The Justice Department has requested House Intelligence Committee records related to former CIA Director John Brennan, a frequent target of President Donald Trump, according to two sources familiar with the request.
The Intelligence Committee voted Tuesday night to send to the Justice Department several classified hearing transcripts related to Brennan, according to a source familiar with the panel’s actions. The vote came at the request of the Justice Department, the two sources said.
A spokesperson for Republicans on the committee said in a statement that the panel “voted to report out classified hearing transcripts at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice for an ongoing investigation related to the 2017" report by GOP members of the committee, "which was declassified and released last year, and other topics related to the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.”
The spokesperson said the committee hopes the action “may advance the accountability process that many Americans are desperate to see unfold.”
An attorney for Brennan, who has been a paid contributor to NBC News, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Punchbowl News first reported the Justice Department request.
The committee’s move suggests that the Justice Department under Trump is moving ahead with a potential criminal case against Brennan after it launched an investigation in July.
His attorneys said in a December letter that they were advised by prosecutors from the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason Reding Quiñones, who has been investigating Brennan, that he is a target of a grand jury investigation in connection with a 2017 intelligence community assessment about Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Brennan was head of the CIA from 2013 to 2017.
“While it is mystifying how the prosecutors could possibly believe there is any legally justifiable basis for undertaking this investigation, they have done nothing to explain that mystery,” Brennan's attorney wrote in the letter to Chief U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a staunch Trump ally and chair of the House Judiciary Committee, previously referred Brennan to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, claiming he gave false testimony in 2023 in connection with the decade-old investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Brennan's lawyers have denied Jordan's allegations.
The testimony Jordan cited took place in Washington, D.C., where federal grand juries have been skeptical of cases the Trump administration has tried to bring against Trump's political targets during his second term. In February, federal grand jurors unanimously rejected the administration's attempt to indict six sitting members of Congress over a video posted to social media urging members of the military not to follow illegal orders.
