House Republicans Refer John Brennan to DOJ for Allegedly Lying to Congress About Steele Dossier

House Judiciary Committee Republicans have referred former CIA Director John Brennan to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution over allegations that he lied to Congress while testifying on the Russian collusion probe.

In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan said that Brennan "knowingly made false statements" when testifying before the committee in May, 2023.

"Congress cannot perform its oversight function if witnesses who appear before its committees do not provide truthful testimony," Jordan wrote. "Making false statements before Congress is a crime that undermines the integrity of the Committee’s constitutional duty to conduct oversight."

Brennan was running the CIA when then-outgoing President Obama ordered an investigation into allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian officials to impact the 2016 presidential election.

Along with the FBI, Brennan's CIA produced an Intelligence Community Assessment which held that Russia “developed a clear preference” for Trump and “aspired to help” him win the election. In his testimony before Congress, Brennan claimed that the CIA "was not involved at all" with the Steele dossier, a Clinton campaign-funded opposition research document compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele that leveled several salacious, unsubstantiated allegations against Trump.

But a since declassified 2017 report produced by the House Permanent Selection Committee on Intelligence found that the decision to include uncorroborated information from the Steele 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 to Bondi.

Not only did Brennan deny that the CIA had anything to do with the Steele dossier, he further claimed in his 2023 testimony to Congress that "the CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment."

But according to a CIA memo declassified by the Trump administration, "when two CIA mission center leaders confronted Brennan with 'specific flaws' in the dossier, Brennan disregarded their concerns," the letter states.

"When senior CIA officers demanded that Brennan remove the Steele dossier from the ICA, Brennan 'refused to remove it,'" the letter continues. "When the officers presented evidence of the dossier’s 'many flaws,' Brennan responded, 'Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?' Ultimately, Brennan had to order [the dossier] included over the objections of [CIA] professionals."

The letter also accuses Brennan of lying in his testimony about the Steel dossier before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in 2017, though the statute of limitations has run on that alleged offense.

Brennan has become an outspoken critic of Trump's since leaving government service, appearing frequently on cable news programs to cast the president as an authoritarian threat to democracy.