Once upon a time, Americans could count on the directors of the CIA and the FBI to stay above the political fray and serve the nation.
No longer.
Former FBI Director James Comey, fired from his post because he was completely incompetent, is traveling the country on a book tour, slamming President Trump at every turn. And former CIA Director John Brennan is now threatening the top Republicans in the House and Senate, Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rep. Paul Ryan.
“Senator McConnell & Speaker Ryan: If Mr. Trump continues along this disastrous path, you will bear major responsibility for the harm done to our democracy. You do a great disservice to our Nation & the Republican Party if you continue to enable Mr. Trump’s self-serving actions,” Brennan said on Twitter on Sunday, targeting the message to Trump.
Early Monday morning, Trump took to Twitter to respond.
“ ‘John Brennan is panicking. He has disgraced himself, he has disgraced the Country, he has disgraced the entire Intelligence Community. He is the one man who is largely responsible for the destruction of American’s faith in the Intelligence Community and in some people at the… top of the FBI. Brennan started this entire debacle about President Trump. We now know that Brennan had detailed knowledge of the (phony) Dossier… he knows about the Dossier, he denies knowledge of the Dossier, he briefs the Gang of 8 on the Hill about the Dossier, which…. …they then used to start an investigation about Trump. It is that simple. This guy is the genesis of this whole Debacle. This was a Political hit job, this was not an Intelligence Investigation. Brennan has disgraced himself, he’s worried about staying out of Jail.”’ Dan Bongino.”
Trump sourced the comments to Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and current Florida congressional candidate. On “Fox and Friends,” Bongino said:
“John Brennan is panicking… John Brennan has disgraced himself. He’s disgraced the country. He’s disgraced the intelligence community. He is the one man largely responsible for the destruction of Americans’ faith in the intelligence community and in some people at the top of the FBI…. Breenan than started this entire debacle with Trump. We now know Brennan had pretty detailed knowledge of the dossier. Walk you through this real slow: He knows about the dossier. He denies knowledge of the dossier. He briefs the the Gang of 8 up on the Hill about the dossier, which they then used to demand the FBI start an investigation on trump. It is that simple. This guy is the genesis of this whole debacle.”
Bongino said his comments are based on an investigation he’s been doing for a new book.
On Brennan, Bongino said, “He just didn’t like Donald Trump, but got information through unofficial channels, through people who were involved with British intelligence. They were basically using unofficial channels… to launder information, like you would launder money. Because if they put it through official channels, something would’ve happened. You know what that one thing is? They would have had to verify the information before they used it and they didn’t want to because this was a political hit job. This was not an intelligence investigation.”
Asked who else knew about this, Bongino said James Clapper, Obama’s director of National Intelligence, Obama’s Atterney General Loretta Lynch, and “of course Comey knew what was going on in this.”
“There was a very small working group of people who were involved in this political hit job on Donald Trump. … Here’s the problem,” Bongino said. “The reason Brennan’s panicking and a lot of others have gone silent is they’re not just worried about reputational harm — Brennan’s disgraced himself, he knows history’s not going to be kind to him — they’re worried about staying out of jail.
“There were criminal leaks here — criminal leaks, felonious criminal leaks,” Bongino said.
Trump also implied that former president Barack Obama knows more about the whole debacle.
Trump is citing this story in the Wall Street Journal, which says:
It’s not clear what an FBI official meant in 2016 when texting that President Obama “wants to know everything we’re doing.” But we can assume that the President was fairly well-informed about the law enforcement agencies reporting to him. Therefore let’s hear from him in detail the full history of how the government came to investigate the presidential campaign of the party out of power.
Stay tuned.