from Trump foes, even when the statute of limitations has already run, in the hopes of finding something—anything—that could please their boss Donald Trump,” Raskin wrote in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “The allegations of lying are flimsy, slipshod and contradictory.”
