John Brennan spent three years on MSNBC calling Donald Trump a Russian asset and his no collusion claims hogwash.
Then the White House released a classified memo from November 2023 and Brennan's name was in it.
Smith's team drove to CIA headquarters to meet Brennan in secret and the FBI's official notes of that meeting just went public.
FBI Agents Filed Blank 302 Reports Where Records of the Brennan Meeting Should Have Been
On November 3, 2023, FBI Washington Field Office agents and members of Jack Smith's special counsel team traveled to CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, for a sit-down with John Brennan.
The stated purpose, according to a typed FBI summary released Monday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force, was to discuss Brennan's potential "expert testimony" on National Defense Information in the Trump classified documents case.
The agents filed two sets of notes with the memo. Both pages were blank — just the date, the location, Brennan's name, and who attended. Nothing about what was said in the room.
The U.S. Attorney's Manual – the Justice Department's own rulebook – requires agents to memorialize substantive interviews with witnesses. Standard practice: rough handwritten notes taken during the meeting, later converted into an official FD-302 report.
Smith's team did neither.
They sat across from one of Trump's most vocal enemies to discuss putting the president on trial – and the FBI left a paper trail so clean it looks like it was designed that way.
How the Man Who Pushed the Russia Collusion Hoax Became Jack Smith's Star Witness
Jack Smith needed an expert witness on classified documents. He chose the man who called Trump's "no collusion" claims "hogwash" in a New York Times op-ed – then collected a paycheck from MSNBC to say it again every night for three years.
According to John Durham's final report, that same man personally briefed President Obama in 2016 on intelligence showing Hillary Clinton had approved a plan to fabricate a Russia scandal against Trump.
Durham was unambiguous: when Crossfire Hurricane opened that summer, neither the FBI nor the Intelligence Community possessed "any actual evidence of collusion." Brennan knew it, briefed the president on it, and pushed the investigation forward anyway.
Newly declassified documents released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard show Brennan made the final call – alongside then-FBI Director James Comey – to force Steele dossier material into the Intelligence Community Assessment over the objections of senior CIA analysts.
Then he went to Congress in 2023 and told lawmakers the CIA was "not involved at all" with the Steele dossier.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan referred Brennan to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution over those statements, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe sent a separate referral after his own agency's internal review reached the same conclusion.
Brennan Now Faces a Federal Grand Jury Subpoena in the Trump Conspiracy Case
Bad press is the least of Brennan's problems.
His own lawyers confirmed in a court filing that Brennan received a subpoena to appear October 15 before a grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, as part of the DOJ's "grand conspiracy" investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials criminally conspired to deprive Trump of his civil rights.
Prosecutors told Brennan's counsel the investigation is "far-reaching" and covers both the 2016 Russia probe and the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. Brennan is a "target" in the narrow false statements inquiry and a "subject" in the broader conspiracy case.
At a Senate hearing last week, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo), confronted Smith directly, presenting memos and emails he said proved Smith's prosecutions "were in fact all about politics from day one" – nothing other than "an attempt to interfere politically in a presidential election."
Smith sat there and took it.
Blank FBI Notes at CIA Headquarters Are the Confession
FBI agents know the Justice Manual. They know meetings with witnesses in major cases get documented. Blank 302 reports are not a clerical mistake — they are a decision.
These agents drove to CIA headquarters, sat across from the man who spent years calling Trump a Russian agent on national television, discussed using him to put the president on trial, and filed pages with nothing on them.
The Russia collusion hoax ran for years on documents nobody was supposed to see, meetings nobody was supposed to remember, and an FBI that seemed constitutionally unable to follow its own procedures – but only when the target was Donald Trump.
They didn't forget to take notes. They remembered not to.
Sources:
- John Solomon and Steven Richards, "Jack Smith team secretly met ex-CIA chief John Brennan in 2023, but FBI agents left notes blank," Just the News, October 5, 2026.
- "Former CIA Director John Brennan Subpoenaed to Testify in DOJ Trump Conspiracy Probe," Fox News, September 14, 2026.
- Drew Berkemeyer, "John Brennan Summoned in Trump 'Grand Conspiracy' Investigation," The Daily Wire, September 2026.
