Justice Department steps up probe into Trump target John Brennan
The Justice Department has requested records from the House Intelligence Committee on former CIA Director John Brennan, a frequent target of President Donald Trump, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The Intelligence Committee voted Tuesday evening to send the Justice Department several classified hearing transcripts related to Brennan, according to a source familiar with the committee’s actions. The vote took place at the request of the Justice Department, the two sources said.
A spokesperson for Republicans on the committee said in a statement that the panel “voted to report classified hearing transcripts at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice for an ongoing investigation related to the ‘2017 Report of Republican Committee Members,’ which was declassified and released last year, and other matters related to the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.”
The spokesperson said the committee hopes this action “can advance the accountability process that many Americans desperately want to see happen.”
An attorney for Brennan, who has been a paid contributor to NBC News, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Punchbowl News was first to report the Justice Department’s request.
The committee’s decision suggests the Justice Department under Trump is moving forward with a possible criminal case against Brennan after launching an investigation in July.
His lawyers said in a December letter that they were informed by prosecutors in the office of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones, who was investigating Brennan, that he was the target of a grand jury investigation as part of a 2017 intelligence community assessment of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Brennan led the CIA from 2013 to 2017.
“While it is strange that prosecutors could believe there is a legally justifiable basis for undertaking this investigation, they have done nothing to explain this mystery,” Brennan’s lawyer wrote in the letter to Chief U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga.
Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, a staunch Trump ally and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, previously referred Brennan to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, saying he gave false testimony in 2023 as part of the decade-old investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Brennan’s lawyers have denied Jordan’s allegations.
The testimony Jordan cited took place in Washington, D.C., where federal grand juries have been skeptical of lawsuits the Trump administration has attempted to bring against Trump’s political targets during his second term. In February, federal grand jurors unanimously rejected the administration’s attempt to indict six sitting members of Congress over a video posted on social media urging service members not to follow illegal orders.
