BREAKING: House committee refers former CIA director John Brennan for criminal prosecution

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) referred former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Brennan to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution after Brennan knowingly made false statements during his transcribed interview before the Committee in 2023. While testifying, Brennan made numerous willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact that were contradicted by the record established by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the CIA including: 
 

• Falsely denying that the CIA relied on the discredited Steele dossier in drafting the post-2016 election Intelligence Community Assessment; and
• Falsely testifying when he told the Committee that the CIA opposed including the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).

Brennan’s assertion that the CIA was not “involved at all” with the Steele dossier cannot be reconciled with the facts. As newly declassified documents show:
 

• A CIA officer drafted the annex containing a summary of the dossier;
• Brennan made the ultimate decision, along with then-FBI Director James Comey, to include information from the dossier in the ICA; and
• Brennan overruled senior CIA officers who objected to the inclusion of the dossier material.

Excerpts from the letter:

“We write to refer significant evidence that former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Brennan knowingly made false statements during his transcribed interview before the Committee on the Judiciary on May 11, 2023. While testifying, 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.

“Under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, a witness commits a crime if he ‘knowingly and willfully . . . makes any materially false . . . statement or representation’ with respect to ‘any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee . . . of the Congress[.]’ Congress cannot perform its oversight function if witnesses who appear before its committees do not provide truthful testimony. Making false statements before Congress is a crime that undermines the integrity of the Committee’s constitutional duty to conduct oversight.

“The points below support an investigation into whether Brennan made false statements at his transcribed interview:

1. Brennan falsely denied that the CIA relied on the discredited Steele dossier in drafting the post-election Intelligence Community Assessment.

“On January 6, 2017, the CIA, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and National Security Agency published a declassified version of an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) titled Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections. 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 Steele dossier was a series of reports containing baseless accusations concerning President Trump’s ties to Russia compiled and delivered to the FBI in 2016 by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. Subsequent investigations confirmed that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid Steele via the law firm Perkins Coie and opposition research firm Fusion GPS to provide derogatory information about Trump’s purported ties to Russia, which resulted in the discredited dossier. In July 2025, the Trump Administration declassified numerous documents showing that 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 newly declassified evidence also confirms 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.’

“A report drafted by HPSCI in 2017, and recently declassified, shows Brennan’s testimony to be false. According to the report, the ICA included supporting evidence for the ICA’s false claim that Russia ‘aspired’ to help President Trump win the election. The report directed the reader to review ‘Annex A’ for ‘additional reporting from an FBI Source on Russian influence efforts.’ Annex A, which was only included in the highest classified version of the ICA, was a two-page summary of the Steele dossier along with ‘some analysis that struggled to imply that some dossier findings might have been corroborated by intelligence.’ The CIA officer who served as the lead author of the ICA told HPSCI that he drafted Annex A ‘in coordination with [the] FBI.’

“Ultimately, according to documents declassified by the Trump Administration, the decision to incorporate information from the Steele dossier in the ICA ‘was jointly made by the Directors of CIA and FBI[.]’ A senior FBI analyst confirmed this fact, telling HPSCI that, after debating for several days whether to include information from the dossier, ‘upper levels [at FBI and CIA] decided to put it in.’

“Brennan’s assertion that the CIA was not ‘involved at all’ with the Steele dossier cannot be reconciled with the facts. As the newly declassified documents show, a CIA officer drafted the annex containing a summary of the dossier; Brennan made the ultimate decision, along with then-FBI Director James Comey, to include information from the dossier in the ICA; and, as discussed further below, Brennan overruled senior CIA officers who objected to the inclusion of the dossier material.

2. Mr. Brennan. Brennan falsely testified when he told the Committee that the CIA opposed including the Steele dossier in the ICA.

“Brennan testified that ‘the CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment.’

“This claim is contradicted by multiple sources that reveal Brennan’s support for including the dossier in the ICA. 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.’ Brennan later ‘formalized his position in writing, stating that “my bottomline is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.”‘ Similarly, the HPSCI report notes that when senior CIA officers demanded that Brennan remove the Steele dossier from the ICA, Brennan ‘refused to remove it.’ When the officers presented evidence of the dossier’s ‘many flaws,’ Brennan responded, ‘Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?’ Ultimately, Brennan had to order [the dossier] included over the objections of [CIA] professonals.’

“As the newly declassified documents demonstrate, Brennan eagerly wanted to include information from the Steele dossier in the ICA, a fact Brennan himself documented in writing. This directly contradicts Brennan’s testimony that ‘the CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the [ICA]’ because as the Director of the CIA, Brennan spoke for the Agency.

3. Brennan also provided false testimony during a HPSCI hearing in 2017.

“On May 23, 2017, Brennan testified before HPSCI at an open hearing titled ‘Russian Active Measures During the 2016 Election Campaign.’ During the hearing, Brennan falsely asserted that the Steele dossier ‘was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was done.’ Although this statement was made beyond the five-year statute of limitations, it indicates a pattern of Brennan’s willingness to lie to Congress about the Steele dossier.

“As discussed above, the HPSCI report and the CIA memorandum confirm not only that the Steele dossier was used as a basis for the ICA, but that Brennan insisted on its inclusion. This stands in stark contrast with Brennan’s testimony to HPSCI that the dossier was not used in drafting the ICA. Brennan’s testimony is also contradicted by the ICA itself, which references the dossier in the main body of the assessment and summarizes material from the dossier in an annex.

“In sum, Brennan’s testimony before the Committee on May 11, 2023, was a brazen attempt to knowingly and willfully testify falsely and fictitiously to material facts. We therefore make this referral for the Department to examine whether any of Brennan’s testimony warrants a charge for the violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001.”

Read the letter to AG Bondi here.