WASHINGTON — Present and former CIA workers are being interviewed as a part of a FBI probe into ex-agency director John Brennan’s dealing with of a 2016 investigation of purported collusion between then-GOP candidate Donald Trump’s presidential marketing campaign and Russia, The Put up has realized.
Brokers from the bureau’s Miami discipline workplace sat down with the employees on the CIA’s headquarters in McLean, Va., final week, with extra interviews anticipated within the subsequent few weeks, Justice Division sources stated.
A number of of the CIA workers had labored on a controversial intelligence report produced underneath Brennan that assessed Russia interfered within the 2016 election to profit Trump, the sources added. Reuters first reported on the sitdowns.
South Florida US Lawyer Jason Reding Quiñones has been overseeing a sprawling investigation into Brennan and different officers within the Obama administration who had been concerned within the 2017 intelligence evaluation, in addition to investigating alleged collusion between Trump’s marketing campaign and Russia.
Each Director of Nationwide Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard and Home Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) made felony referrals to the DOJ final 12 months relating to Brennan’s function within the investigation.
Gabbard launched greater than 100 inner authorities paperwork exhibiting Obama ordered the 2017 Intelligence Neighborhood Evaluation after having heard from nationwide safety officers that Moscow and different overseas adversaries’ cyberattacks didn’t alter the presidential contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
The felony referrals cited proof that Brennan falsely testified to Congress in 2023 that the CIA was “very a lot opposed” to utilizing data from a now-discredited file, authored by ex-MI6 spy Christopher Steele, within the evaluation.
The truth is,veteran CIA officers warned Brennan concerning the dangers of releasing a “substandard” intelligence product, however Brennan pushed again in a December 2016 electronic mail change to the company’s deputy director of research, saying of the Steele file: “I imagine that the knowledge warrants inclusion.”
Requested concerning the file’s failure to satisfy “fundamental tradecraft requirements,” a Home Intelligence Committee investigation discovered, Brennan responded, “Sure, however doesn’t it ring true?”
The ex-CIA director advised the Home Judiciary Committee on Could 11, 2023, that “the CIA was very a lot against having any reference or inclusion of the Steele file within the Intelligence Neighborhood Evaluation.”
That assertion falls inside the five-year statute of limitations ought to prosecutors cost Brennan with mendacity to Congress whereas underneath oath.
The Obama-ordered ICA decided that “Russia’s objectives had been to undermine public religion within the US democratic course of, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and hurt her electability” and that Putin had a “clear choice for President-elect Trump.”
A 2020 Home Intelligence Committee report contradicted this, noting that Putin’s “principal motivations in these operations had been to undermine religion within the US democratic course of.”
The Russian president additionally anticipated Clinton to win in 2016 and held again on “some compromising materials for post-election use in opposition to the anticipated Clinton administration,” the Home report said.
President Trump has railed in opposition to Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, ex-DNI James Clapper and others for perpetrating a “hoax” on the American individuals by pushing the 2017 intelligence evaluation.
As of July 2025, Brennan claimed that the FBI hadn’t contacted him or his attorneys concerning the investigation.
His protection attorneys, in a December letter to South Florida US District Chief Choose Cecilia M. Altonaga, confirmed that Brennan was a goal of a probe into “the circumstances surrounding the manufacturing of the 2017 Intelligence Neighborhood Evaluation about Russian efforts to intervene within the 2016 presidential election in the US.”
Brennan’s lawyer didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. The FBI declined to remark. Reps for the DOJ didn’t reply to a request for remark.
