Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
When asked why the current Department of Justice might be investigating him, former CIA Director John Brennan answered, as was his wont, with a complete lie: “I am clueless about what it is exactly that they may be investigating me for.”
Clueless? Hardly. Brennan knows full well that his fingerprints are on some of the greatest scandals of the last decade. These machinations have threatened the very integrity of our institutions and elections.
He has a record of serially lying to Congress, the public, and the media, and doing so emphatically.
In 2011, as the government’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan absurdly insisted that the Obama administration’s drone strikes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border had not killed a single civilian noncombatant. Yet multiple sources proved the claim was clearly false. In truth, the number of innocents killed was likely somewhere between 50 and 70.
In 2014, as director of the CIA, Brennan lied again, doubling down by denying that CIA operatives were hacking into U.S. Senate staffers’ computers.
“As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. . . . We wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the, you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we do.”
Here, too, he was caught lying and forced to apologize—but never charged with perjury.
But Brennan’s biggest fabrications came in 2017 when, as an ex-CIA director, he testified before a congressional committee that he neither knew who had commissioned the now-infamous bogus Steele dossier nor whether the CIA had relied on it for its intelligence assessments.
But Brennan knew well at the time that then NSA director Michael Rogers and James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, had both gone on record that the dossier did play a major role in the intelligence community’s interagency assessment. Indeed, the concocted dossier was delivered directly to President Obama. And John Brennan was one of its most ardent advocates, seeing in it a way to undermine the Trump campaign.
So, Brennan himself played a major role in disseminating the fake brief, more or less violating a cardinal CIA precept not to interfere in domestic surveillance and intelligence gathering. For example, Brennan approached the late Sen. Harry Reid to brief him in hopes that Reid would contact the FBI to help spread the lies of the dossier. And Reid did just that two days later, in a call to then-Director James Comey.
Brennan, against the advice of senior CIA Russian analysts, had insisted that the false dossier’s contents be made part of formal assessments presented to the president. He also must have known that Christopher Steele was also indirectly hired by the Clinton campaign, which had funneled his payments through three covert channels—the DNC, Perkins Coie law firm, and Fusion GPS—to hide the campaign’s tracks.
Remember that Brennan was one of the chief architects of the now-infamous “51 intelligence officials” rounded up on the eve of the last 2020 presidential debate by Antony Blinken, a Biden campaign operative.
Blinken had called former CIA interim director Mike Morrel to assemble dozens of supposedly retired intelligence experts to falsely claim to the public that Hunter Biden’s laptop—then in the possession of the FBI, which had insisted on silence about its own authentication of its lurid contents—was a product of Russian intelligence to help Trump.
Brennan and the supposedly retired “authorities” (many of whom were still working for the CIA as contractors, despite claiming to be retired) sought to hide their tracks by the weasel words “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” What they meant by that wink and nod was that their deceptive letter was aimed at tarnishing Trump as a beneficiary of a collusive Russian disinformation project on the eve of the last debate.
The trick worked like clockwork, as an equally lying Biden cited the signed letter to counter Trump during the presidential debate:
“There are 50 [sic] former [sic] national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. They have said that this has all the … five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend, Rudy Giuliani.”
Christopher Wray’s FBI also partnered with social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, to suppress any accurate news accounts about the genuine laptop, claiming it was “misinformation” or “disinformation.”
In other words, the FBI knew the laptop was real, kept that knowledge hidden, and then helped the media to suppress the truth—in ways that helped Joe Biden’s campaign win the election.
In retrospect, that colossal laptop lie likely affected the final 2020 debate and the news coverage that followed. A controversial post-election Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics poll found that some 79 percent of respondents said their vote might have changed had they known the incriminating laptop was authentic.
As an “expert” MSNBC analyst (relying on his security clearance to monetize his on-screen credibility) and social media gadfly, Brennan did his best to cover his tracks by periodically smearing then-President Trump with incoherent rants like the following:
“When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You will not destroy America . . . America will triumph over you.”
Brennan’s perfidy and lying are in addition to his adaptability, going from a Bush-era promoter of “enhanced integration” (i.e.,waterboarding at Guantanamo?) to a sudden Obama convert who lectured the nation about the good intentions of jihadists: “Nor do we describe our enemy as ‘jihadists’ or ‘Islamists’ because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one’s community.”
But mostly, Brennan shouted on the air or tweeted his furor at Trump in increasingly unhinged fashion, “Your kakistocracy is collapsing after its lamentable journey… we have the opportunity to emerge from this nightmare stronger & more committed to ensuring a better life for all Americans, including those you have so tragically deceived.”
Given that Brennan was one of the founders of the Russian collusion hoax, he not only never apologized for the lie but continued to advance the falsehood of Trump-Russian collusion.
In 2018, Brennan called the president a veritable traitor:
“Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to and exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of ‘treasonous.’ Not only were Trump’s comments ‘imbecilic,’ but he is also wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you?”
For a former CIA director, Brennan proved strangely clueless about why Putin had invaded his neighbors during three of the last four American administrations—except Trump’s. When he called Trump treasonous, Trump had already lifted the Obama sanctions on providing offensive weapons to Ukraine. Trump would soon pull out of a disadvantageous missile deal with Russia. Trump would also lecture the Germans on the folly of cutting a natural gas pipeline deal with Putin. He sanctioned Russian oligarchs and ordered the destruction of a cohort of attacking Wagner Group Russian mercenaries in Syria.
Brennan was at the center of three of the greatest scandals in recent history that may well have changed American history. His promotion of the fake Steele dossier sought to destroy the Trump campaign and sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.
That continual false charge of Russian collusion in 2017-8 consumed 22 months of Trump’s first term, forcing the president to spend every day defending himself from the truly weaponized Mueller legal team vainly trying to concoct a collusion charge. Often on MSNBC, Brennan lied to the American people that President Trump was all but a traitor in league with Putin.
Not yet done, in 2020, Brennan and his associates likely changed the course of the last presidential debate by spreading a fantasy letter. Thereby, he helped turn a potentially disastrous Biden scandal into a false charge that Trump was once again “colluding” with the Russians to promote a supposedly fake Biden laptop. And those lies may well have swung the close 2020 election.
Now, Brennan thinks Trump has weaponized the Justice Department to investigate Brennan’s many lies and efforts to warp domestic elections. In truth, John Brennan, along with former FBI Director James Comey and James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence, more or less destroyed the reputation of our investigative and intelligence bureaus by chronically lying, leaking, and weaponizing the government.
After all that, who would ever believe anything Brennan says—as he still projects his own past sins onto others?
An excellent historical record of John Brennan’s deceit and attempted destruction of our constitutional republic for personal and ideology gain.
There is only one solution to right this injustice to the nation, arrest, conviction and incarceration of all involved.
Brennan may not be lying in the statement you quote. There are so many bad deeds in his dossier that he may indeed not know “exactly” what’s under investigation. Lying liar always lie… and when they tell a truth is may well be an accident.
I doubt that Brennan will ever see the inside of a prison cell. His deep state handlers would likely fit him for a pine box first. No good reason to let him spill all he knows to the world.
As for him sullying the CIA? The CIA has been carrying out anti-American activities for many years prior to Brennan’s taking the reins of the CIA. He’s just the latest in a long line of directors that carry out criminal level activities. Does anyone really believe that G.H.W. Bush didn’t have some guilt in the assassination of President Kennedy? When questioned on where he was when Kennedy was shot he said he couldn’t remember!
I was 15yo at that time and I vividly recall where I was on that dark day.
I don’t think Trump could be more pronounced concerning his intent to move forward and pull what is left of the battered honest Washington with him. Old news like this is slogging and slowing his progress.
I reckon that throughout history of human civilization some leaders in religion, education, finance and politics have always lied to further their career or protect institutional interests. Only in my lifetime here in U.S.A (b.1946) has lying in public become a career choice for leaders, middle-management, entry-level employees and the man on the street.
A teacher of mine once told us that in Latin cultures, lying is an acceptable, expected social practice. OTOH, most English speaking people spoke of FACTS honestly and forthrightly. Some say our system of justice is the greatest engine ever devised for discovering truth. Is that a fact?
In my neck of the woods what Jesus says about himself is foundational:
“I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.”
That is a categorically conclusive statement. Believe it or not. Every fact is indeed a fact. Whether or that FACT relates to the Good LORD’s purposes is a question only the LORD Himself will answer. And in time, He will.
And we now learn just how much the CIA was lying to the people for the past 60+ years re what it knew about Lee Harvey Oswald before Nov. ’63. Amazing that anyone would trust the agency after that.
The one thing we all know that is true regarding Brennan is that he will never be punished for his sins against the country.
Won’t happen.
Why?
He knows too much. Where the bodies are buried. All the important people who would be ruined if his knowledge went public. Every celebrity, politician, news anchor, or deep state operator.
So we can tear out hair out about his obvious anti American actions, but he will remain a free man.
That’s how it works. Always has, always will.
It is just a fun parlor game to think otherwise.
As my father used to say, “Jim, the world is not fair.”
Your analysis is incredible…and no, Brennan will never tell the truth.
Your analysis is incredible…and no, Brennan will never tell the truth.
Great piece, as usual…. A very deserving indictment of the vile Spook Brennan….
Minor question: Should “enhanced integration” be “enhanced interrogation” given it is referring to waterboarding — an interrogation technique?
a friend of mine who brennan was employed by found out he was lying to him. he had the great pleasure of firing him by telling his security team to immediately escort brennan from the office. packed his personal effects into a box and delivered it via messenger.
I blame Obama
Brennan was inserted into his position by Barry Soetoro to undermine & destroy our intelligence community, I believe (but cannot confirm) that he converted to Islam when he was COS in Jiddah. He will go down in history as the greatest traitor (alongside John Kerry) in US history Benedict Arnold step aside!
Miranda Devine reports today that a solid majority of left wing voters still
pretend to
believe the Russian hoax,
as a salve to their conscience after voting for a dead fool in an empty suit,
according to Rasmussen.
Miranda Devine reports today that a solid majority of left wing voters still believe the Russian hoax according to Rasmussen. Proves the point that if you lie big and hard enough the lie will stick. TDS ensures it in this case. Even if Brennan and his conspirators are ever held to account they will frame it as the persecution of a patriotic American servant. In truth the bloke is a disgusting creep and hopefully will be eventually remembered as such.
The parlous moral state of the public service in the US is typified by incorrigible congenital liars, hypocrites, traitors and bigots like Brennan.
No. Not unless he is compelled with a credible threat to do so.
He who tells the story rules (Plato). The CIA (Brennan et al) have controlled the narratives in the US and around the world for decades overthrowing elected democratic governments (Ukraine among them), and doing unspeakable crimes in the name of “democracy”. They, conspired with the DNC and a compliant and bought media to successfully overthrow the US elected President.
No Brennan will not tell the truth anytime soon. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose if he’s suddenly honest now.
Thanks to Richard Borgquist for clarifying sociopath vs. psychopath. Never liked that guy Brennan who voted for Gus Hall, Communist Party USA candidate for President in 1976 during the Cold War. How was he ever appointed to any prominent government position? Also, he seems to make a point of using big words in a turgid style, implying a certain lacking.
The pathologically mendacious Brennan smears Trump with an ironically perfect description of Brennan himself and the horrendous destruction he wrought:
“When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You will not destroy America . . . America will triumph over you.”
It’s a fitting epitaph for his eventual tombstone.
I would like to know the people who had promoted/mentored this scoundrel throughout his odious career. Brennan is another example of the Peter Principle of people being promoted beyond their level of competence. In fact, he should never have been hired in the first place.
This sad fact creates this question: how many other “Brennans” continue to infest key positions of authority within our national security establishment?
I think there’s a fair chance that Brennan, who voted for communists in his youth, may be a secret Muslim convert.
The fact that Brennan was a Communist sympathizer should have disqualified him from ever being considered to be Director of the C.I.A. , His pathological need to lie or outright make up stories for profit iis all you need to know about Brennan. This has nothing to do about President Trump, John Brennan seeks fame and glory, for what reason we may never know, what we do know is that Brennan is pulled out and dusted off like an old pair of shoes when the Liberal Media needs a person willing to lie for a paycheck.
Awesome article. Clear indictment of Brennan —let’s hope we can get one from Bondi.
1. “Brennan absurdly insisted that Obama’s drone strikes along the Pak-Afghan border had not killed a single civilian noncombatant. Yet multiple sources proved the claim was clearly false. In truth, the number of innocents killed was likely somewhere between 50 and 70”
WELL!!!–> see : he told the truth: it wasn’t a single non-combatant, it was 50-70!
2. ““has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” I thought it was “dis”-information.?
3. I think Brennan probably also controlled Ciamarella and Vindman.
A key difference between sociopaths and psychopaths relates to moral behavior and conscience (the ability to differentiate between right and wrong). While sociopaths may have a weak conscience and try to justify their actions, psychopaths typically lack a conscience.2
Sociopaths also act more impulsively, jumping on opportunities without thought. Psychopaths tend to be more strategic and think before acting, acting intentionally even if irrational.2
Venables NC, Hall JR, Patrick CJ. Differentiating psychopathy from antisocial personality disorder: a triarchic model perspective. Psychol Med. 2013;44(5):1005–1013. doi:10.1017/S003329171300161X
The success of a serial killer depends on the ability to convince their next victim that they are choir boys or girls. Some people are just great at what they do.