John Brennan: Trump will suffocate the intelligence community to get reelected

Opinion by John Brennan

August 31, 2020 at 4:06 p.m. PDT

John Brennan is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. His memoir, “Undaunted,” will be published in October.

As America’s intelligence professionals seek to carry out their responsibilities to brief Congress on foreign efforts to interfere in this November’s election, they face far greater challenges than ever before in striking the right balance between sharing intelligence with Congress and preventing its misuse.

In 2016, I was fortunate to work for a president and with a director of national intelligence who had no personal or partisan agendas that affected the ability of the intelligence community to fulfill its statutory obligations to keep Congress “fully and currently informed” on national security matters, including Russian interference in our elections.

Just a little more than four years ago, the United States faced a similar challenge — and met it a different way. President Barack Obama already knew the Russians were hacking into the networks of U.S. presidential campaigns, buton the afternoon of July 28, 2016, I informed himin a hurriedly scheduled meeting that Russian President Vladimir Putin had authorized his intelligence services to carry out activities to hurt Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and boost the election prospects of Donald Trump.

“Mr. President,” I said, “it appears that the Russian effort to undermine the integrity of the November election is much more intense, determined, and insidious than any we have seen before.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/31/john-brennan-trump-national-intelligence-congress/

Note: Brennan testified under oath he did not see any of the Steele Dossier until December of that year.