The Justice Department recently acknowledged that it is conducting a criminal investigation of both former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey. The current CIA director, John Ratcliffe, made a criminal referral to the DOJ concerning Brennan. Many believe that referral involves perjury on Brennan’s part when testifying before Congress or during Special Counsel John Durham’s inquiry.
The precise criminal offenses concerning Comey are not clear at this point. But there was certainly plenty of malfeasance and misfeasance by both these agency heads starting with the inception of the Russia collusion fiasco.
Comey described, in his book, the sole origin of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign as a report “from an allied ambassador” of a conversation in London between a Trump adviser and “a Russian agent.” That was his characterization of George Papadopoulos’ meeting with Joseph Mifsud, who told the Trump aide the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Comey has piously huffed that it would have been “dereliction” not to proceed with an investigation. But to proceed with an intrusive investigation on so little was abuse.
A secondhand rumor should never be enough to justify opening an investigation of any American, much less a presidential candidate. This off-hand conversation initiated an investigation that dogged the presidency. Like directors before him, Comey should have said, “We need more probable cause.” Instead, Comey had the Bureau pursue investigations into more than one U.S. citizen without sufficient predicate.
Comey tried to bolster his case by branding Mifsud a Russian agent. It is more plausible that Mifsud was a British or CIA asset. In that first encounter, there was no mention of emails. Only after the WikiLeaks disclosures was an assumption made by both Australian High Commissioner Alexander Downer, Comey’s “allied ambassador,” and Papadopoulos, that the “dirt” was in the emails.
Once the case got rolling, Comey justified the electronic surveillance of Carter Page, a U.S. citizen, by writing that a federal judge granted “permission.” We now know the FISA Court was seriously misled.
Comey later tried to dodge responsibility by claiming it happened “seven levels below” him. That is simply not true. Peter Strzok, deputy assistant director for counterintelligence, drafted and signed out the communication initiating the probe. Strzok’s texts demonstrate he answered to Andrew McCabe, who was the deputy director and Comey’s direct report. These people were not seven levels below Comey. They were his inner circle, mere steps away from him on the seventh floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
It was Comey who wrote a memo of his conversation with Trump and then leaked it. What was he thinking? Here was the FBI director trying to incriminate the president. Comey signed three of the four applications for FISA coverage on Carter Page. The most damaging decision to the FBI’s reputation in history was Comey’s baseless investigation of a presidential campaign.
As much as the FBI has rightly been criticized for the Russian collusion fiasco, it was John Brennan’s CIA who led them down this rabbit hole.
John Brennan is a determined partisan. Before his nomination as CIA director, he was a close adviser to President Barack Obama. Since leaving his CIA post in 2017, he bragged about prodding the FBI to investigate the Trump campaign and has been unsparing in his vitriol towards President Trump. On July 21, 2017, at the Aspen Institute’s annual Security Forum, the former CIA director engaged in a disrespectful diatribe about the newly elected president, which I and many others in the audience found shocking.
The activity leading up to the FBI’s case opening was carried out in Britain under John Brennan’s direction. In his pre-election efforts to defeat Trump, Brennan turned to British intelligence. The close relationship between British and U.S intelligence goes back to World War II. There are, at its most basic, two aspects to this close arrangement. First, there is an ironclad agreement not to spy on each other. Second is an agreement to share all intelligence, including tasking one another. The Guardian, a UK newspaper, reported that Robert Hannigan, then the head of Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (their equivalent of the NSA) passed information about Trump to John Brennan in 2016. Likely, Brennan tasked Hannigan and GCHQ for any possible intercepts. British intelligence services are “the hand on the arm of the CIA.” Brennan used this British intelligence to push the FBI into the investigation.
“Crossfire Hurricane,” the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign, began on Sunday, July 31, 2016, when Peter Strzok wrote the communication opening the case. Just two days later, Strzok and another agent were in London to interview Downer about his conversation with Papadopoulos.
In the summer of 2016, Brennan, whose animus towards Trump is evident, briefed Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, telling him the Agency had referred the case to the Bureau. This was part of his effort to get the FBI moving on the collusion investigation. Sen. Reid, joining Brennan in pushing the collusion narrative, wrote Comey demanding action. This leaked to the media.
Brennan, clearly a biased actor, prodded the Bureau into pursuing an investigation to aid his candidate, Hillary Clinton, by discrediting the ultimate winner. Durham’s filing on February 11, 2022, documents how reports about supposed internet connections between Trump’s company and a Russian bank were fed to the CIA to create an “inference” or a “narrative” of Russian involvement.
The CIA led the FBI down a rabbit hole into its investigation of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. According to The New York Times, Durham asked in interviews “whether CIA officials might have somehow tricked the FBI into opening the Russian investigation.” This is where a possible charge of lying to Durham may now come into play for Brennan. Although the FBI’s investigation officially began on July 31, 2016, there were earlier contacts by an informant and others with individuals connected with the Trump campaign. That activity was carried out in Britain by or under the direction of John Brennan’s CIA. This is highly problematic because of long-standing agreements that the United States will not conduct intelligence operations in Britain.
The initiation of an FBI investigation requires certain “predicate information” i.e., articulable facts. What we now know about the case’s origin certainly does not meet this threshold required by the Attorney General Guidelines.
All of what passes for predicate information in this matter originated in Britain. Stefan Halper, identified in the investigation as a “confidential human source,” is an American academic in Cambridge with a history of political scandals and questions about his honesty. He is a close friend of Richard Dearlove, former director of British Intelligence (MI6). Brennan is also a close friend of Dearlove. Halper, whose father-in-law was Ray Cline, a well-known long-time CIA officer, has been identified as a CIA source in the past.
Halper met Carter Page at a Cambridge conference in early July 2016. Halper also contacted Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos. The FBI would not usually maintain an informant in Cambridge, England. More likely during the springtime lead-up to the opening of the FBI’s case, Halper was providing intelligence to the CIA or directly to Brennan, who had begun creating the collusion chimera.
In his memoir, James Comey mentions only the conversation in London between Papadopoulos and Downer as predicate information for opening the investigation. That conversation happened two months before the July 31, 2016 initiation of the FBI’s inquiry. As Strzok texted in April 2017, “I’m beginning to think the agency [CIA] got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn’t shared it completely with us.”
A referral from the CIA, particularly in the post-9/11 world, would cause some in the FBI to believe they had to act — especially if the agency’s information originated with our major foreign intelligence partner. Again, the FBI was led down a “rabbit hole,” losing sight of the time-tested Attorney General Guidelines requiring sufficient predicate. This sourcing — a CIA referral — might explain why the investigation began absent any predicate.
As the FBI’s investigation progressed, it utilized a FISA warrant against Carter Page, a member of Trump’s campaign, who had been in contact with Stefan Halper at Cambridge. This may be one reason why the early reporting on the FISA aspect came from the British media. The FBI used the dossier provided by Christopher Steele, formerly of MI6, to obtain the FISA warrant.
Although Brennan has exposed himself as a partisan, the CIA has escaped criticism for their role in using only thinly sourced information from British intelligence to snooker the Bureau. It also appears that the CIA may have undertaken intelligence activities in Britain — rather than tasking MI5 or MI6 — in violation of longstanding agreements.
Whatever the outcome of the current criminal investigations of Comey and Brennan, they will stand convicted by history as reckless partisans.