Former CIA Director and NBC News security analyst John Brennan was on MSNBC's Morning Joe Monday morning to comment on Attorney General William Barr's summary of the Mueller Report that was released on Sunday. Brennan, who has been one of President Trump's most incendiary critics, tried to act as if he has been measured in his outlandish predictions about the Russia investigation all along.
Earlier in the segment Brennan argued that, when he called Trump's actions "treasonous" after the Helsinki press conference, he was not referring to the legal sense of the word and only to Trump's actions. Morning Joe had largely spent the morning ignoring two years of collusion charges, including themselves repeatedly calling Trump a Russian asset, or trying to figure out why Barr and Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein made a determination not to peruse obstruction of justice charges against Trump. However, co-host Joe Scarborough found the time to ask Brennan, "Did you receive bad information throughout this process like so many of us did? That there was more there than ended up in the report regarding collusion?"
Brennan responded, "Well, I don't know if I received bad information, but I suspected there was more than there actually was." He said that it was a good thing that the President did not collude with a foreign power, but then said, "I'm not at all surprised that the high bar of criminal conspiracy was not met." But, that's not what Brennan wrote in a New York Times op-ed in August 2018:
Mr. Trump’s claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash.
The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of “Trump Incorporated” attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets
In other words, less than seven months ago, Brennan was saying that criminal conspiracy was a real possibility and now he's trying to cover up the fact that he used he has been discredited...again
Just as the collusion narrative was put to bed this weekend, maybe Brennan's career as a political analyst who is taken seriously, will too.
Here is a transcript for the March 25 show:
MSNBC
Morning Joe
8:24 AM ET
JOE SCARBOROUGH: So, so, Director Brennan, I’m just curious Mr. Director, how surprised were you by the findings yesterday by the conclusions that were drawn, and I'm just curious did you receive bad information throughout this process like so many of us did? That there was more there than ended up in the report regarding collusion?
JOHN BRENNAN: Well, I don't know if I received bad information but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was. I am relieved that it's been determined there was not a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government over our election. I think that's good news for the country. So I still point to things that were done publicly, or efforts to try to have conversation with the Russians that were inappropriate, but I'm not all that surprised that the high bar of criminal conspiracy was not met. I am surprised that that second part of obstruction of justice in terms of how it came out. I don't know whether or not Bob Mueller wanted the Attorney General to pronounce on that issue or whether or not Bob Mueller it was up to Congress and the American public to determine whether the weight of information indicates whether Donald Trump did try to obstruct justice, so there are some surprises there. I think that's why getting to the full Mueller report is the best way to get some of these if not all of these questions answered.
