
Brennan on reported DOJ scrutiny: ‘I've had no contact'
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the DOJ saud that former FBI director James Comey and Brennan were facing a 'criminal investigation.'
'I don't know whether or not there's any, you know, validity to it. If there is — it was a referral,' Brennan told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on 'Deadline: White House,' in a clip highlighted by Mediaite.
'If there is an investigation, presumably, if there is an investigation, that people will be questioned, I would be questioned about it. But again, I've had no contact from them,' he added.
Fox News first reported Tuesday that according to Justice Department sources, a criminal investigation faced by Comey and Brennan was connected to their 2017 investigation into President Trump's ties with Russia.
According to the Post, a source familiar said CIA director John Ratcliffe referred Brennan for criminal investigation over allegedly being dishonest during congressional testimony.
'I know nothing about this reported investigation or referral to the DOJ, other than what I've read in these press reports, these leaks, which are not really supposed to happen if there is an investigation going on,' Brennan said Wednesday.
The Hill has reached out to the CIA and DOJ for comment.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Forbes
3 minutes ago
- Forbes
Alina Habba's One-Time Replacement Desiree Grace Calls Firing ‘Completely Unjustified,' Report Says
Desiree Grace, the prosecutor whom judges appointed to replace ex-Trump lawyer Alina Habba as New Jersey's U.S. attorney, has filed a long-shot complaint challenging the Trump administration's decision to fire her, Bloomberg reports, as the Justice Department's decision to keep Habba on after her initial term expired has sparked legal challenges. Alina Habba speaks during a press conference with now-President Donald Trump at Trump Tower on September 6, 2024 in New York City. Getty Images Grace filed a complaint with the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal employees' disputes over their employment, according to Bloomberg, citing a filing obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The Justice Department fired Grace on July 22, hours after the state's federal judges voted for her to become the U.S. attorney in New Jersey—appointing her to the role instead of extending Habba's term. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Grace, who had been serving as Habba's first assistant, had been 'removed' after 'politically minded judges refused to allow [Habba] to continue in her position.' The DOJ then used a complex legal maneuver to keep Habba on as acting U.S. attorney, despite her tenure as the interim attorney expiring and the Senate not voting on her confirmation to permanently fill the role. Grace, who had previously suggested she still intended to try and serve as U.S. attorney, argued to the Merit Systems Protection Board that her firing was 'completely unjustified' and was in 'direct retaliation' for her being named to the U.S. attorney role, as quoted by Bloomberg. Grace, the Justice Department and the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board have not yet responded to requests for comment. As of now, it's unlikely. The board lacks a quorum after President Donald Trump fired one of its Democratic appointees earlier this year, which means it can't actually decide cases right now. Board member Cathy Harris' lawsuit challenging her firing is still moving forward in court, but the Supreme Court let Trump fire her while it does, and it's unclear if the case will ultimately be resolved in Harris' favor and result in her being reinstated. What To Watch For The Trump administration's decision to override the opinion of the New Jersey judges and keep Habba on as U.S. attorney has sparked new legal challenges. Several defendants being prosecuted on criminal charges in New Jersey have argued Habba was not lawfully appointed, and thus the indictments against them are invalid and should be dropped. A Pennsylvania court will hear arguments on Aug. 15 over that dispute, after it was moved out of New Jersey due to judges' involvement with Habba's initial ouster. Grace is a 37-year-old veteran prosecutor who has been serving in the New Jersey U.S. attorney's office since 2016, The New York Times reports, citing her LinkedIn profile. She had been serving as the second-in-command at the office prior to her termination, after previously holding roles leading the office's violent crimes and criminal divisions, in which she prosecuted gang members, securing convictions against multiple members of MS-13. Grace is a registered Republican, according to the Times, and had previously earned high praise from Habba, who reportedly said in May that appointing Grace as her deputy was the best decision she had made as U.S. attorney. Key Background Habba was named as the U.S. attorney in New Jersey in March after becoming well-known as one of Trump's most vocal legal advocates. The lawyer began representing Trump in 2021—after previously serving as the attorney for a parking garage—and was on his legal team for such major cases as the civil fraud trial against Trump and his company and a defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll. Habba did not have any prosecutorial experience prior to becoming U.S. attorney, but frequently advocated for Trump in the media and in court, earning her a spot as a White House adviser before being named as a U.S. attorney. The DOJ's decision to override the will of the judges by keeping Habba in place comes as the White House has repeatedly attacked judges for issuing opinions against the administration, and as Trump has tried to use the DOJ in order to advance his agenda and punish his critics. In addition to Habba, the Trump administration used similar legal maneuvering to keep another U.S. attorney, John Sarcone III, in place after judges in the Northern District of New York also declined to extend his term. Further Reading Forbes Criminal Defendants Challenge Alina Habba's Authority As She Stays On As U.S. Attorney—What To Know By Alison Durkee Forbes The Alina Habba Saga Explained: How Trump May Get Her Back In Power—But Not As U.S. Attorney By Alison Durkee Forbes DOJ Fires Alina Habba's Replacement As U.S. Attorney Hours After Ouster By Alison Durkee

16 minutes ago
What's known and not yet known about the Justice Department's scrutiny of Trump-Russia probe origins
WASHINGTON -- News that Attorney General Pam Bondi is advancing a criminal investigation into the Obama-era origins of the Trump-Russia investigation means that one of the most studied, and politically polarizing, chapters of modern American history will be under the microscope yet again. Here's a look at what's known and not yet known about the latest Justice Department revelation: Perhaps no issue continues to aggravate President Donald Trump more than the assessment by intelligence officials that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on his behalf and the investigation by law enforcement into whether his campaign colluded with Moscow to tip the outcome of the contest. Robert Mueller, the former FBI director tapped as special counsel by Trump's first Justice Department to investigate, found that Russia had waged a multi-prong operation in Trump's favor and that the Republican president's campaign welcomed the aid. But Mueller did not find sufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign. As president for a second time, Trump has made no secret of his desire to use the Justice Department as a weapon of retribution against perceived political adversaries he sees as having smeared him, including by calling for Obama-era officials to be jailed. And his administration, now more broadly and across multiple agencies, has been engaged in a effort to reopen the long-accepted conclusion — including among prominent Republicans — of Russian interference and to scrutinize the officials involved in reaching that assessment. Bondi, a Trump loyalist, has directed Justice Department prosecutors to investigate the Russia inquiry and has authorized the use of a grand jury. Grand juries are tools used by prosecutors to issue subpoenas for records and testimony and to produce indictments based on the evidence they receive. The bar is low for an indictment given that the presentation of evidence by prosecutors is one-sided, though grand juries do have the option to decline to indict and have done so in the past. A person familiar with the matter confirmed Bondi's directive to The Associated Press but key questions remain. The Justice Department has not disclosed, for instance, which prosecutors are pursuing the investigation, where the grand jury that might hear evidence is located and whether and when law enforcement officials might seek to bring criminal charges. The Justice Department, in an unusual statement last month, appeared to confirm the existence of an investigation into former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director James Brennan but provided no details. It's not clear who might be targeted in the investigation, but the Trump administration has been aggressively challenging intelligence community conclusions about Russia's actions and intentions that had seemed settled long ago. It's been a welcome diversion for the administration as it confronts a wave of criticism from Trump's base and conservative influencers over the handling of records from the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation. In the last month, Trump administration officials and allies have released a series of documents aimed at casting doubt on the extent of interference and at portraying the original Russia investigation as an Obama administration frame-job. The documents have been hailed by Trump and other supporters as incontrovertible proof of a conspiracy, but a close inspection of the records shows they fall well short of that. Among the documents released by Tulsi Gabbard, the administration's director of national intelligence, are emails showing that Obama administration officials recognized in 2016 that Russians had not hacked state election systems to manipulate votes in favor of Trump. But the absence of evidence that votes were switched — something the Obama administration never alleged — has no bearing on the ample evidence of other forms of Russia interference, including a hack-and-leak operation involving Democratic emails and a covert social media campaign aimed at sowing discord and spreading disinformation. Last week, Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a previously classified annex of a 2023 report by John Durham, the special counsel appointed by the first Trump administration to hunt for government misconduct in the Trump-Russia investigation. The annex included a series of emails, including one from July 2016 that was purportedly sent by a senior staffer at a philanthropic organization founded by billionaire investor George Soros, that referred to a plan approved by then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to link Trump to Russia at a time when the public was focusing on her use of a private email server. But Durham's own report took pain to note that investigators had not corroborated the communications as authentic and that the alleged author had no recollection of drafting the email. The report said the Durham team's best assessment was that the message was 'a composites of several emails' the Russians had obtained from hacking — raising the likelihood that it was a product of Russian disinformation. Fresh scrutiny has also centered around the intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference published in January 2017. An annex in a classified version of the assessment contained a summary of the so-called Steele dossier — a compilation of opposition research that included uncorroborated rumors and salacious gossip about Trump and Russia. Just as Russian interference has been heavily scrutinized, so too has the U.S. government's response to it. Multiple government reports, including not only from Mueller but also a Republican-led Senate intelligence committee that included current Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have documented Russia's activities in painstaking detail. To be sure, reports from the Justice Department inspector general and Durham also identified significant flaws in the FBI's Russia investigation, including errors and omissions in applications the Justice Department submitted to a secretive surveillance court to eavesdrop on a national security adviser to the 2016 Trump campaign. But Durham found no criminal wrongdoing among senior government officials, bringing three criminal cases — two against private citizens that resulted in acquittals at trial and a third against a little-known FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to doctoring an email. It is unclear if there is any criminal misconduct that exists that Durham, who launched his investigation in 2019 and concluded it four years later, somehow missed during his sprawling inquiry.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Top brass firings at DOJ raise new questions about Trump's antitrust agenda
Fractures in the Trump administration's roughly six-month-old antitrust team are recasting doubts about its commitment to competition enforcement. A shake-up that led to the departure last week of two of the Justice Department's most senior officials came as corporate America was getting its bearings around the administration's competition enforcement posture, which seemed to take an aggressive yet negotiation-friendly shape. The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the antitrust officials were fired after an internal clash over the division's autonomy to police competition. The report raises concern that the White House would use the division as a political tool. The fired officials, Roger Alford and William Rinner, who served in Trump's first administration, had been working on the department's challenge to Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (HPE) acquisition of rival Juniper Networks ( the report said — before a settlement was reached with HPE's politically connected lawyers, who lacked antitrust expertise. Alford was the principal deputy to President Trump's hand-picked antitrust chief, Gail Slater. Rinner, a deputy assistant attorney general, headed up merger enforcement. "Those are two of the most important deputy assistant attorney general positions," former DOJ Antitrust Division attorney William Vigen of Venable said, "and they are key advisors to the Assistant Attorney General." Boston University antitrust law professor David Olson described the new uncertainty surrounding the administration's antitrust policy as "a bit schizophrenic." Paul Steidler, a fellow with the conservative-leaning Arlington, Va.-based think tank Lexington Institute, said it's difficult to gauge if the DOJ changes mean that enforcement policy has softened. "I think it's erratic. I think it's unpredictable," he said, possibly in part because the administration is new. Steidler called the terminations "troubling" and "confusing," especially given that the White House has offered no official reason for the decisions. Merger challenges like the one against HPE — filed roughly a week after Trump took office — appeared to signal the administration's plans to vigorously pursue competition concerns. Further underscoring its offensive approach, the administration pushed ahead with antitrust prosecutions targeting the biggest names in tech, including Google (GOOG), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta (META). "So early on, it seemed there would be a lot of continuity from the Biden Administration's antitrust enforcement to the Trump Administration," Olson said. "But this pro-enforcement approach is facing headwinds." Olson and other antitrust experts said the mysterious enforcement tactics may be related to administration goals that act as a double-edged sword. On one hand, Trump has repeatedly said he would crack down on Big Tech's dominance. And under his administration, the DOJ and its enforcement partner, the Federal Trade Commission, confirmed they would keep in place stricter Biden-era 2023 merger guidelines. Alford said during a panel discussion at George Washington Law School in May that the administration's focus was on mergers that threatened to drive up prices on goods and services that impact everyday Americans. But at the same time, the president has encouraged regulators to get out of the way in the interest of advancing US artificial intelligence. An "AI Action Plan" announced by the president two weeks ago calls for reviewing and potentially recalibrating Biden-era antitrust enforcement actions in the AI sector. Steidler said those competing interests make Slater's role a difficult balancing act under an administration seeking to appeal to two different constituencies: conservatives who don't like Big Tech and the business community that wants sensible, fair mergers to go forward. Gaynor said that if the enforcement agenda is left in limbo, it could counteract economic growth. Companies, he added, make decisions in part based on what actions are likely to trigger antitrust investigations. "If it looks to people in business like enforcement is either completely unpredictable, or might be based on political considerations," Gaynor said, "that's not good for business. It's not good for the economy. It's not good for consumers. And it's not good for America." Olson added that President Trump's hands-on approach to dealmaking could also spell uncertainty for business, because antitrust officials have historically maintained autonomy to enforce the nation's competition laws. "It seems that Alford, Rinner, and also Slater were opposed to this method of settling an antitrust case because it violates long-standing norms of insulating antitrust enforcement from political pressure," Olson said. The Justice Department sued Hewlett Packard in January, alleging that the $14 billion tie-up to combine the nation's second- and third-largest providers of enterprise wireless networking would substantially lessen market competition. Five months later, in June, the department announced it had settled with HPE and would allow the merger to go forward by requiring HPE to divest its global "Instant On" WLAN business to a DOJ-approved buyer, plus ensure it would license key software assets to rivals. One of the lawyers who reportedly took part in the negotiations, Mike Davis, called Slater his "good friend" in an April 29 post to the social media platform X. The Wall Street Journal reported that during the negotiations, Slater ceased communications with Davis. Vigen agreed that it's too early to assess if the administration has softened its enforcement approach. However, he said, mid-litigation shifts could jeopardize staff morale. "It's not just the Assistant Attorney General and her people in leadership," Vigen said. "Think about the trial attorneys that put in the work on these cases ... it can be quite demoralizing." Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data