A new report by Nick Short for The Epoch Times suggests that former CIA Director John Brennan may be guilty of perjury. To see how, we have to go back to May 23, 2017, when Brennen testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence about how the probe into then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign got underway.
The relevant part of Brennan’s testimony comes from an exchange he had with former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC). Remember that we now know that the campaign of Hillary Clinton, along with the Democratic National Committee, paid Fusion GPS for opposition research. Fusion GPS, in turn, funded former British spy Christopher Steele — who was openly opposed to Trump — to produce the now-infamous dossier which was then used by the Obama administration’s Justice Department to obtain FISA warrants to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Brennan’s testimony
During the exchange, Brennan denied knowledge of who commissioned the Steele dossier, denied knowledge of whether the FBI paid for, denied knowledge of the FBI using the dossier for any court filings, and insisted that his own agency — the CIA — did not rely on it.
When asked by Gowdy why the CIA did not rely on it, Brennan responded, “Because we — we didn’t. It wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was done. It was — it was not.”
Brennan’s basis
If this is indeed the case — that Brennan lacked knowledge of any of this vital information — the key question is: “What intelligence did Brennan have that was sufficient to warrant the probe into Donald Trump’s campaign?” Here’s the answer Brennan gave in his testimony:
I was aware of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion, cooperation occurred.
“All right,” said Gowdy. “Well, there are a bunch of words that start with ‘c’ floating around. I asked you about collusion, coordination, and conspiracy, and you used the word contact. And I think in a previous answer, you did a really good job of establishing that contact could be benign or not benign. So, was it contact that you saw? Was it something more than contact? What is the nature of what you saw?”
“I saw interaction and [was] aware of interaction that, again, raised questions in my mind about what the true nature of it was,” said Brennan. “But I don’t know. I don’t have sufficient information to make a determination whether or not such cooperation or complicity or collusion was taking place, but I know that there was a basis to have individuals pull those threads.”
What individuals?
Taking Brennan at his word, we next have to ask who those individuals were.
Short’s analysis argues that one was former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), whom Brennan briefed behind closed doors using intelligence that “seems to be nothing more than the Steele dossier.” Then-FBI director James Comey was then pressured by Reid in a public letter to launch an investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The letter is a key piece of evidence as to whether Brennan perjured himself. It was written two days after Brennen briefed Reid — a fact that the letter omitted — and it talks about a “Trump Advisor” who “met with high ranking sanctioned individuals in Moscow in July 2016.” If this sounds a lot like the Steele Dossier, that is because it is just about word for word. But going a step further, Short points out, this letter was used in Michael Isikoff’s Yahoo article that was then used by the FBI as support for its FISA application.
So, did Brennan perjure himself? That’s something that U.S. Attorney John Durham, who has been tasked by U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr with investigating the origins of the intelligence agencies’ probe of the Trump campaign, is going to determine.
And if he did, will he actually face criminal charges? We’ll have to wait and see. But it seems like the right man is on the job. Durham is “looking at putting people in jail,” according to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who is also investigating the origins of the Trump-Russia probe.
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