The revelation that former CIA Director John Brennan made a secret trip to Moscow in March 2016, meeting with the Russian Federal Security Service (today’s version of the Soviet KGB), has heightened speculation that Brennan may have been a key figure behind the Trump-Russian collusion story.
Certainly Brennan is well-known for his intense hatred of President Donald Trump. After Trump fired Andrew McCabe, a senior official with the FBI and a close confidante of Brennan, last month, Brennan let loose a vitriolic tweet aimed at Trump: “When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America.” After Trump fired another of Brennan’s friends, former FBI Director James Comey, Brennan tore into Trump, “Your kakistocracy is collapsing after its lamentable journey.… We have the opportunity to emerge from this nightmare stronger & more committed to ensuring a better life for all Americans, including those you have so tragically deceived.”
Exactly who the “we” are in Brennan’s tweet rant — a tweet rant that rivals anything that Trump has put out — is not clear. But what is clear is that the “we” does not include those Americans who voted for Trump, because he considers them to be “deceived.” The “we” that Brennan considers himself a part of, which supposedly is going to make things better, whatever that means, even for those who voted for Trump, is something Americans should know more about.
According to the British newspaper The Guardian, Brennan passed derogatory material about Trump to eight senators in August and September 2016 (soon after Trump had been nominated at the Republican National Convention). One of the eight, Senator Harry Reid, then the Democratic Party leader of the Senate, was given information from the much discussed “Steele dossier.”
Not surprisingly, the material soon turned up on the front page of the New York Times.
According to Yahoo News, Reid then wrote a letter to Comey, arguing that the dossier provided “evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.”
Even before taking office, Trump regularly denounced the “Deep State.” The Deep State has been defined as those who dictate the policies of the U.S. government, who remain the same regardless of who occupies the White House. And Brennan — who was a high-ranking member of the Bush administration before he seamlessly became a high-ranking member of the Obama administration — certainly fits that description.
The American Thinker, in a story on Brennan’s’s secret trip to Russia, believes that it is a real possibility that “John Brennan himself colluded with the Russians to help Hillary win to guarantee his continued tenure as CIA director,” noting that the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele “was used by Brennan and others as a pretext for a Trump investigation bonanza.”
Brennan certainly personifies the “Swamp” that Trump vowed to drain during the 2016 campaign. While Trump has taken very seriously the threat of terrorism, emanating from the Middle East, Brennan’s connections with that part of the world are rather curious.
A former FBI agent, John Guandolo, has even charged that Brennan is a Muslim himself. He has noted that Brennan once said during a speech that he had “marveled at the majesty of the Hajj [an annual pilgrimage undertaken by Muslims to Mecca, a city that non-Muslims are not even allowed to enter].” Guandolo argued that it was curious as to how Brennan would be able to comment on the Hajj’s “majesty,” unless he had seen it personally — and, under Guandolo’s reasoning, is therefore a Muslim.
Of course, Brennan could just be sympathetic to Islam, and believe anything connected to the religion is majestic, whether or not he has actually seen it in person. Brennan apparently does not believe the holy book of Christianity — the Bible — is all that majestic, as he refused to take his oath of office on it. Brennan was a CIA station chief for a quarter of a century. He spent a year abroad in college learning Arabic and taking Middle Eastern studies courses at the American University in Cairo, and received a master’s degree at the University of Texas, with a concentration in Middle Eastern studies.
Others might argue that Brennan was a fierce opponent of Islamic terrorism, even supportive of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. He defended CIA drone strikes in several Middle Eastern countries. But The Atlantic has also noted that earlier, Brennan had “been willing to lie about those drone strikes.”
Nothing to see here. Pay attention to Trump’s attorney. Nothing to see here.
The President’s Party Line… (A pun that will certainly be lost on the youngsters)
October 24, 2018 — New York Times: China, Russia listening to Trump’s cell phone calls
@Greg:
Nothing confirmed or verified. More “anonymous sources”. Not like the intelligence verification of Hillary’s emails being made available to everyone, something you never worried about.
He won’t stop using an iPhone, which are known to be vulnerable to relatively unsophisticated commercial spy aps, some of which can be installed via email. I trust the Russian and Chinese intelligence services have far better applications than those.
Spy on Cell Phone Without Installing Software on Target Phone
@Greg: And this started worrying you… WHEN? You never worried about it before, when Hillary was using unsecured devices overseas and wouldn’t stop. We don’t know that any of those were hacked, but we DO know her unsecured email was hacked and EVERYONE was reading all her emails, but that never worried you, either.
Hypocrisy.