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Ex-FBI Director Comey and ex-CIA Director Brennan under investigation by Trump

The FBI is investigating former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey for possible false statements to Congress following a referral from the current CIA Director John Ratcliffe, according to a person briefed on the matter.

The referral came after Ratcliffe last week released a review that criticized the 2016 US intelligence community assessment, long criticized by President Donald Trump and his allies, that found Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to intervene in the election on Trump’s behalf.

In a post on X, Ratcliffe said the new review found that the original assessment “was conducted through an atypical & corrupt process under the politically charged environments of former Dir. Brennan & former FBI Dir. Comey.”

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by Anonymousreply 10July 11, 2025 4:06 AM

The Ratcliffe review did not dispute the intelligence community’s core judgment that Putin preferred Trump to then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton but argued that agency leadership rushed the process and then Brennan “risked stifling analytic debate” by “signaling that agency heads had already reached consensus before the ICA was even coordinated.” The review made no mention of Comey.

It’s not clear whether the FBI probe, first reported by Fox News, has moved beyond a preliminary stage.

“We do not comment on ongoing investigations,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

“Nobody from the FBI or Department of Justice or CIA has reached out to me at all, so I am just waiting to hear more about what this might be,” Brennan said Wednesday on MSNBC, where he is a contributor.

“I am clueless about what it is exactly that they may be investigating me for,” Brennan added.

The CIA and Comey declined to comment.

On Wednesday, Trump told reporters at the White House he wasn’t aware of the reported investigation of Brennan and Comey but repeated his accusation that they are “very dishonest people.”

At the center of the dispute are statements by both men to Congress about the 2016 investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election, and the decision to examine claims in a dossier from former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, funded by the Clinton campaign, which alleged coordination between the Russian government and people associated with the Trump campaign.

Last month’s CIA report also argued that Brennan restricted access to key intelligence and “showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness” when faced with internal objections including information from the dossier.

Brennan, in his memoir, said he opposed including information from the Steele dossier in a briefing document provided to President Barack Obama. Officials decided instead to append a summary of the dossier’s allegations to the briefing document.

The FBI’s criminal investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia began in 2016 and stretched into the first Trump administration. It became the subject of investigations by the Justice Department’s inspector general and by special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr to also examine the handling of intelligence that led to the Trump-Russia probe.

The Durham probe ended with no finding of wrongdoing in the handling of the intelligence, but it did end with the indictment of three people, including a former FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to falsifying information in a surveillance warrant request targeting a Trump campaign aide.

by Anonymousreply 1July 10, 2025 8:46 AM

Mein director!

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by Anonymousreply 2July 10, 2025 8:48 AM

This was a great @johnbrennan tweet to Trump from 2018:

When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America...America will triumph over you.

by Anonymousreply 3July 10, 2025 1:30 PM

Yes but..still waiting and it doesn’t look good.

by Anonymousreply 4July 10, 2025 2:47 PM

I have always had the feeling John Brenner, without warning could slowly remove his suit jacket and tie, place them neatly on a nearby chair, roll his sleeves up... and beat your ass into the middle of next week.

And I especially get that feeling when he's talking about Trump and his imps.

Love him.

by Anonymousreply 5July 10, 2025 2:57 PM

R5 - Do you mean Brennan? Or former Pennsylvania Mayor Brenner?

by Anonymousreply 6July 10, 2025 3:15 PM

David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo argues that harassment and induced stress is the point. (Trump and Bondi would like nothing more than Brennan and Comey to commit suicide).

by Anonymousreply 7July 10, 2025 3:18 PM

Never going to happen, Any 'normal' DOJ wouldn't send out a memo saying who they're investigating....intimidation tactic. Durham and Rubio would make poor witnesses. It's been 81/2 years.....timed out.

by Anonymousreply 8July 11, 2025 2:03 AM

Another 4-D chess move: waste an untold amount of time and resources on "crimes" that are barred by the statute of limitations.

by Anonymousreply 9July 11, 2025 2:16 AM

Brennan, R6.

by Anonymousreply 10July 11, 2025 4:06 AM
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