RUTHFULLY YOURS

John Brennan, director of the CIA during the Obama administration, is running for cover. He could be facing criminal charges for his role in the Deep State cabal that sought to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and then to undermine the legitimacy of the duly elected president of the United States, Donald Trump. Acting in desperation as the noose tightens around him, Brennan tweeted a warning to House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, claiming they will “bear the majority of the responsibility of the harm done to our democracy” if they don’t stop President Trump from continuing along his “disastrous path.”  The “disastrous path” to which Brennan took such umbrage was the president’s own tweet on Sunday, in response to news reports that an FBI informant was hovering around members of Mr. Trump’s campaign and asking them questions under false pretenses. President Trump demanded “that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

Brennan is evidently unfamiliar with the U.S. Constitution. Here is a simple explanation for the man who once voted for the Communist Party candidate for president, Gus Hall, even though Hall by then had been a long-time enthusiastic supporter of the Communist Soviet Union’s hardline expansionist policies. The Department of Justice is part of the Executive Branch of the U.S. government. Under Article II of the Constitution, Mr. Brennan, the president of the United States is the head of the Executive Branch. The president, therefore, is acting within his constitutional authority to order the Department of Justice to undertake an investigation of possible abuse of power for political purposes within the Executive Branch over which he now presides.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has proven that he is no shrinking violet, had no trouble ordering the Department of Justice Inspector General’s office to look into the matter raised by the president. Unlike Brennan, he understands the scope of the president’s constitutional authority. Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein said in a statement: “If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action.” Department of Justice spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores added, “The Department has asked the Inspector General to expand the ongoing review of the FISA application process to include determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation in how the FBI conducted its counterintelligence investigation of persons suspected of involvement with the Russian agents who interfered in the 2016 presidential election.”

President Trump believes, for good reason, that Brennan was at the center of the cabal seeking to take him down. Borrowing from the sentiments of a former Secret Service agent and conservative commentator, Dan Bongino, President Trump tweeted on Monday morning that Brennan was the “one man who is largely responsible for the destruction of American’s faith in the Intelligence Community and in some people at the top of the FBI. Brennan started this entire debacle about President Trump.”

Indeed, Brennan was the prime instigator behind the Russian collusion witch hunt, which grinds on despite having uncovered apparently no evidence implicating the president after more than a year of investigation. Brennan pushed the FBI to get involved, using the discredited, unverified Steele dossier as a lure. The dossier was paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, but that did not matter to Brennan and his cabal. “Just because it was unverified didn’t mean it wasn’t true,” Brennan said about the dossier on Meet the Press earlier this year. The dossier served as a major justification for the FBI and the Department of Justice to apply to the FISA court for a surveillance warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

As the Tablet reported, “The warrant allowed the FBI to intercept not only the communications of Page, but also anyone in contact with Page whose metadata—phone number, email, etc.—might have signaled a pattern interpreted by FBI analysts as potentially meaningful to a counterintelligence investigation. In other words, the warrant was a backdoor giving the FBI access to spy on the entire Trump campaign.”

In trying to distance himself from the infamous Steele dossier, which played such a critical role in moving the Russian collusion investigation forward, Brennan may have committed perjury in his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in May 2017. Brennan claimed that he did not know who commissioned the Steele dossier and had “no awareness” whether the FBI ever relied on the Steele dossier as part of any court filing. He also denied that the CIA had relied on the dossier. According to a report by Paul Sperry, published by RealClear Investigations on February 11, 2018, “Several Capitol Hill sources say Brennan, a fiercely loyal Obama appointee, talked up the dossier to Democratic leaders, as well as the press, during the campaign. They say he also fed allegations about Trump-Russia contacts directly to the FBI, while pressuring the bureau to conduct an investigation of several Trump campaign figures starting in the summer of 2016.”

President Trump picked up on Brennan’s dissembling in his May 21^st tweets, quoting Dan Bongino: “We now know that Brennan had detailed knowledge of the (phony) Dossier…he knows about the Dossier, he denies knowledge of the Dossier, he briefs the Gang of 8 on the Hill about the Dossier, which they then used to start an investigation about Trump…Brennan has disgraced himself, he’s worried about staying out of Jail.”

John Brennan used his perch as CIA director to subvert the U.S. political system in a way that would make Vladimir Putin’s KGB and its successor, the Federal Security Service, proud. Brennan must now face the full consequences of his actions.