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Following the arrest of Alexander Smirnov by U.S. federal authorities on charges of lying to the FBI about alleged bribe payments to President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, former CIA Director John Brennan suggested that Republican lawmakers are “tools” being “exploited” by the Russian government via Mediaite.
House Intelligence Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) and others used Smirnov as a key witness in their impeachment investigation of the president; however, they have since stated that the testimony does not change their overall charges of corruption. The president was never involved in either Biden’s commercial transactions, as both Bidens have adamantly denied, and no solid connection has been mentioned by witnesses to far.
One former Hunter Biden business associate, Devon Archer, described their tactics as a “soft abuse of power,” suggesting access to the White House to business partners that weren’t actually there.
Brennan, now a senior MSNBC analyst, claimed on Sunday that Republicans like Jordan and House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) don’t care whether the information they receive on Biden is accurate or not. He also suggested lawmakers are “tools” of Russia over Smirnov’s admission that “Russian intelligence” was involved in his accusations against the Bidens.
“I think that my colleagues are concerned that the Russians see the Republican lawmakers as tools,” Brennan told Michael Steele on MSNBC. “They are so willing to accept anything, and Russians use information operations very effectively. And I have no doubt at all that they are going to continue to use it in this presidential election.”
Brennan claimed Comer and Jordan only want “salacious” material, and the truth is less of a priority.
“The fact that Comer and Jordan and others willingly accept these things, and they don’t care whether it’s true or not as long as it’s salacious, as long as it’s something they can use,” he said. “This is something that the Russians recognize is ready for their exploitation.”
Regarding government intelligence programs, Brennan is a contentious figure in his own right. After asserting that there was no truth to accusations that the CIA had spied on a Senate panel’s computers, he was charged with plain lying to the public. In March 2014, he informed MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that the claims made at the time regarding alleged “hacking” into Senate computers were “beyond” the agency’s purview.
Brennan even went so far as to say he was “dismayed” by the charges made by lawmakers at the time, implying that they were harming the rapport between Congress and the intelligence community. Among the legislators making the allegations was the late Dianne Feinstein. She presided over the relevant Senate panel.
By July, an internal CIA investigation found that CIA officers had accessed the computers of the Senate panel ahead of the release of a report on the government’s interrogation programs.
He later apologized to lawmakers but claimed there was no “memorandum of understanding” and denied thwarting any investigation or oversight.