Earlier this year, the U.S. Justice Department asked two Senate committees to provide transcripts and records of contacts with former CIA Director John Brennan regarding the now-discredited Russia collusion allegations, signaling there was an active investigation into whether the former spy boss had misled or obstructed Congress. The letters gave a hard deadline of Feb. 23 for compliance.Two months later, the body run by Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has not complied, slowing a key angle of a grand jury investigation based in Fort Pierce, Fla., into whether Obama and Biden-era government officials engaged in a conspiracy to weaponize law enforcement and intelligence tools to harm President Donald Trump and his followers.
All that is needed, senators told Just the News, is a resolution to be introduced and a floor vote in the GOP-controlled Senate. Neither has happened — even after prosecutors narrowed their requests to evidence related to Brennan — though prosecutors were recently allowed to read one single Senate Intelligence Committee report in a secure room, officials said.
Senate hiding evidence from a Congress in same party
The weeks-long standoff means a Republican administration is being kept from seeing evidence from a Congress in its own party’s control. And it was Congress who referred Brennan for prosecution on allegations he misled lawmakers.
One option, officials told Just the News, is for DOJ to escalate pressure by serving the Senate with a grand jury subpoena.
The delay – which stands in stark contrast to the House, which had already voted to transmit to DOJ similar evidence from its side of the Capitol, risks inflaming Thune’s already strained relationship with Trump.
The president has openly fumed that the Senate leader has been unwilling to rid the chamber of the 60-vote filibuster rule and has been unable to muster enough votes for the administration’s signature election-integrity legislation called the Save America Act, which would impose citizenship checks and photo ID for voters in federal elections.
Two spokespersons for Thune did not immediately return an email from Just the News seeking comment. A spokesperson for the Senate Intelligence Committee also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said he was committed to full transparency.
“Senator Grassley has released a deluge of information related to Crossfire Hurricane over the past decade, including the defective annex to the Intelligence Community’s assessment of Russian election interference, which then-DNI Ratcliffe declassified and provided to Grassley upon his request,” the spokesperson said.
“Grassley has made public records he’s received throughout multiple Congresses regarding Crossfire Hurricane, including the declassified Durham and Clinton Annexes, and left no stone unturned,” the spokesperson said.
A DOJ spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
The delays in the Senate come as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is ramping up resources in Florida to develop the weaponization conspiracy case. The career prosecutor who was running the weaponization probe was sent back to her post this week in Miami, and former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova is set to start Monday as the new lead prosecutor on Russia collusion matters.
DiGenova, a longtime vocal Trump supporter who also did legal work for the president, is a veteran and accomplished federal prosecutor who has worked as a U.S. Attorney in the nation’s capital as well as an independent and special counsel in politically sensitive cases.
As the chief federal prosecutor in the nation’s capital under President Ronald Reagan, diGenova led a sprawling corruption prosecution of D.C. Mayor Marion Barry that secured a dozen convictions, and he also prosecuted convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.
Later, he was named an Independent Counsel in a Bush administration probe into workers who had improperly accessed Bill Clinton’s passport records ahead of the 1992 election, and also acted as a special counsel who probed Teamsters union corruption.
Brennan claims he’s the victim of a witch-hunt
Brennan has been told he is the target of the investigation and denies any wrongdoing, according to a letter his attorneys sent in December to a federal judge in Miami that argued there was no “legally justifiable basis” for the investigation. The Obama-era CIA boss has claimed in media interviews he’s a victim of a “politically-based” witch hunt.
“I think this is unfortunately a very sad and tragic example of the continued politicization of the intelligence community, of the national security process,” Brennan said last summer. Brennan currently serves as a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC News and MS NOW, and, according to one talent agency receives between $50,000 and $75,000 for speaking fees.
Brennan’s lawyer’s acknowledgment came after House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, in October referred the former CIA director to the DOJ for criminal prosecution, alleging he made false statements to Congress in 2023 and possibly obstructed lawmakers’ ability to investigate the role the now-discredited Steele dossier played in an Obama-era intelligence assessment. That bogus assessment portrayed Vladimir Putin as assisting Trump in winning the 2016 election.
The letters from Assistant Attorney General Patrick Davis to the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees – obtained by Just the News — provide some insights into what evidence prosecutors are seeking in their investigation into Brennan.
Davis’ letter asked the Senate to provide “fully unredacted copies of classified and unclassified transcripts of the Committee’s interviews, depositions, briefings, and hearings with any witnesses, as well as any written responses provided by witnesses” related to three categories:
The January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment entitled “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections”;
Documents related to the Steele dossier and its inclusion in the ICA; and
Allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian officials.
