Will John Brennan Ever Tell the Truth?

John Brennan spent years lying to Congress, the press, and the public—yet now claims he's "clueless" about a DOJ investigation. He’s only clueless about how not to lie.

When asked why the current Department of Justice might be investigating him, former CIA Director John Brennan answered, as was his wont, with a complete lie: “I am clueless about what it is exactly that they may be investigating me for.”

Clueless? Hardly. Brennan knows full well that his fingerprints are on some of the greatest scandals of the last decade. These machinations have threatened the very integrity of our institutions and elections.

He has a record of serially lying to Congress, the public, and the media, and doing so emphatically.

In 2011, as the government’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan absurdly insisted that the Obama administration’s drone strikes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border had not killed a single civilian noncombatant. Yet multiple sources proved the claim was clearly false. In truth, the number of innocents killed was likely somewhere between 50 and 70.

In 2014, as director of the CIA, Brennan lied again, doubling down by denying that CIA operatives were hacking into U.S. Senate staffers’ computers.

“As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. . . . We wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the, you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we do.”

Here, too, he was caught lying and forced to apologize—but never charged with perjury.

But Brennan’s biggest fabrications came in 2017 when, as an ex-CIA director, he testified before a congressional committee that he neither knew who had commissioned the now-infamous bogus Steele dossier nor whether the CIA had relied on it for its intelligence assessments.

“John Brennan’s evil actions are beyond statute of limitations, I would think. Though the charge of treason can be made at anytime.”
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Treason is a very specific and limited charge under the Constitution.

Article III, Section 3, Clause 1:

“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”

Early judicial interpretation of the Treason Clause and the term “levying war” arose in the context of the partisan struggles of the early nineteenth century and the treason trials of Aaron Burr and his associates. In Ex parte Bollman,1 which involved two of Burr’s confederates, Chief Justice John Marshall, speaking for himself and three other Justices, confined the meaning of levying war to the actual waging of war. Chief Justice Marshall distinguished the offense of conspiring to levy war and the offense of actually levying war. In his view, “[t]he first must be brought into operation by the assemblage of men for a purpose treasonable in itself, or the fact of levying war cannot have been committed.”2 This “enlistment of men to serve against the government,” according to him, “does not amount to levying war.”3 Chief Justice Marshall was careful, however, to state that the Court did not mean that no person could be guilty of this crime who had not appeared in arms against the country. He stated: “On the contrary, if war be actually levied, that is, if a body of men be actually assembled for the purpose of effecting by force a treasonable purpose, all those who perform any part, however minute, or however remote from the scene of action, and who are actually leagued in the general conspiracy, are to be considered as traitors.”4 But, Chief Justice Marshall emphasized, “there must be an actual assembling of men, for the treasonable purpose, to constitute a levying of war.”

Based on these considerations and because no part of the crime charged had been committed in the District of Columbia, the Court held that Bollman and Swartwout could not be tried in the District, and ordered their discharge. Chief Justice Marshall continued by saying that “the crime of treason should not be extended by construction to doubtful cases”6 and concluded that no conspiracy for overturning the Government and “no enlisting of men to effect it, would be an actual levying of war.”

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Conclusion
There is no explicit constitutional requirement that a pardon must specify every crime. While some legal scholars believe blanket pardons are unconstitutional without specificity, historical precedent and the broad language of the Constitution have allowed such pardons to stand. Unless and until the Supreme Court rules otherwise, blanket pardons remain constitutionally permissible in practice, though their use is controversial and legally debated

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