Former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan are reportedly under criminal investigation for potential wrongdoing regarding the infamous Steele dossier, according to Fox News Digital.
In 2016, the Steele dossier paved the roadmap for the FBI’s investigation of alleged collusion between President Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign and Russia. Brennan and Comey previously testified to lawmakers. Sources told Fox News Digital that the FBI is allegedly viewing the officials’ interactions as a “conspiracy,” potentially opening the investigation to a “wide range” of prosecutorial options.
While it is unclear how far the investigation will span, sources reportedly told the outlet that current CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred evidence of Brennan’s alleged misconduct to FBI Director Kash Patel. The new information stems from Ratcliffe declassifying a “lessons learned” review of the creation of the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).
While the ICA claimed that Russia sought to influence the 2016 presidential election to aid Trump, the review said the process of compiling the ICA had been rushed and marked by “procedural anomalies,” allegedly allowing officials to divert from typical standards.
According to Fox News Digital, Brennan’s allegedly false statements to Congress in 2023 stem from a newly declassified email sent to him in December 2016 by the former deputy CIA director, warning that including the dossier in the ICA would jeopardize “the credibility of the entire paper.”
Years later, Brennan told the House Judiciary Committee that he didn’t approve of the dossier being included. Ratcliffe’s newly declassified materials reportedly show Brennan had, in fact, pushed for the dossier to be part of the ICA.
In addition to Brennan testifying to Congress, Comey has reportedly spoken to lawmakers over the years about the agency’s support of the Steele dossier.
In 2018, Comey told Congress that the FBI had not verified the infamous dossier prior to the agency’s reliance on it to obtain a FISA warrant on Trump’s then-campaign adviser Carter Page. The former FBI director additionally claimed to lawmakers that Republicans had backed the dossier at the time, saying he believed it was important for investigators to understand the dossier was “a politically motivated effort, first by Republicans, then by Democrats.”
By 2020, Comey sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee, pleading ignorance to knowing that there had been significant problems with the dossier’s reliability. Comey said at the time that his staff at the FBI had not notified him of issues regarding Igor Danchenko, who was the primary source for the dossier’s author Christopher Steele.
Comey told the lawmakers that he could not “recall” details from a briefing in October 2016 about the Department of Justice’s concerns over the dossier’s political bias against Trump, adding his uncertainty on the details of the CIA’s concerns about using the dossier in the 2017 ICA.
The FBI declined to comment. The CIA did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/PBS NewsHour)
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