DOJ interest in Brennan docs adds to scrutiny of 2016 election probe in Florida

The Department of Justice (DOJ) appears to be developing its case against former CIA Director John Brennan, sparking speculation he could be the next perceived foe of President Trump to face charges.  

The House Intelligence Committee voted last week to turn over to DOJ two 2017 documents involving Brennan, including a transcript of a meeting with the panel.

The release — approved strictly along party lines — comes as House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has called on the Justice Department to charge the former CIA director with lying to Congress.

It’s the latest sign a probe out of the Southern District of Florida is chugging along as prosecutors review the 2016 election and the cases brought against Trump.

“This is heating up down in Florida,” Jordan said during an appearance on Fox News’s “Hannity” shortly after the documents were released.

“And maybe there’s ultimately going to be some accountability for Mr. Brennan.”

To the committee’s Democrats, it’s the latest lever pulled to advance a political prosecution after the Trump Justice Department tried — and failed — to launch cases against other perceived enemies of the president.

“They were voted out because the gospel of Trump requires a continual return to the notion that 2016 was a Russia hoax and that the 2020 election was lost by Joe Biden,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) said, referencing the transcripts.

“So this is just one of the many, many long-run things that they are going to try to do for retribution against those who were involved in the so-called Russia hoax. It makes no sense otherwise.”

Himes listed off a string of recent attempts to seek retribution against Trump’s foes, including efforts to reduce the military rank of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), the failed effort to bring charges against former FBI Director James Comey, and a judge quashing subpoenas into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, with a prosecutor later conceding they weren’t sure they had any evidence indicating Powell committed a crime.

“It goes on and on and on. These guys are going to deliver retribution, even when it embarrasses them, as it has with [U.S. Attorney] Jeanine Pirro and the chairman of the Federal Reserve. So of course, they’re going to try, and they’re going to fail, because these people did not break the law,” Himes told The Hill.

A source familiar with the matter said one of the transcripts turned over by the committee is from a closed-door session with Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Comey. The other is for a hearing the panel had with just Brennan. Some parts of those discussions were held publicly.

Brennan’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

The former CIA director has been targeted by several Trump allies.

Last July, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard accused Brennan and other Obama-era officials of committing a “treasonous conspiracy” in how they handled Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections. Her 11-page memo detailed internal discussions showing Russia was unable to affect any vote totals. That doesn’t contradict the assessment at the time, as Obama officials said shortly after the election that Russia was unable to hack voting systems. 

The documents also do not undercut a conclusion reached by several reviews of the 2016 election: that Russia launched a massive campaign with the hopes of influencing the contest.

Shortly thereafter, Brennan and Clapper in a joint op-ed in The New York Times blasted the accusations against them as “patently false” while falsely minimizing Russia’s 2016 efforts. 

“Every serious review has substantiated the intelligence community’s fundamental conclusion that the Russians conducted an influence campaign intended to help Mr. Trump win the 2016 election,” the two wrote.

“Contrary to the Trump administration’s wild and baseless claims, there was no mention of ‘collusion’ between the Trump campaign and the Russians in the assessment,” they added.

Nonetheless, the DOJ then announced it would launch a “strike force” to investigate Obama officials over the 2016 election.

Also in July, CIA Director John Ratcliffe said he made a criminal referral, arguing Brennan, Clapper and Comey could all face charges in what he called a “hoax against the American people.”

Jordan then added to the list with a criminal referral in October, accusing Brennan of lying to Congress during a 2023 appearance about various aspects of the 2016 investigation, including the role the Steele dossier played.

Brennan was informed in February he is the target of a probe.

Since then, his attorneys have written to the chief judge for the Southern District of Florida, Cecilia Altonaga, expressing fears that the U.S. attorney there, Jason Reding Quiñones, is “judge-shopping the matter by steering it toward a favored judge — the only judge — in the Fort Pierce Division,” Judge Aileen Cannon.

“Were we in a normal time, we might hesitate to question the propriety of the government’s actions in the grand jury process. However, we are no longer in a normal time,” Brennan’s attorney Ken Wainstein wrote in the December letter.

Publicly, Jordan has continued to press the matter.

“God bless the attorney general for initiating this conspiracy investigation down there and putting this unit together at the Justice Department to look into all of this,” he said on Fox News.

“I think maybe it’s getting serious here,” he said, in reference to his referral.

Jordan pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi about the matter in a February hearing.

“I can’t confirm nor deny whether there is a pending investigation, but what I will say is no one is above the law,” Bondi said at the time.

Quiñones’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

But earlier this month, his team issued a subpoena to Comey, though the nature of what they were seeking is unclear.

The House Intelligence Committee voted to release the records the same day it permitted the DOJ to review transcripts of a discussion with Michael Atkinson, the former inspector general for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, over matters related to Trump’s first impeachment.

The committee’s majority defended the release of the other documents as well, noting that they were compiled as part of the House Intelligence Committee GOP’s 2017 report “related to the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.”

“The Committee took this action at the request of DOJ and hopes it may advance the accountability process that many Americans are desperate to see unfold,” a committee spokesperson said in a statement after the vote.

Himes expressed doubts the Justice Department would be able to bring any credible case against Brennan, as it has struggled to successfully mount other prosecutions.

“We’ve seen this over and over and over again, grand juries are throwing these things, the indictments out,” he said. “Name for me the number of Biden administration officials or Federal Reserve officials or FBI people who have been criminally convicted.”

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