House Judiciary Committee Refers John Brennan to DOJ for Criminal Prosecution
“I think the most vulnerable may be Brennan, who’s like a 30-point buck now out in the open.”
In what may be the Trump Justice Department’s strongest and most clear-cut case against a former Obama administration official over alleged involvement in the 2016 Russian Collusion hoax, the House Judiciary Committee has referred former CIA Director John Brennan for criminal prosecution to the Department of Justice.
In a Tuesday letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) wrote they were “refer[ring] significant evidence” indicating that Brennan “knowingly made false statements during his transcribed interview before the Committee on the Judiciary on May 11, 2023.”
According to the letter, Brennan “made numerous willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact contradicted by the record established by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the CIA.”
John Brennan lied to Congress.
Today, we referred him to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution.
Read the full referral here: https://t.co/NG45lgFWgM pic.twitter.com/92BF4BUz4B
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) October 21, 2025
The letter continues, “Brennan falsely denied that the CIA relied on the discredited Steele Dossier in drafting the post-election Intelligence Community Assessment.” Jordan also alleged that “Brennan falsely testified when he told the Committee that the CIA opposed including the Steele dossier in the ICA.”
As we learned from the records declassified and released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe in July, Brennan insisted on including the dossier in the January 6, 2017, ICA (titled Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections).
Jordan states in his letter that those documents showed “the ICA’s main findings were false and that the Obama Administration knowingly fabricated the findings for the purpose of undermining the Trump Administration.”
The ICA stated, among other things, that Russia “developed a clear preference” for President Trump and “aspired to help” him win the election. This conclusion—now known to be false—was based in part on the Steele dossier, which “was referenced in the ICA main body text, and further detailed in a two-page ICA annex.”
The documents released in July “also confirm[ed] that Brennan falsely testified to the Committee. During a transcribed interview on May 11, 2023, Brennan stated that “the CIA was not involved at all with the [Steele] dossier.”
Here is a portion of Brennan’s exchange with then-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL):
Gaetz: So the fact that the DNC was providing the financing for the Steele dossier’s development doesn’t give you concern that it might be partisan?
Brennan: Again, that was happening back in 2016. . . . I understand how you were able to tie this to my reference to my expertise, but I don’t see any relevance to the Hunter Biden laptop issue now.”
Gaetz: You said that you signed this letter that we now acknowledge Joe Biden misused in a debate to fool the American public because you’re this great Russia expert, so I’m trying to understand your Russia expertise. And you were involved in analyzing this information.
Brennan: No, I was not involved in analyzing the dossier at all. I said the first time I actually saw it, it was after the election.** And the CIA was not involved at all with the dossier. You can direct that to the FBI and to others.
Gaetz: Were you aware of the FBI’s involvement with the dossier?
Brennan: Yes, because there’s an annex in the ICA, the Intelligence Community Assessment, that the Bureau asked to be included in there. It was their purview, their area, not ours at all.
During the hearing, Jordan asked Brennan about how and when he had learned about the dossier.
Brennan: I received a copy of it from the FBI when they were wanting to have a summary of that document . . . attached to the Intelligence Community Assessment that was done. This was before . . . we went to Trump Tower and briefed Donald Trump, when Jim Comey was going to talk to Donald Trump about the contents of that dossier.
And the CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment. And so they sent over a copy of the dossier to say that this was going to be separate from the rest of that assessment. And that’s when the CIA was given formal access to it.
The truth is that Brennan was likely the first Trump administration official to learn about the dossier. In October 2020, Fox News obtained a page of Brennan’s handwritten notes from a July 28, 2016, Oval Office meeting. Brennan had briefed Obama and others present on “Hillary Clinton’s purported ‘plan’ to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia as ‘a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server’ ahead of the 2016 presidential election.”
John Ratcliffe ordered the CIA to conduct a “lessons-learned” review of the 2017 ICA this spring. A report on its findings was among the documents released in July. The most significant takeaway was Brennan’s determination to include the Steele dossier in the ICA. I wrote about this story at the time.
According to the review, “the ICA authors and multiple senior CIA managers — including the two senior leaders of the CIA mission center responsible for Russia — strongly opposed including the Dossier, asserting that it did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards. … CIA’s Deputy Director for Analysis (DDA) warned in an email to Brennan on December 29 that including it in any form risked ‘the credibility of the entire paper.’”
Still Brennan insisted on including it. His response? “My bottom line is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.”
Jordan also noted in the referral that Brennan had lied during sworn testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in 2017. Although the statute of limitations has expired on those statements, Jordan wrote that it demonstrates “a pattern of Brennan’s willingness to lie to Congress about the Steele dossier.”
Here is a portion of Brennan’s exchange with then-Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) from May 2017.
Gowdy: Do you know if the Bureau ever relied on the Steele dossier as . . . part of any court filings, applications, petitions, pleadings?
Brennan: I have no awareness.
Gowdy: Did the CIA rely on it?
Brennan: No.
Gowdy: Why not?
Brennan: Because we . . . didn’t. It wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was done. . . . [I]t was not.
John Brennan referred to DOJ for criminal prosecution.
Here’s the exact moment Brennan lied under oath denying the Dossier was used in the ICA.
The Russiagate documents Tulsi Gabbard released prove this 100%.
Now you know why he’s so nervous.
Whoops!pic.twitter.com/Ii8yyBXQNs
— C3 (@C_3C_3) October 21, 2025
During that same hearing, Gowdy asked Brennan, “When you learned of Russian efforts, did you have evidence of a connection between the Trump campaign and Russian state actors?”
Brennan famously replied, “As I said, Mr. Gowdy, I don’t do evidence.”
Brennan would be well-advised to tone down that level of arrogance this time around because the evidence is not on his side.
Gabbard and Ratcliffe’s decision to release the long-buried documents in July sent shockwaves through Washington. At the time, George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley considered Brennan as the most vulnerable for perjury charges.
Turley said:
[I]t does appear that a couple of these figures may have committed perjury.
I think the most vulnerable may be Brennan, who’s like a 30-point buck now out in the open. I mean, this stuff goes directly to information that he gave to Congress. It seems to be in contradiction. And so there are real questions here.
I suppose we’ll see.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
“I suppose we’ll see”
I’ll believe it if and when it happens.
I’d like to know when the true leader of this hoax is going to be charged. If nothing else, at least with a RICO charge.
Perhaps the people responsible for finding the truth are concerned with being suicided?
It wouldn’t be the first time, or second time, or third …
I’m patient but I’m not getting younger.
I don’t know if it’s necessary to add this, but I’m talking about Hillary.
IF people like Comey and Brennan are indicted, arrested, perp-walked, jailed, bailed, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to actual prison time (and not some Club-Fed) I’ll believe that some change might be happening in D.C. to drain the swamp.
Until then I simply don’t believe that ANYTHING has changed other than the figureheads at the top of the pile.
Make a deal, John. Give us obama. Give us biden. Give us any clinton (preferably both).
If it can be only one Clinton, it must be Hillary. Bill is dirty, but Hillary is evil.
He’s a commie, I want him in prison for the rest of his life.
This for lying to Congress. You can get an indictment. It’s DC. It will be hard to get a conviction. Although once indicted the Grand Jury in Florida may want a pice of Brennan for conspiracy. His problems won’t end in DC. It’s just the beginning.
They ought to go after Clapper. I sense that he’s enough of a squish to flip on all of them.
go after hillary!!!
obama nad fjb
Very deserving, based on what he did to the country, especially because he knew it was false. Let him defend himself. His sanctimony will be his undoing.
According to congress.org: “Section 1001 of Title 18 of the United States Code, the general false statement statute, outlaws material false statements in matters within the jurisdiction of a federal agency or department.
It reaches false statements in federal courts and federal grand jury sessions as well as congressional hearings and administrative matters but not the statements of advocates or parties in court proceedings.”
Under § 1001, a statement is a crime if it is false, regardless of whether it is made under oath.
Conviction could result in imprisonment for not more than five years, and/or a fine of not more than $250,000.
In the modern era (since 1950), it is an extremely short list of people who have been convicted and punished for lying to congress; a professional courtesy of sorts, I guess.
I shake my head at how this avowed commie got a commission in the USMC, then became a DC bureaucrat of the worst order.
Brennan and many others belong in prison. There’s no doubt in my mind these conspirators were promised something or another for their cooperation in getting rid of Trump.
He’s not an avowed communist. I doubt he’s even a secret communist, but if he is he hasn’t avowed it.
I also don’t think he’s a secret Moslem, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if I were to find out he is.
He’s certainly a far more likely candidate than 0bama. It was never likely that he was a Moslem. 0bama actually was raised as a communist, but it didn’t take, because the only god he has ever worshiped is himself.
He conspired to execute a coup against the duly elected POTUS. He should be tried, convicted and hung by his neck until dead.
There is no such crime.
Seditious conspiracy? Treason? Rebellion and insurrection? Being an obnoxious, lying piece of sh*t?
None of those apply except the last one, which isn’t a crime.
Not a 30-point buck.
A 170-lb. wolf, with his leg caught in a bear trap.
Next headline on this: “Brennan case ‘randomly’ assigned to extremely biased Biden judge.”