In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi Tuesday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, referred former CIA Director John Brennan to the Justice Department for allegedly making false statements to Congress.
Jordan accused Brennan of lying in his 2023 Judiciary Committee testimony by denying that the CIA used the Steele dossier in prepping the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian election interference, and falsely claiming the CIA opposed including the dossier.
The Steele dossier was a series of reports detailing President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. It was compiled and delivered to the FBI in 2016 by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele.
In Jordan’s letter, he alleged subsequent investigations “confirmed that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid Steele via the law firm Perkins Coie and opposition research firm Fusion GPS to provide derogatory information about Trump’s purported ties to Russia, which resulted in the discredited dossier.”
In July 2025, the Trump administration declassified documents which appear to show Brennan approved the decision to include the dossier, despite objections from senior CIA officials.
During a transcribed interview on May 11, 2023, Brennan stated that “the CIA was not involved at all with the [Steele] dossier.”
Yet, according to the declassified documents, the decision to incorporate information from the dossier in the ICA “was jointly made by the Directors of CIA and FBI.”
“Brennan’s assertion that the CIA was not ‘involved at all’ with the Steele dossier cannot be reconciled with the facts,” Jordan wrote in the letter. “As the newly declassified documents show, a CIA officer drafted the annex containing a summary of the dossier; Brennan made the ultimate decision, along with then-FBI Director James Comey, to include information from the dossier in the ICA; and, as discussed further below, Brennan overruled senior CIA officers who objected to the inclusion of the dossier material.”
While past the five-year statute of limitations on criminal prosecution, Jordan also accused Brennan of providing false testimony during a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) hearing in 2017 — a move Jordan said “indicates a pattern of Brennan’s willingness to lie to Congress about the Steele dossier.”
“The HPSCI report and the CIA memorandum confirm not only that the Steele dossier was used as a basis for the ICA, but that Brennan insisted on its inclusion,” Jordan wrote. “This stands in stark contrast with Brennan’s testimony to HPSCI that the dossier was not used in drafting the ICA. … Brennan’s testimony before the Committee on May 11, 2023, was a brazen attempt to knowingly and willfully testify falsely and fictitiously to material facts.”
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