The Brennan Files and the Reckoning That Never Came

The File That Wouldn't Close

John Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 that he didn't know who funded the Steele dossier. He later admitted, after documentary evidence made denial impossible, that he had in fact been briefed on the Clinton campaign's role in funding it. That's not a minor inconsistency. That's the director of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States lying to Congress about the predicate for an investigation into a presidential candidate.

Nothing happened.

Now the Department of Justice is reportedly showing renewed interest in Brennan's documents, as scrutiny of the 2016 election probe's origins in Florida intensifies. The specific focus — according to reporting from The Hill — involves the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and the intelligence community's handling of the dossier in the months before the 2016 election.

I've spent years studying intelligence oversight in the context of American foreign policy, and the 2016-2019 period represents the most significant documented failure of intelligence community integrity in my professional lifetime. Not because of what was alleged about the Trump campaign — those allegations largely collapsed under scrutiny. Because of what the agencies themselves did in response to political pressure from the outgoing administration.

What the Florida Connection Is Actually About

The Florida angle in this renewed scrutiny involves the origins of intelligence gathering on Trump campaign figures, particularly the role of Stefan Halper and other confidential human sources who were deployed against campaign associates. Some of this activity had Florida nexuses — meetings arranged there, sources operating in that geography.

More substantively, the Florida connection involves the handling of intelligence derived from Five Eyes partners — specifically, whether Australian and British intelligence tips about George Papadopoulos were the genuine origin story of Crossfire Hurricane or whether predicate intelligence was constructed after the fact to justify surveillance decisions that had already been made for political reasons.

The Justice Department Inspector General found in 2019 that the FBI's surveillance applications contained significant errors and omissions. What the IG report deliberately did not resolve was the question of intent — whether those errors were bureaucratic sloppiness or deliberate construction. That gap is what makes the Brennan documents relevant. His position as CIA director, his daily briefings with President Obama during the critical months of summer and fall 2016, and his evident hostility to the Trump campaign all place him at the center of the question the IG left open.

The Accountability Question

Here is the hard geopolitical reality that most conservative commentary misses when discussing this episode: the damage from the 2016 intelligence scandal is not primarily domestic. It's global.

American intelligence relationships with allies depend on a shared understanding that intelligence will not be weaponized for domestic political purposes. The Five Eyes partnership, NATO intelligence sharing, bilateral relationships with Israel, South Korea, Japan — all of them rest on trust that American intelligence agencies operate within legal and political boundaries. When the CIA director lies to Congress about the predicate for a presidential surveillance operation, every intelligence partner on earth takes note. And they draw conclusions about what the United States might do with intelligence they share.

The ongoing failure to hold anyone accountable for the documented abuses of 2016-2017 is not just a domestic political problem. It is a corrosive force on American intelligence credibility worldwide. Foreign partners who watched John Brennan face no legal consequence for misleading Congress have adjusted their behavior accordingly.

If DOJ seriousness about the Brennan documents produces actual accountability rather than another round of referrals that go nowhere, it will matter beyond the domestic political satisfaction it generates. It will send a signal — long overdue — that intelligence agencies in America answer to law rather than to whoever happens to be running the executive branch. That signal is visible from London, Tel Aviv, and Seoul. It should be sent clearly.

Why This Time Feels Different

I've been wrong before about accountability in this case. Durham's investigation produced one conviction — Kevin Clinesmith — and a comprehensive report that documented serious abuses and then watched everyone named in it continue their careers at CNN and MSNBC. Fool me once.

But the specific focus on documents — actual primary source records rather than testimony — changes the calculus. Documents don't adjust their recollections. They don't lawyer up. The question with Brennan's records isn't whether the investigation will find something. It's whether the institution of the DOJ has the spine to act on what it finds.

That question remains open. The scrutiny is overdue. The reckoning, if it comes, will be years late. But in intelligence accountability, late is still better than the alternative.