FBI interviewing CIA officers in Brennan investigation
WASHINGTON — The FBI is conducting interviews with current and former CIA officers as part of an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan’s role in an intelligence assessment that found Russia sought to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
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FBI agents began questioning employees last week at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the person said.
The interviews appeared to focus solely on Brennan and his statements to Congress, as well as the decision to include an unverified dossier on President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia in a 2017 intelligence assessment of Moscow’s election interference, the person said.
Brennan said he opposed the dossier’s inclusion, but was overruled by then-FBI Director James Comey.
Reuters first reported on the FBI interviews.
The FBI declined to comment. The CIA declined to comment and referred questions to the Justice Department.
An attorney for Brennan did not respond to a request for comment.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a Trump ally and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, previously referred Brennan to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution over allegations that Brennan gave false testimony in 2023 as part of the Russia investigation.
Brennan’s lawyers have denied Jordan’s allegations.
Lawyers for the former CIA director said in a December letter that they were informed by prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida that Brennan was the target of a grand jury investigation as part of the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Brennan led the CIA from 2013 to 2017.
Brennan testified in person before Congress, meaning any case against him for false statements would normally have to go before a federal grand jury in Washington, where grand jurors have been skeptical of some cases brought by the Trump administration. Earlier this year, a federal grand jury rejected an attempt to indict six sitting members of Congress over a social media post calling on members of the military and intelligence services not to obey illegal orders.
President Donald Trump and top officials in his administration have sought to rerun the 2016 election and advanced claims that Trump was the target of an elaborate plot by the Obama administration to sabotage his first term.
A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation in 2020 concluded that the intelligence assessment of Russia’s election influence efforts was accurate.
The three-year Senate investigation, involving more than 200 witnesses and reviewing more than a million documents, confirmed intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia spread disinformation online and leaked stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee to undermine Clinton’s candidacy and boost Trump’s prospects.
Trump’s current Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, was acting chairman of the Intelligence Committee at the time. He and all other committee members, Republicans and Democrats, supported the report’s findings.
A special counsel appointed by Trump during his first term, John Durham, said he found no criminal conspiracy among Obama administration officials to fabricate intelligence about Russian operations and filed no charges against the CIA officers who oversaw the 2017 assessment.
