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The FBI has reportedly begun questioning current and former CIA officials as part of a Justice Department probe into former CIA Director John Brennan and his role in the intelligence community’s 2017 assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Agents have interviewed roughly a dozen officials involved in drafting the assessment, with investigators focusing on how its conclusions were reached and whether Brennan may have misled Congress during his 2023 testimony, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Brennan has been identified as a subject of the investigation, according to his attorney.
BONDI CONFIRMS DOJ HAS RECEIVED CRIMINAL REFERRAL ALLEGING BRENNAN PERJURY OVER STEELE DOSSIER
At the center of the probe is whether the intelligence assessment — which concluded Russia sought to boost Donald Trump’s candidacy — was influenced by the controversial Steele dossier, a collection of largely unsubstantiated allegations about Trump’s supposed ties to Russia that was funded by political opponents.
Brennan has previously said the CIA opposed including the dossier in the assessment, though a summary was ultimately attached to a classified version of the report.
The probe into Brennan gained momentum after House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan referred Brennan to the Justice Department last year, alleging he may have made false statements to Congress about the CIA’s role in handling the Steele dossier.
Brennan said in sworn testimony to Jordan’s committee that “the CIA was not involved at all with the dossier.”
“This claim is contradicted by multiple sources that reveal Brennan’s support for including the dossier in the ICA,” Jordan wrote in his letter to the DOJ referring Brennan for criminal prosecution.
“According to a CIA memorandum declassified by the Trump Administration, when two CIA mission center leaders confronted Brennan with ‘specific flaws’ in the dossier, Brennan disregarded their concerns, ‘appear[ing] more swayed by the [d]ossier’s general conformity with existing theories than by legitimate tradecraft concerns,'” Jordan wrote, citing messages from Brennan revealed after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified internal agency communications in July.
BONDI CONFIRMS DOJ HAS RECEIVED CRIMINAL REFERRAL ALLEGING BRENNAN PERJURY OVER STEELE DOSSIER
The original intelligence findings were later upheld by multiple government reviews. However, Trump has long derided the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt” and a “hoax” while calling for scrutiny of officials involved in launching it.
Brennan, for his part, claimed the Trump administration is “lawyer shopping,” according to Reuters, after the DOJ removed prosecutor Maria Medetis Long from Brennan’s case in favor of Joe diGenova.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the CIA and the FBI for comment.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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