The Department of Justice has just dropped a bombshell by launching criminal investigations into former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey for their roles in the controversial Trump-Russia probe.
These probes, as reported by Fox News Digital, center on potential misconduct, including allegations of false statements to Congress, tied to the flawed 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) and the broader investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Let’s rewind to 2016, when the FBI kicked off "Crossfire Hurricane," a counterintelligence operation to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Declassified notes reveal Brennan briefed then-President Barack Obama and top officials, including Comey and Joe Biden, on intelligence suggesting Hillary Clinton’s campaign aimed to smear Trump with Russian ties as a distraction from her controversies.
The CIA flagged this as a potential political maneuver, forwarding it to the FBI with a memo noting it was for “background investigative action,” yet the FBI plowed ahead with Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller later concluded in 2019 that no evidence of criminal conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia existed, casting serious doubt on the investigation’s foundation.
Fast forward to the 2017 ICA, which alleged Russian efforts to sway the election for Trump, but a recent declassified review exposed a rushed process riddled with “procedural anomalies” that strayed from intelligence norms.
Brennan pushed hard to include the now-discredited Steele Dossier—funded by Clinton’s campaign and the DNC—in the ICA, despite warnings from CIA officials who dubbed it “internet rumor” and cautioned it could taint the report’s credibility.
A declassified email from 2016 to Brennan even warned that including such shaky material risked “the credibility of the entire paper,” yet he pressed on, prioritizing narrative over facts.
The review sharply criticizes Brennan, stating he “showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness,” a polite way of saying he ignored solid tradecraft for a preconceived story.
Contrast that with Brennan’s 2023 testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, where he claimed the CIA was “very much opposed” to referencing the dossier in the ICA—yet records show he wrote that he believed it “warrants inclusion.”
That kind of flip-flop doesn’t just raise eyebrows; it practically demands a magnifying glass, especially when career CIA officials now admit the process was politicized under Obama-era leadership.
Special Counsel John Durham’s report didn’t mince words either, noting the FBI ignored “a clear warning sign” that Clinton’s team might be manipulating the bureau for political gain during the 2016 race.
Durham called out the FBI’s failure to critically assess this so-called Clinton Plan intelligence, suggesting that a more skeptical approach might have changed the trajectory of Crossfire Hurricane entirely.
While the Steele Dossier was relegated to a footnote in the final ICA—thanks to FBI insistence, not CIA approval—its shadow looms large, with declassified Annex A admitting Steele’s claims had “only limited corroboration” and weren’t used in the report’s conclusions.