FBI interviewing CIA officers in Brennan investigation

WASHINGTON -- The FBI is conducting interviews with current and former CIA officers as part of an investigation into ex-CIA Director John Brennan’s role in an intelligence assessment that found Russia sought to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.

FBI agents began questioning employees last week at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the person said.

The interviews appeared to focus solely on Brennan and his statements to Congress, and the decision to include an unverified dossier about President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia in a 2017 intelligence assessment about Moscow’s election meddling, the person said.

Brennan has said he opposed including the dossier, but was overruled by the FBI director at the time, James Comey.

Reuters first reported on the FBI interviews.

The FBI declined to comment. The CIA declined to comment and referred questions to the Justice Department.

A lawyer for Brennan did not respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a Trump ally and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, previously referred Brennan to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution on allegations that Brennan made false testimony in 2023 in connection with the Russia investigation.

Brennan’s lawyers have denied Jordan’s allegations.

The former CIA director’s attorneys said in a December letter that they were advised by prosecutors from the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida that Brennan is a target of a grand jury investigation in connection with the intelligence community assessment about Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Brennan was head of the CIA from 2013 to 2017.

Brennan testified before Congress in person, meaning that any case against him for false statements would normally have to be brought before a federal grand jury in Washington, where grand jurors have been skeptical of some cases brought by the Trump administration. Earlier this year, a federal grand jury rejected an attempt to indict six sitting members of Congress over a social media post that called upon members of the military and intelligence communities not to obey unlawful orders.

President Donald Trump and top officials in his administration have sought to re-litigate the 2016 election and pushed assertions that Trump was the target of an elaborate conspiracy by the Obama administration to sabotage his first term in office.

A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee investigation in 2020 concluded that the intelligence assessment about Russia’s election influence efforts was accurate.

The Senate investigation, which spanned three years, involved more than 200 witnesses and reviewed more than a million documents, endorsed the intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia had spread disinformation online and leaked stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee to undermine Clinton’s candidacy and bolster Trump’s prospects.

Trump’s current secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was the acting chair of the Intelligence Committee at the time. He and every other member of the committee, both Republicans and Democrats, backed the report’s findings.

A special counsel Trump appointed in his first term, John Durham, reported finding no criminal conspiracy among Obama administration officials to fabricate intelligence about Russia’s operations and filed no charges against the CIA officers who oversaw the 2017 assessment.