Dan Bongino: It Was Brennan

Lee Smith pointed the finger at Brennan in February as being the first mover of the Russia Hoax. That would have made a nice journalistic coup for the Weekly Standard, if they hadn't had fired him soon after he submitted a piece about Fusion GPS that might have been a journalistic coup for them.

Brennan has himself previously taken credit for initiating the inquiry. While on Meet the Press, Brennan suggested that the British sent their intelligence on to the FBI, in his May testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, he indicated it came from him directly.

"I was aware," Brennan said in May, "of intelligence and information about contacts between Russian officials and U.S. persons that raised concerns in my mind about whether or not those individuals were cooperating with the Russians, either in a witting or unwitting fashion, and it served as the basis for the FBI investigation to determine whether such collusion-cooperation occurred."

Brennan continued: "I wanted to make sure that every information and bit of intelligence that we had was shared with the bureau [FBI] so that they could take it. It was well beyond my mandate as director of CIA to follow on any of those leads that involved U.S. persons. But I made sure that anything that was involving U.S. persons, including anything involving the individuals involved in the Trump campaign, was shared with the bureau."

In other words, the FBI investigation didn't start when the Australians, according to the Times--or the Brits, according to Brennan’s most recent version of the story--contacted the FBI after the Papadopoulos-Downer meeting. No, it started when the director of the CIA decided to start an investigation, when Brennan passed on information and intelligence to the FBI, and signaled that the bureau better act on it.

It's cute that some Conservative Geniuses still believe the ever-shifting stories of when and why this investigation started. Hey, they've only changed the story three times already, but sure, go ahead believing their fourth version.

Now here's Dan Bongino:

Trump is quoting Bongino on Twitter. He adds this to the quotes:

As Richard Fernandez notes, America hasn't had to deal with the consequences of a failed coup before. (Perhaps with Aaron Burr, but he didn't have the power that Obama and Brennan do.)

posted by Ace of Spades at 12:48 PM

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