The Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched interviews of current and former Central Intelligence Agency employees at CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, as part of a Department of Justice investigation into former CIA director John Brennan, according to multiple sources.
Agents assigned to the FBI's Miami field office conducted questioning at the agency last week, and sources indicated those interviews are scheduled to continue over the coming weeks. The line of inquiry is linked to a probe by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida that has been active for several months.
Prosecutors in Florida are scrutinizing whether Brennan provided false testimony to Congress in 2023 when discussing a 2017 intelligence assessment that examined Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. The assessment concluded that Russia engaged in cyber-espionage and influence operations intended to bolster Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. Those core findings were later affirmed by the Department of Justice, a bipartisan Senate committee and a CIA review.
President Donald Trump, who has described the Russia inquiry as a "hoax," has pushed for investigations into officials he views as having led or enabled the probe into Russian interference, including Brennan. Sources familiar with the current investigation said that roughly a dozen current and former CIA officers who worked on the 2017 assessment were interviewed by FBI agents. Those officers were questioned about Brennan's involvement in producing the assessment and whether the conclusions were influenced by a controversial dossier of unverified allegations.
The document in question - the Steele dossier, compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele - contained salacious allegations about possible ties between Trump's 2016 campaign and Moscow. The dossier was funded by political opponents of Trump, and many of its claims remained unverified. The dossier was referenced briefly in the 2017 assessment and a summary of its allegations was attached to a classified version of that report.
Brennan has stated that the CIA opposed including the dossier in the public assessment and that the classified summary ultimately appeared as part of a compromise with the FBI. The DOJ and the CIA declined to comment on the ongoing interviews. A lawyer for Brennan also declined to comment, though Brennan's attorney did tell a chief federal judge in Miami that prosecutors had informed his client he is a target of the investigation.
In a letter to the Miami judge, Brennan's lawyer accused prosecutors of "judge shopping," alleging attempts to move the case to a Trump-appointed judge in Fort Pierce, Florida, who previously dismissed a criminal case against the former president. Sources familiar with the probe said they expect any charges, if brought, would ultimately need to be filed in Washington, D.C., because Brennan's congressional testimony took place there.
Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, referred Brennan to the Department of Justice in October. Jordan alleged that Brennan had lied during 2023 congressional testimony, including by asserting the CIA was "not involved at all" with the Steele dossier.
The Justice Department's handling of the investigation has seen personnel changes in recent weeks. Attorney General Todd Blanche played a role in overseeing the inquiry when the office was led by Pam Bondi; Bondi was fired in April amid reported White House dissatisfaction with the pace and outcomes of her team's reviews. The department removed the veteran Miami prosecutor who had been leading the Brennan investigation last month and subsequently installed Joe DiGenova, a former federal prosecutor and conservative legal commentator, to oversee the probe and a related effort examining whether prior investigations into the former president amounted to a conspiracy.
Prosecutors initially issued several subpoenas to witnesses to testify before a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., signaling a more assertive phase of the investigation. Two sources familiar with the matter said those subpoenas were withdrawn in mid-April shortly after being issued.
DiGenova's appointment has unsettled some current and former CIA personnel, according to sources, who fear the oversight could lead to broader scrutiny of intelligence community officials whom the president views as having participated in politically motivated investigations.
At present, interviews of intelligence officers at CIA headquarters are continuing and the investigative process remains active. The scope of potential charges, the forum in which any indictment might be filed, and the timeline for further prosecutorial decisions remain uncertain as the DOJ and U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida continue their work.