Thomas Speciale: The Man Behind John Brennan's Meltdown | Episode 167

0:00Hey, everybody. Welcome to a special edition of Vince. It is great to have you with us as always coming up on the program. John Brennan. Boy, the walls are closing in on the former CIA director. director. We'll get into all the latest details and we'll talk to a man who just got a chance to confront John Brennan directly to his face. In fact, Brennan was furious about this. He went absolutely ballistic. We'll explore it all in a moment on this edition of Vince. Thank you for being here. The best audience anywhere. Hey, the Fed just dropped interest rates again. That's really great news for American homeowners.

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2:59Well, the walls are definitely closing in on the former CIA director, John Brennan. As you know, as this audience very well knows, we've seen massive numbers of indictments dropped on a bunch of high profile officials to include James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton and so many others. And John Brennan appears to be the latest who is being looked at by the Justice Department for legitimate violations of the law. He was just referred by the Congress for criminal prosecution because of his lies to Congress, in particular about his involvement in pushing the Steele dossier into the intelligence community assessment back in 2017.

3:41You know, that was the Hillary Clinton opposition research pack designed to destroy Donald Trump and debilitate his incoming administration. Yeah, Brennan was at the epicenter of all of it. But for years now, people have thought of John Brennan as untouchable. He's a former CIA director. He knows all the secrets. Nobody could possibly go after him. But now they are. And in fact, this past week, we just learned that the United States Department of Justice has been sending out grand jury subpoenas related to John Brennan. It's a flurry of subpoenas going out the door. The U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason Redding Quinones, has been supervising all of this, according to a Fox News report.

4:23and the left, well, they're angry about it. They're really upset about it, but it couldn't happen to a better guy. He definitely deserves it. In fact, recently, John Brennan was speaking at an event for George Mason University. He was on a panel, Intel Community thing. And while he was there, he was questioned about what exactly he did while he was in office. Take a look. Here's John Brennan being questioned by an intelligence community veteran who really wants some answers on why John Brennan abused his power. Look at this. I would like to hear what your justification was for supporting the dossier that was known to be false being used as source material in the second ICA.

5:15I don't know who put you up to this. Nobody put me up to this or I'm here on my own. what role you played or who you are, but it's a bunch of bullshit that you just passed on. The emails are clear, sir. The emails are clear. The emails are clear. The second question. Next. Next. Next. Next. Next. Next. Next. Next. Next. Next. Next. Look, we can talk about it. Talk about it in the reception. Russian disinformation. No, we didn't say that. No, I'm getting facts straight. You said it was likely Russian disinformation. No, we did not. We said it. Yes, you did. No.

5:50An amazing moment. The man responsible for it joins us now. Thomas Speciale is here. He is a national security consultant, and he has since the 80s served in the military and the intelligence community. He's a subject matter expert on intel terrorism, the Middle East, and he recently served as a senior advisor on counterintelligence and security issues for Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence. You can find his website, ThomasSpeciale.com. Thomas, great to have you with us on the program today. Thank you, sir. Thanks for having me. Man, I've watched that moment like a dozen times now, and every time I do, I'm amazed by, and not that shocked, but really fascinated by, the fact that John Brennan loses his mind in that moment.

6:37Why was he so furious at you for posing that question? Well, I think he believed that that was a completely friendly audience, and it was just happenstance. I literally just attended as an attendee. They gave us the opportunity to ask questions. I had intended to try and get him on a sidebar and ask a couple of questions regarding the regarding the use of the dossier in the ICA. And then also with regard to him being a signatory on the 51 intelligence officers memo. I had intended for that to be a sidebar conversation. But when they asked if we were when they said they were going to take questions, I was concerned that he wasn't going to be at the reception afterward.

7:20So I figured I would just I would just ask it, ask him then. And yeah, it was not his reaction. I don't think it's just indicative of the fact that he knows that the emails that have been released by the DNI email communication between Clapper, Brennan, Comey and Admiral Rogers are very, very telling about the inappropriate use and the. The inappropriate influence, I think, that they deliberately tried to have on the ICA, the intelligence community assessment regarding Russian involvement in the influencing the 2020 election or the 2016 election. It was he knew that he was basically cornered with that question and he couldn't answer that question.

8:12And he just, you know, he just lost his mind. I want to get in a moment to your to your confrontation in that sidebar. You did have another opportunity to speak to him. But I want to focus on this for a moment. What do you think those emails reveal about John Brennan specifically? What did you learn when you read them? Well, it's not a it's not really a matter of what they reveal. It's it's what they demonstrate. It's what these are. These are like a level of a receipt of a factual event that is. I don't think I've ever seen anything like this in American history where we have the personal communications between the four senior intelligence leaders for the NSA, the CIA, the FBI and the DNI, all essentially admitting to writing intelligence at the highest level that was deliberately meant to influence or impact the future.

9:13president, the incoming president's presidency, because that's really what, you know, one of the things that I try and make clear to people is, is that this wasn't about Trump. This was actually about an influence operation or in the intelligence community, we'd call it an offensive counterintelligence operation that they perpetrated against the American people. So they did this to everyone, Democrats and Republicans. They did this to everyone to essentially provide an intelligence community assessment that said, in fact, Putin favored Trump and that Putin had ordered this, this influence operation to help Trump get elected.

9:55Well, that was not demonstrated in any of the intelligence reporting. And they basically fabricated it from whole cloth. Then they put it in the intelligence community assessment, which was then given to Congress, which they knew then would leak to the public. And then they also leaked it to the media themselves through the FBI leaks to again, leak out to the American people that, you know, Trump was supposedly working, you know, along that the Russians were actually supporting him, which was totally not the case. Totally not. So it seems, it seems like if, if there's an intent built into this, it strikes me that there's probably two things that jump to mind immediately.

10:35One is to manufacture an excuse for Hillary's loss in the election, to basically say that it was a rigged deal, that she should have never lost the election. It was Putin that violated it because he loved Donald Trump. And then two, it's also to try and lock in our foreign policy posture towards Russia, to make it seem like, to basically back Donald Trump into a corner. They're like, oh, you're close to Russia. You can do whatever they want to try and sort of browbeat him into submission in order to adopt the status quo posture towards Russia in Washington. And of course, we saw the real impact on the Trump administration as he came in.

11:09It debilitated their ability to even execute the will of the American people because he was constantly bogged down by phony investigations that all emanated from this corrupt seed. Yeah, well, and I think also it played a huge part in the in his second election, in the 2020 election, because all of that was still out there. And the Biden administration, you know, they had never been able to get this information out. So ultimately, it was that's why I make very clear that this was not about Trump personally. This was about an influence operation against the American people to to to to to damage his presidency, make him ineffective as a president, ultimately because they just hated him.

11:55And then and then at the same time to influence the American people into voting against him or not supporting him. And we saw that in the midterms. We saw that in the 2018 midterms. And then ultimately we saw that in the 2020 election. They did this as a election rigging, you know, intelligence operation to to damage Donald Trump's presidency and ultimately his future presidency. When you rig an election, I just want to basically ask you a normative question here. Shouldn't you be prosecuted and in jail if you try to rig an American election? Yeah, I think that, you know, there's a lot of things that are thrown around about treason.

12:33and you know the problem with the treason charge is it's a really really high bar and it really has to be at the at the to the benefit of a foreign country i think that you probably the closest thing you're going to come to that is a seditious conspiracy and at the very least they should be investigated and investigated under sort of the auspice of a seditious conspiracy whether or not they're ever charged or not i don't know you know i'm not a lawyer but i i do think that, you know, it has all the earmarks of a seditious conspiracy. Well, let me just I mean, let me ask a basic question about what it's like to be an intel officer.

13:09Like at any point in your career, do you get warnings against this type of abuse of the American people? Like clearly into people who get security clearances and are involved in national security, like as a predicate to getting your clearance, you are told like, hey, if you if you do this, you're in violation of the law. If you abuse the power that you are being given, like you're breaking laws by doing that. Yeah. It's, it's, it's for, I got to ask the question the other day on, uh, as to like, had I ever seen anything or heard anything like this ever happening before, or aren't we trained not to do this?

13:47And the reality is, is it, it, it, it's, it's, it's day one training. It's day one oath where you say you're going to support and defend the constitution. You know, we don't, we don't swear oaths to parties. We don't swear oaths to presidents. We swear oath to a constitution and that means everyone, every single one of us. And it's what makes our country ultimately different. I think than every other country in the world is that our highest, the highest thing we swear an oath to is our constitution in our country. And I believe that these people at the very least were at the very least were in direct and blatant and deliberate violation of their oaths to protect the constitution because ultimately they didn't do what they were entrusted to do, which is to protect us from misinformation, disinformation.

14:46Instead, what they did was is they perpetrated an intelligence operation on the behalf of Hillary Clinton. I mean, that's really what this was. This was an intelligence operation on behalf of Hillary Clinton, and it started with the Steele dossier. Yes, and it continued way too long. Do you, do you think John Brennan ever anticipated being caught? Do you think he ever anticipated these emails coming out and revealing what he was doing and the extent to which he knew that this was a fraudulent intel operation? No, Vince, and I'll tell you, it goes worse. It's worse than that. They perpetrated the Crossfire Hurricane investigation against Trump.

15:23They leaked that information. They knew it was all predicated on the Steele dossier. They did that to try and prevent him from becoming the president in 2016, and they failed in that mission. And so I would argue that I would argue that not only did they not think that these emails would ever become revealed, they assumed that Hillary Clinton was going to win. And that's in every one of their books. That's in every single one. I've read all of their books and every single one of them says they never thought Hillary Clinton was going to lose. Well, that's the reason they did Crossfire Hurricane, because they never thought anybody would ever find out about it.

16:01And then when Donald Trump did win and he had Michael Flynn in there who already had a bone to pick with the CIA, he would have discovered Crossfire Hurricane probably very quickly. And once he had discovered Crossfire Hurricane, their whole house of cards would have fallen and we would have had prosecutions probably in 2017. Which is why they took Michael Flynn out first. Correct. Had to get him out of there as quick as possible before he found everything else out. Yeah. So, so, I mean, I mean, it really is like the more you stare at, the more you realize that, like, as we talk about possible grand conspiracy charges, that's what we're looking at.

16:37I mean, James Comey and John Brennan are now, by virtue of the emails, identified as the people who are ramming the Steele dossier into the intelligence community assessment. And then James Comey is the one who calls in the hit on General Flynn. He's the one who sends FBI agents over to the White House under false pretenses, pretending that they're there for a collegial meeting of some kind. And instead, they turned him into a mark and they were saying, we're going after this guy. And then he would later brag about this. I'll give you another one that people haven't even really caught on to yet, because if you're not in the intelligence community, you probably wouldn't recognize this.

17:11And only somebody that's worked counterintelligence would realize this. When Comey gives the private counterintelligence defensive briefing to Trump, he he mentions the dossier to Trump and Trump outright says it's a lie. It's a lie. Now, Comey knew at that time that it was a lie. He knew that there was no Russian collusion. So when he essentially intimated to the incoming president that the Russians had compromise on him, I believe he was trying to hoover him. I think he was trying to intimidate him to try and say, hey, we're the FBI. We have secret stuff about you. And you better toe the line.

17:55And Trump doesn't toe the line for anyone. So they tried to do it in the office, Comey directly to Trump. Yeah, and that meeting, that was January 2017 when they meet in Trump Tower. Remember, at that time, top Obama officials, to include James Clapper, were communicating that CNN wanted to publish the story about the Steele dossier, but they needed a hook to do it. They didn't have a hook. and that briefing that you just referred to became CNN's hook. They were able to report this. Basically, it's what Nancy Pelosi refers to as the wrap-up smear, which is like we just take this thing, this event where Comey says, hey, there's this thing about Russian hookers and pee tapes and all this stuff and tells Trump about it.

18:46That served as the thinnest possible pretext for CNN to say, well, that happened, meaning the conversation between Comey and Trump, and then to lead people into believing that there was a broader conspiracy that Donald Trump was a part of. Right. But but but again, the fact that Comey knew that it was not true and used it anyway. Yes. Is evidence of a conspiracy because he was trying to, I believe, intimidate the incoming president. So what ends up happening, of course, is President Trump comes into office. He's got this storm cloud that is created by John Brennan, James Comey, Hillary Clinton, Mark Elias, all of these guys over the top of him.

19:27And eventually we're barreling towards the 2020 election. And he's dealt with impeachments. He's dealt with the Mueller investigation. He's dealt with all of it designed to stagger his first presidency. And as we're approaching the 2020 election, the Hunter Biden laptop story comes out. Correct. And that includes a bunch of real information about an actual presidential candidate who is actually compromised by foreign governments, who's actually taking immense amount of money from them. And John Brennan once again pops up in an effort to rig that election. And I want people to see now this is you confronting John Brennan.

20:08This was at the kind of the after party, the soiree after this this panel event that you attended. and you're standing in front of John Brennan and Brennan plants his finger in your chest, furious that you've noticed these details as well. Take a look. And you misrepresented that. We never said it was disinformation. We said it was Russian influence operations, which is what they do. There's a big difference between influence operations and a big difference. No, you don't know that. You don't know. No, we knew. The literature said, all of our stories. OK, and for those of you listening, just to give you an image here, they're just standing in a little room with some drinks.

20:45Thomas is a drink in his hand, looks like a Stella. And he's and Brennan goes up to his chest. It's all they had. I know I've been to these parties. Like, I guess I'll take the Stella. And Brennan walks up right to your chest and it plants his finger right into your chest and starts yelling at you about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. I can gather from the context clues that you're talking about the 51 intelligence official letter that John Brennan was a signatory on where they were very heavily implying that this was a Russian disinformation operation, that that the 100 Biden laptop thing was not real, that the Russians had invented all of this.

21:25And they got that story planted in Politico and they were off to the races. Tell me about that exchange and again, that underlying story and what you think of it. Well, I think that it's important to understand that the origin of the memo is, again, with the Democrat Party, the Morrell email. Morrell sends the memo to Brennan to get it signed to to ask for his signature. And I'm I'm sure all of these people that signed it and probably many more got got that invitation to sign that email, probably from the Democrat Party. And so that shows the political angle automatically. Right. These guys are professional intelligence officers.

22:09They knew what they were saying, and they also knew that the language they were using was not only going to insinuate to the American people that it was Russian disinformation operation. It was for all intents and purposes, they knew they were relying on sort of the ignorance of the American people to just take it at face value that 51 intelligence officers have looked at this. And and and it's definitely Russian disinformation. So can I can I can I add one can I add one detail that I want to make sure people know about where this emanated from? You are right, of course, that it was a former deputy director of the CIA, Mike Morrell, who coordinated all of this.

22:48And John Brennan was a signatory on it. But the man who started this initiative was Tony Blinken. Tony Blinken would become the secretary of state for Joe Biden. And during the 2020 campaign, they desperately needed a talking point to get out of the Hunter Biden laptop saga. And so Tony Blinken goes to Morrell and they created this fake explanation for why the Hunter Biden laptop existed at all. And that that got the social media companies and the big media companies to suppress the entire story, thus impacting the 2020 election. Well, and not just that, the FBI went directly to Twitter and Facebook and asked them to suppress things that look like Russian disinformation.

23:32Well, and then you get the memo that comes out that supports it. And so now what you have is, is you have essentially the FBI and the CIA in collusion to essentially silence free speech regarding this Hunter Biden laptop, you know? And the reality is, like, for me, the Hunter Biden laptop does not affect. I mean, it does. But I mean, it's not it's his son. Right. Like it's you leave it up to the voter to decide whether or not the information on the laptop should influence their decision to vote for Biden or not. You leave it up to the American voter, but you don't suppress it in order to help a candidate.

24:16it, which if you read the memo, that's exactly what it says. It says we need essentially to give Biden a talking point. And we think that the Russians are going to use this against the American people. Well, if yeah, why can't the American people just use it against Biden if they know what's in it? You know what I mean? OK, OK. Let me I want to spend some more time on this and talk to you about the grand conspiracy here, because each of the pieces you're describing, they all feel like they're part of the same exact cover up. I'll get to that in just a moment. I I want to thank the great sponsors who make this program possible.

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