When it comes to John Brennan, the man who choreographed the phony investigation of Donald Trump’s ties to Russia that hamstrung the 45th president for much of his first term, consider two facts that should have sent a chill up the spines of the American people. First, as the Cold War raged in 1976, Brennan voted for a hardened Communist, Gus Hall, for President. Second, he was later nominated as Barack Obama’s Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the very agency tasked with rooting out anti-American activity around the world. Brennan openly admitted to voting for a Communist but was still confirmed as the head of the nation’s premier spy agency.
How was that even possible? Brennan claimed he was never actually a member of the Communist Party, as if that is reassuring. But what does it say about the instincts of the man placed in charge of the nation’s intelligence?
While voting for a Soviet puppet was appalling enough – and he never said he regretted his vote – what Brennan did in hopes of preventing Donald Trump’s election and then to incapacitate him in office forged his ultimate identity as the quintessential corrupt deep state operative. By now, you will have heard of the Steele Dossier, the opposition research document commissioned by the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. It was rife with concocted falsehoods, most famously about Trump relieving himself on the bed in which Obama slept while in Moscow. Brennan insisted on the inclusion of the ginned-up dossier in order to promote the Trump-Russia probe in 2016, despite other top Obama-era intelligence officials knowing it was filled with unverified "internet rumor" and arguing for its exclusion from the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) handed to disgraced former FBI Director James Comey.
Nine years later, Congress is launching a criminal investigation into the actions of Brennan and Comey. But the question is whether there is sufficient reason to launch this probe so long after the fact, or if it is merely an act of political revenge.
Why Does It Matter Now?
The issue is accountability. While Brennan and Comey have been stripped of their security clearances by Trump and are no longer able to directly threaten the 47th president (though you can be certain they remain hooked into the intelligence community via former colleagues), should they remain uninvestigated and unaccountable for their naked attempt to kneecap Donald Trump?
Ask yourself what it is like to teach a child that he needs to be responsible for his actions if there are no consequences for misbehavior? Sure enough, the child will undoubtedly continue to misbehave. It is only when he is grounded, stripped of privileges, or given some other form of punishment that such behavior will cease. It is a simple proposition that applies equally to the political realm.
The fact that Brennan’s escapades occurred almost a decade ago is essentially the basis for the left’s argument that there should be a de facto statute of limitations on what may well have been criminal conduct. But this is not a witch hunt so much as a matter of holding public officials to account for past indiscretions or crimes in order to prevent future episodes of official misconduct designed to destroy a presidency or other nefarious deeds.
You may recall that the principal reason Gerald Ford lost the 1976 election was that he pardoned Richard Nixon – a justifiable decision to unite the country, but also one that angered millions of Americans who were itching for Nixon to stand trial or at least be held directly to account. Of course, Nixon’s actions during the Watergate crisis had occurred just weeks before, but does that mean it should all have been swept under the rug if more time had passed before Ford’s decision to pardon?
John Brennan, Serial Liar
On July 28, 2016, Brennan briefed Obama on a plan from one of Clinton's campaign advisors "to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service," according to declassified notes from the meeting that also included then-Vice President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
"We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from (REDACTED)," read Brennan’s handwritten notes obtained by Fox News Digital in October 2020. After that briefing, the CIA forwarded the information in its ICA to Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok, and that resulted in the probe known as "Crossfire Hurricane." Intelligence protocols went out the window when it came to the urgent matter of delegitimizing the man who promised to drain the putrid swamp in which Brennan and his cohorts ruled the roost. The review launched by current CIA Director John Ratcliffe asserts that the "decision by agency heads to include the Steele Dossier in the ICA ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment."
Brennan and his colleagues knew Trump was a political novice at the time who would be relatively powerless to fight back against the black ops of the entrenched deep state. Trump was crippled enough by the fictitious accounts that all he could do was defend himself and claim the charges were false. That assertion of innocence was validated by the Mueller investigation, which carried on for two years despite Mueller’s widely reported awareness from the get-go that Trump did not “collude” with Vladimir Putin and Russia. Brennan later helped perpetrate another bald-faced lie, along with dozens of like-minded intelligence officials, that the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the earmarks” of Russian disinformation, cementing his identity as a corrupt serial liar. And he continued his crusade against Trump during the Biden presidency, suggesting that the intelligence community might limit the information it would provide to Donald Trump as the 2024 GOP presidential nominee for fear that he could “misuse” it.
What made Brennan’s actions regarding Trump back in the day even more intolerable was his statement to a congressional committee that he opposed the inclusion of the Steele Dossier in the ICA, when it is now clear that the opposite was true, that he alone insisted on keeping it alive. He may now be prosecuted for lying to Congress, or at least publicly humiliated for the leading role he played in trying to take down a prospective and sitting president. While voting for a communist to become president and later being placed in charge of the nation’s top spy agency was chilling enough, perpetuating a lie of mammoth proportions to politically decapitate his enemy is what has the MAGA world wishing John Brennan good riddance.
