Just remember that this man ran intelligence efforts for the US. For two years, former CIA director John Brennan appeared on media outlets, most prominently MSNBC, and insinuating that he had inside knowledge about Donald Trump’s collusion with the Russians. Now that Robert Mueller has exonerated Trump on collusion, Brennan now says that, er … he must have gotten out a little over his skis:
Brennan on MSNBC: Well, I don't know if I received bad information but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was. I am relieved that it's been determined there was not a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government over our election. pic.twitter.com/V2D7Cg9KsV
— Wojciech Pawelczyk (@WojPawelczyk) March 25, 2019
Oopsie! His bad. The egg on Brennan’s face looks similar to that on any number of pundit faces after this weekend. Pundits get paid to opine, however, and that involves batting averages, for better or worse. (In this case, almost entirely worse.) Brennan’s case is much different, however. He didn’t just represent himself as an analyst — Brennan represented himself as an insider with inside knowledge of the case. And media outlets, again mainly MSNBC, slurped that misinformation-as-truth down enthusiastically.
ABC’s Terry Moran highlights a recent example of Brennan on MSNBC misinforming viewers about his knowledge of Russia and collusion, predicting two weeks ago that Mueller was about to drop indictments on Trump and everyone else. The only wish Brennan had was that Mueller avoid March 15th for the big reveal because of its historical relevance as “the ides of March” and the assassination of Julius Caesar.
As Moran points out now, Brennan needs to answer for his part in a character assassination instead. And so does MSNBC:
https://twitter.com/TerryMoran/status/1110010116361932800
https://twitter.com/TerryMoran/status/1110202743459848194
Brennan’s part of a larger accounting over Russiagate as well. Kim Strassel wonders whether we will get an answer as to how Brennan, Clapper, and the Obama administration finagled FISA to spy on its political opponents. Strassel focuses on the FBI but this applies to Brennan too, who was in charge of US intelligence at the time — and has certainly represented himself as in the loop on the operation:
