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John Brennan, former director of the CIA and chief counterterrorism adviser to former President Barack Obama, appeared bent out of shape in an interview following President Donald Trump's removal of his security clearance.
The 69-year-old deep-stater suggested that his continued access was a benefit to the government and that its withdrawal was not the result of his having misled the nation in 2020 but instead an act of "revenge" in response to his criticism of the president.
The letter
Brennan was among the 51 signatories of an Oct. 19, 2020, letter aimed at discrediting the New York Post's Oct. 14 report about the discovery and damning contents of Hunter Biden's laptop, which the FBI "verified" one year earlier.
The letter Brennan gladly put his name to claimed that the story was likely a thing of Slavic fantasy — that the story had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation" and that the damning emails on the laptop discussed by the Post were manufactured in an attempt to influence how Americans would vote in the election.
The liberal media dutifully picked up on the intel officials' framing. Politico, for instance, titled its write-up, "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say."
'The faith of Americans in all other patriotic intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect the Nation has been imperiled.'
Then-presidential candidate Joe Biden was quick to put the combined efforts of anti-Trump intelligence officials and the liberal media to work for his campaign, referring to the letter in his first debate with Trump on Oct. 22, 2020.
Although former Secretary of State Antony Blinken has denied doing so, the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government indicated in 2023 that Blinken, at the time an adviser to the Biden campaign, got the ball rolling on the letter.
Just as Blinken was apparently rewarded for his commitment to Biden's success in the 2020 election, Brennan was later appointed to the Biden Department of Homeland Security's Homeland Intelligence Experts Group.
The executive order
In his Monday executive order titled, "Holding former government officials accountable for election interference and improper disclosure of sensitive governmental information," Trump noted that "federal policymakers must be able to rely on analysis conducted by the Intelligence Community and be confident that it is accurate, crafted with professionalism, and free from politically motivated engineering to affect political outcomes in the United States."
"The signatories willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions," continued the president. "This fabrication of the imprimatur of the Intelligence Community to suppress information essential to the American people during a Presidential election is an egregious breach of trust reminiscent of a third world country. And now the faith of Americans in all other patriotic intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect the Nation has been imperiled."
Brennan showed up fourth from the top on Trump's list of former spooks whose clearances would be revoked.
In addition to tearing up the former intel officials' security clearances, Trump tasked his incoming director of national intelligence — possibly Tulsi Gabbard, whose candidacy and capabilities Brennan has criticized — with reporting to him on whether there should be any disciplinary action "that should be taken against anyone who engaged in inappropriate conduct related to the letter signed by the 51 former intelligence officials."
The spy's spin
Brennan told MSNBC Tuesday that he has kept his clearance for as long as he has "for the benefit of the government — so that if the CIA or another government agency wanted to call me in to discuss a classified matter, they could do that."
Apparently failing to grasp that the people's government no longer wants his misleading input, Brennan called Trump's executive order "bizarre among the many bizarre executive orders that he had signed out."
Brennan claimed that Trump "misrepresented the facts in that executive order 'cause it said we had suggested that the Hunter Biden laptop story was disinformation. No, we said it bore the hallmarks of Russian information operations, including the dumping of accurate information."
Brennan neglected to mention that his letter concluded with a quote suggesting that the material in the Post story was "part of a smoke bomb of disinformation pushed by Russia" or that there was apparently no effort on his part or the part of other signatories to correct Politico's framing of their letter, which, again, stated, "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo."
Unwilling to admit the letter's misleading and tactical nature, Brennan suggested that Trump's push for accountability is "just his effort to try to get back at those individuals who have criticized him openly and publicly in the past."
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