House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) sent a criminal referral to Attorney General Pamela Bondi on Tuesday alleging that former CIA director John Brennan made “knowingly and willfully” false statements to Congress about the role of the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community’s 2017 assessment (ICA) of Russian election interference.  Brennan’s statements, according to the Oct. 21, 2025, press release, “were contradicted by the record established by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).  Jordan’s letter asks DOJ to investigate potential violations of 18 USC §1001 (material false statements).

Jordan argues that significant declassified records show that the CIA helped incorporate Steele dossier material into the post-election ICA, contrary to Brennan’s testimony in a May 11, 2023 transcribed interview that “the CIA was not involved at all with the [Steele] dossier.”  The referral cites the 2020 House Intelligence Committee majority report and other materials indicating an annex (Annex A) to the ICA summarized the dossier and was coordinated by a CIA officer.

According to the referral, documents declassified this summer show that “the decision to incorporate information from the Steele dossier in the ICA was jointly made by the directors of CIA and FBI” and that the ICA’s finding that Russia “aspired to help” Donald Trump was, in the committee’s telling, “now known to be false.”

The letter says Brennan falsely testified that “the CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier” in the ICA.  Jordan cites a declassified CIA memorandum stating that when senior CIA officials raised “specific flaws” with the dossier, Brennan “formalized his position in writing,” saying the information “warrants inclusion,” and he ultimately “had to order [the dossier] included over the objections of [CIA] professionals.”  In fact, the CIA did not categorically oppose inclusion; it opposed placing the material in the body of the ICA.  Instead, the material was attached as Annex A to the most classified version of the ICA.

As additional context, Jordan points to Brennan’s 2017 open-session testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, where Brennan said the dossier “was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment.”  Though outside the five-year statute of limitations, Jordan argues that the 2017 statement shows a “pattern” of false claims to Congress.

The referral stresses that congressional oversight relies on truthful testimony and asks the DOJ to determine whether Brennan’s 2023 statements were materially false in light of the declassified record.

Key allegations, as summarized in the criminal referral:

• Brennan denied CIA involvement with the Steele dossier in producing the 2017 ICA.  The committee says records show that a CIA-drafted annex summarized dossier claims and was included at the direction of Brennan and then–FBI director James Comey.

• Brennan said the CIA opposed including the dossier; however, the committee cites a CIA memo and testimony indicating that he pushed to include it over internal objections.

• Brennan told HPSCI in 2017 that the dossier was not used as a basis for the ICA; Jordan frames that as part of a broader pattern (though that statement is outside the statute of limitations).

In June 2025, CIA director John Ratcliffe released an assessment of the 2017 ICA, concluding that it was misleading and politically skewed and departed from established analytic processes and tradecraft.  The assessment says John Brennan played a heavy-handed role in shaping the final product — repeatedly pressuring agencies toward consensus, sidelining dissent, and allegedly ultimately steering the document toward his preferred narrative.

Image: John Brennan.  Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.