Former CIA Director John Brennan got into a verbal altercation at a George Mason University event Thursday with a counterintelligence expert who asked him why he described some reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop as bearing “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Thomas Speciale, a national security consultant and former senior advisor to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, twice confronted Brennan on his decision to cosign a letter from 51 intelligence officials deeming October 2020 reporting on the content of Biden’s laptop by the New York Post as evidence of Russian election interference.
“Why sign that?” Speciale asked Brennan, a video posted Saturday to X shows. Brennan then appears to move toward Speciale and point at his chest.
“We never said it was disinformation. We said it was Russian influence operations, which is what they do. There’s a big difference,” he said.
The memo, released to the media in the weeks before the 2020 election, amounted to offensive counterintelligence against Donald Trump and election interference from the highest echelons of the intelligence community, Speciale said.
“The arrival on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” the 2016 memo read. “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”
The two-round confrontation occurred at an event hosted by the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, which also featured the center’s namesake, former CIA Director Michael Hayden, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Speciale pressed Brennan in front of the university audience earlier about why he included the Steele dossier, a salacious opposition research document commissioned by Democrats, in drafting the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) about Trump and Russia. The document touched off years of Russiagate media frenzy, consuming much of Trump’s first term.
Speciale also asked about documents declassified by Gabbard showing that Clapper urged then-National Security Adviser (NSA) Mike Rogers, who expressed doubts about the assessment’s veracity, to compromise “normal modalities” and to get on board with the ICA as a “team sport.”
Brennan refused to answer Speciale’s question. Hayden then chanted “next, next, next,” the video shows.
“I wanted answers to basic questions for my own personal interest. These are the people that as career intelligence people we looked up to. Why would you do these things?” Speciale told the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF).
House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan referred Brennan to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution Oct. 21 for lying under oath to Congress about the ICA. He cited evidence declassified by Gabbard showing Brennan made the ultimate decision, along with then-FBI Director James Comey, to include information from the dossier in the ICA and overruled senior CIA officers who objected to its inclusion.
