Former CIA Director John Brennan and ex-FBI Director James Comey are under criminal investigation, according to multiple Justice Department sources.
The FBI is examining whether the two former officials broke the law during their handling of the Trump-Russia collusion probe. DOJ insiders told Fox News Digital that the bureau now views their actions as part of a “conspiracy.” Investigators are reportedly considering a wide range of potential charges.
The criminal referral involving Brennan came from current CIA Director John Ratcliffe. The focus is on whether Brennan lied to Congress and pushed false intelligence.
A recently declassified “lessons-learned” CIA review revealed Brennan insisted on including the Steele dossier in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. This was despite warnings from senior CIA officials that the dossier didn’t meet even basic standards.
One CIA official warned that including the dossier could destroy the report’s credibility. Another said it risked making the entire assessment look politically motivated.
Yet Brennan formalized his support for the dossier’s inclusion in writing.
Publicly, however, Brennan claimed the dossier “wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence” and had “no role” in shaping the final report. He repeated this claim under oath in 2017. In 2023, Brennan told Congress that he opposed including the dossier at all. New emails contradict that.
Comey is also under investigation. The exact focus of the probe into the former FBI director remains unclear. But he too pushed for the Steele dossier to be included in the intelligence assessment, according to the CIA’s own review.
FBI leadership, the review said, made clear they wouldn’t participate in the ICA unless the dossier was included.
Comey also admitted the FBI relied on the unverified dossier to get a FISA warrant on Trump campaign aide Carter Page. He later claimed the bureau didn’t know the dossier’s main source had credibility issues. By 2020, he told Congress he “couldn’t recall” warnings from DOJ or CIA about the document’s flaws or bias.
Critics say Brennan and Comey helped create a false narrative that Trump colluded with Russia. That narrative dominated headlines and investigations for years.
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid Fusion GPS through Perkins Coie to dig up dirt on Trump. Fusion then hired ex-British spy Christopher Steele to compile the dossier.
The new CIA review suggests Brennan, Comey, and James Clapper, then Director of National Intelligence, rushed the process and bypassed key agencies. It also warned that media leaks may have shaped analysts’ conclusions.
“This was Obama, Comey, Clapper and Brennan deciding ‘We’re going to screw Trump,’” Ratcliffe told the New York Post.
The FBI, DOJ, and CIA have not issued public statements about the ongoing investigations.