The House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday referred former CIA Director John Brennan to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution, alleging that he lied to Congress about the role of the Steele dossier in shaping the intelligence community’s 2017 assessment of Russian interference in the U.S. election.

The move, spearheaded by Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), marks a new front in Republicans’ years-long campaign to revisit and punish what they call the “Russia collusion hoax.” In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Jordan accused Brennan of “knowingly making false statements” during a May 2023 transcribed interview before the committee’s weaponization subpanel, claiming the ex-intelligence chief misrepresented his role in including information from the dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).

“The integrity of congressional oversight depends on truthful testimony,” Jordan wrote. “Brennan’s false statements strike at the heart of that duty.”

The referral revives a political and legal saga that has shadowed U.S. intelligence agencies since Donald Trump first took office. Brennan, who led the CIA from 2013 to 2017 under President Barack Obama, has long been a lightning rod for conservatives who accuse him of politicizing intelligence findings to damage Trump during the transition period.

During his 2023 testimony, Brennan insisted the CIA “was very much opposed” to including the Steele dossier — a compilation of opposition research financed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign — in the assessment that concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to boost Trump’s election chances. Brennan told lawmakers the dossier appeared only as an FBI-proposed annex, distancing the CIA from its inclusion.

But Jordan’s referral cites declassified documents and a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report—released earlier this year by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard—that contradict that claim. Those records, Republicans say, show Brennan personally pushed for the dossier’s inclusion in the ICA’s main body despite objections from analysts who viewed it as unreliable.

“The HPSCI report and internal CIA memoranda confirm that Brennan insisted on including the dossier,” Jordan wrote, arguing that the testimony “stands in stark contrast” to the record.

The committee’s referral also references Brennan’s 2017 testimony, where he similarly downplayed the dossier’s role. That statement is now beyond the five-year statute of limitations but, Jordan argues, shows a “pattern” of dishonesty.

This is not the first time Brennan’s credibility has come under scrutiny. In 2014, he falsely denied that CIA staff had accessed Senate Intelligence Committee computers during a torture investigation, a claim later refuted by the agency’s inspector general. Trump revoked Brennan’s security clearance in 2018, citing his “erratic behavior and partisanship.”

The former CIA chief has dismissed the latest referral as a political vendetta. “This is retribution, pure and simple,” Brennan told The New York Times last month, calling the GOP-led probe “a partisan effort to rewrite history.”

The referral builds on earlier moves by Trump-aligned officials to revisit the origins of the Russia investigation. In 2025, CIA Director John Ratcliffe—himself a Trump appointee—sent a similar criminal referral accusing Brennan of misleading lawmakers about the assessment process. That review described the 2017 report as “politically skewed” and “rushed to align with a predetermined narrative.”

Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey have since faced overlapping DOJ inquiries into alleged false statements related to the Russia probe, though no charges have emerged to date.

For Republicans, Tuesday’s referral is part of a broader push to re-litigate the intelligence community’s handling of Trump-era controversies — and to cast them as examples of political bias in the national security bureaucracy. For Democrats, it’s another instance of what they call the weaponization of congressional oversight.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)