"Name The Person And The Crime" -- II

Gee, d'ya think?

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Thursday former CIA Director John Brennan could face criminal charges in the wake of new documents regarding the “Russiagate” scandal.

. . . “It does appear a couple of these figures may have committed perjury. I think the most vulnerable may be Brennan, who is, like, a 30-point buck in the open,” Turley said. “This stuff goes directly to information that he gave to Congress and seems to be in contradiction, and so there are real questions here.”

During Congressional testimony, Brennan claimed he did not approve including the so-called “Steele dossier” in intelligence assessments about allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“People talk about, well, you can’t charge Obama. That is very likely the case that he is protected,” Turley continued. “But these individuals, whether Comey or Brennan, are not protected from perjury charges if the statue of limitations have not run. They’re more likely to be called again to repeat prior testimony.”

This is all weak tea, but if Jonathan Turley is putting it out, it must be fresh and important, huh? Current CIA Director John Ratcliffe issued a criminal referral of Brennan to the Justice Department on July 8, so this news is over two weeks old, and we know little else about it:

The source familiar with Ratcliffe’s actions said the CIA director referred elements of Brennan’s actions to the FBI for an investigation into potential criminality.

The source, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss the sensitive matter, did not provide specificity on which activities Brennan had undertaken which Ratcliffe believed could be criminal.

. . . While the specifics of Ratcliffe’s criminal referral of Brennan to the FBI were not immediately made public, it is likely that it has to do with Brennan’s potentially false statements to Congress about the ICA and the Steele dossier. Brennan spoke with Special Counsel John Durham in August 2020 and testified before the House Judiciary Committee in May 2023. Given a five-year statute of limitations, he could be in the crosshairs of law enforcement action until August of this year or until May 2028, respectively.

This is about the clearest explanation we have of how eligible any of the major Russiagate figures may be for criminal prosecution -- most federal crimes have a five-year statute of limitations. Thus anything anyone did before 2020 can't be prosecuted, which would include creating the Steele dossier in the first place -- except that if any of those acts is part of a conspiracy that went beyond 2020, they can still be prosecuted. But Ratcliffe's July 8 criminal referral named James Comey as well as Brennan:

The two targets are former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in his first term, according to a statement that a Justice Department spokesperson provided to reporters.

Fox News reported the existence of the investigations Tuesday evening. After referring to Comey and Brennan, the spokesperson said the Justice Department does "not comment on ongoing investigations."

A lawyer for Comey had no comment. The FBI declined to comment.

For now, Comey is best known for his Janury 6, 2017 one-on-one meeting with Trump, when he laid out the allegations in the fictitious Steele dossier. Trump fired him five months later, that May, for reasons that have never been made public. Comey then leaked details of other conversations with Trump via an intermediary to the New York Times in hope that this would cause a special prosecutor to be named, which resulted in the Mueller investigation. However, any particular crimes during this time period would not be subject to prosecution, since the five-year statute of limitations would have expired.

The only exception would be if those crimes were part of an ongoing conspiracy that lasted after 2020, and for now, we know nothing more. Except that Greta Van Susteren, in an interview with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Newsmax, embedded at the top of this post, made these remarks at 6:29:

I don't think you can ignore that on October 19, 2020, they cooked up this letter, 51 signatures saying that all the Hunter Biden stuff was part of Russian mischief. And to make matters worse, he origin of this was Antony Blinken, who then went on to become Secretary of State, calling Mike Morell, who wanted to be CIA Director, they get 51 people to put this document together saaying that the laptop thing was a lie, when nine months earlier, the FBI had already seized the laptop, and they knew that was real. And then of course, in the debate between Trump and Biden in late October of 2020, Vice Pesident Biden uses this 51 against Trump. Now, that's in plain sight, which is very suspicious. Now let me tell you one other thing that really bothers and sticks to me. It's hard to tell someone's intent. You know, people can amke mistakes, but I have not gotten over the fact that James Comey had some notes of a conversation with Trump, and what bhe did with them is he didn't hsve the guts or the courage to release them to the New York Times like he wanted them. Instead what he did was he came to one of his pals in New York, a law professor at Columbia, to sneak to the New York Times to publish. Why was he sneaking around like that?

Gabbard, whose demeanor throughout the interview was friendly but highly circumspect, made no direct reply. But the issues Van Susteren raised go to the question of a continuing conspiracy, first extending to the question of the 51 signature letter claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, which would extend the conspiracy to at least October 2020, and then to the question of Comey's intent in leaking his notes of his conversations with Trump, apparently to bring about the Mueller investigation.

At this point, the most we can surmise is that the Gabbard criminal referral to the Justice Department over the past week also relies on this view of the case:

Several others named in Gabbard’s document could be targeted. They include James Clapper, her predecessor as director of national intelligence; John Brennan, the former CIA director; James Comey, who was FBI director until he was fired by Trump; Comey’s former deputy Andrew McCabe; ex-national security adviser Susan Rice; John Kerry, the former secretary of state; and Loretta Lynch, the former attorney general.

James Clapper has said on CNN that he is "lawyering up":

KAITLAN COLLINS: So what will you do if they come after you? What is your plan?

JAMES CLAPPER: Well, I'll lawyer up, I suppose. I already have.

KAITLAN COLLINS: You've already hired attorneys in anticipation that this Trump Justice Department could try to prosecute you.

JAMES CLAPPER: We've had sort of perpetual attorneys since I left the government in 2017.

This, of course, is only prudent, and we may assume that everyone named just above has had to do the same thing. But whatever the specific charges, I think it's reasonable to surmise that the Justice Department is looking at an ongoing conspiracy from 2016 to at least the 2020 election to manipulate national policy and the media into believing Trump was either a Russian dupe or a Russian agent. So far, we've had no other comment.