WASHINGTON — May 12, 2026 : The U.S. Justice Department has intensified its investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan over his role in the drafting of the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that concluded Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election in an effort to support Donald Trump.
As part of the expanding inquiry, the FBI has begun questioning current and former CIA officials involved in preparing the assessment. According to reports, agents from the FBI’s Miami field office recently conducted interviews at CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, with approximately a dozen intelligence officers contacted so far. Additional interviews are expected in the coming weeks.
Federal investigators are examining whether Brennan made false statements during congressional testimony in May 2023 concerning the inclusion of the “Steele dossier” in the intelligence assessment. The dossier, compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and funded by political opponents of Trump, contained unverified allegations regarding Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.
The investigation stems from a criminal referral submitted in October 2025 by the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Representative Jim Jordan. The committee alleged that Brennan falsely testified that the CIA did not rely on the Steele dossier in producing the ICA and that the agency had opposed its inclusion in the report.
According to the committee’s interpretation of declassified intelligence records, Brennan allegedly overruled objections from senior CIA analysts who argued that the dossier failed to meet established intelligence tradecraft standards. Investigators are examining claims that Brennan ultimately approved attaching a summary of the dossier to the assessment as a classified annex despite those objections.
Brennan has consistently denied that the dossier served as a foundational source for the assessment’s core conclusions. He and former intelligence officials have maintained that the CIA opposed including the dossier in the main body of the report because its sourcing could not be verified. Brennan has stated that the classified annex was included as part of a compromise requested by the FBI.
The Justice Department has reportedly moved beyond voluntary interviews and has begun issuing formal grand jury subpoenas to cooperating witnesses. Earlier subpoenas were also issued to Brennan, former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, and former FBI attorney Lisa Page.
The probe is currently being overseen by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida and is being managed through the Miami office. Recent personnel changes in the investigation reportedly included the appointment of conservative attorney Joe DiGenova following the removal of a career prosecutor previously handling the case.
The 2017 ICA was jointly produced by the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency (NSA) under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The assessment concluded that the Russian government directed a coordinated influence campaign aimed at undermining public confidence in the U.S. democratic process and showed a preference for Trump during the 2016 election.
The investigation has expanded under the Trump administration, which has repeatedly criticized the intelligence community’s conclusions regarding Russian election interference. Trump has frequently described the original Trump-Russia investigations as politically motivated.
Critics of the current Justice Department inquiry argue that the administration is using prosecutorial authority to revisit previously examined matters and target political opponents. They note that while earlier reviews identified significant flaws in aspects of the FBI’s investigative process, multiple official inquiries upheld the core conclusions of the 2017 intelligence assessment.
Among those reviews were investigations conducted by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Special Counsel John Durham, and the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The Senate committee concluded in its multi-year review that the 2017 assessment was a professionally produced and unbiased intelligence product and affirmed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
No criminal charges have been filed against Brennan, and the FBI and Justice Department have not publicly commented on the ongoing investigation.
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