Did the Democrats' orchestrated attempt to catch the Trump administration in a major scandal with Russia just blow up?

The Washington Times reported it was President Obama's CIA director, John Brennan, who prompted the investigation into claims the Trump campaign had inappropriate contacts with the Russian government.

But that's the same John Brennan who, like other top Democrats, has stated he has seen no evidence of collusion with the Russians, and the same John Brennan who, among the other indiscretions, was caught lying to Congress.

The Times reported on Memorial Day that the reason the Obama administration last summer started investigating the Trump campaign "has come into clearer focus following a string of congressional hearings on Russian interference in the presidential election."

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"House of War: Islam's Jihad Against the World" conveys what the West needs to know about Islam and the violent, expansionary ideology that seeks the subjugation and destruction of other faiths, cultures and systems of government

"It was then-CIA Director John O. Brennan, a close confidant of Mr. Obama's, who provided the information – what he termed the 'basis' – for the FBI to start the counterintelligence investigation last summer. Mr. Brennan served on the former president's 2008 presidential campaign and in his White House," the report said.

The Times reported Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee on May 23 "that the intelligence community was picking up tidbits on Trump associates making contacts with Russians.'

But Brennan did not name either the Russians or the Trump people, and he indicated he did not know what was said.

"But he said he believed the contacts were numerous enough to alert the FBI, which began its probe into Trump associates that same July, according to previous congressional testimony from then-FBI director James B. Comey," the Times said.

The paper aid the FBI probe of contacts "came the same month the intelligence community fingered Russian agents as orchestrating hacks into Democratic Party computers and providing stolen emails to WikiLeaks."

"Mr. Brennan, who has not hidden his dislike for Mr. Trump, testified he briefed the investigation’s progress to Mr. Obama, who at the time was trying to aid Hillary Clinton in her campaign."

But WND reported earlier this month Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee he did not know of any evidence of collusion, coordination or conspiracy between Trump and the Russian government.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., former director of national intelligence James Clapper and former acting CIA Director Michael Morell also have stated they have seen no evidence of collusion.

At the time, Brennan said he had seen some Trump campaign operatives making contact with Russia, and he was worried it might lead to collusion. In response, the Obama administration surveilled the Trump team and had the FBI launch an investigation.

"I know what the Russians try to do," testified Brennan. "They try to suborn individuals and they try to get individuals, including U.S. persons, to act on their behalf, either wittingly or unwittingly."

"And I was worried," he continued, "by a number of the contacts that the Russians had with U.S. persons and so, therefore, by the time I left office on Jan. 20, I had unresolved questions in my mind as to whether or not the Russians had been successful in getting U.S. persons, involved in the campaign or not, to work on their behalf, again, either in a witting or unwitting fashion."

Nonetheless, Brennan concluded, "I felt as though the FBI investigation was certainly well-founded and needed to look into those issues."

But WND also reported that when Brennan was urging Congress to investigate, he didn't mention that he, himself, had colluded with Russia on behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Nor was his admission to having voted for a Communist Party candidate in the 1976 election ever mentioned.

Nor was the fact a 2012 WikiLeaks email dump pointed to him "as the person behind the 'witch hunt' of journalists who reported unflattering Obama administration leaks."

Nor was his refusal to use a Bible, as tradition prescribes, when he was sworn into office.

"House of War: Islam's Jihad Against the World" conveys what the West needs to know about Islam and the violent, expansionary ideology that seeks the subjugation and destruction of other faiths, cultures and systems of government

Nor was his graduate thesis in which he denied the existence of "absolute human rights" and said government censorship of speech was an appropriate management tool.

Nor was his insistence that people not use the word "jihadist" to describe terrorists.

Nor was his lying to Congress.

A lie

It was a columnist for the Guardian of London who, in 2014, detailed Brennan's lie about the claims that the CIA was spying on U.S. Senate staffers.

"John Brennan blatantly lied to the American public. Again," wrote columnist Trevor Timm.

"The facts will come out," Brennan told NBC News in March after Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., condemned the CIA on the Senate floor, accusing his agency of hacking into the computers used by her intelligence committee's staffers.

"Let me assure you the CIA was in no way spying on [the committee] or the Senate," he said, the paper reported

But Timm noted: "After the CIA inspector general's report completely contradicted Brennan's statements, it now appears Brennan was forced to privately apologize to intelligence committee chairs in a 'tense' meeting earlier this week. Other senators on Thursday pushed for Brennan to publicly apologize and called for an independent investigation."

And the report noted, at the time, something else about Brennan, his support for torture.

"That spying scandal, as well as the one Brennan has actually owned up to, both spawn from the Senate’s damning 6,000-page report on CIA torture, part of which is supposed to be publicly released any day now. The document will serve as yet another reminder that Brennan, when he worked in the CIA during the Bush years, supported many of the barbaric techniques used on prisoners after 9/11, which the Obama administration claims to oppose."

Timm continued: "Lest we forget, Brennan’s most recent false statement is not his first James Clapper-esque experiment in misinformation. The nation's top spy is, in fact, a proficient and skilled liar. As Obama's top counterterrorism adviser for his entire first term in the White House, Brennan built, oversaw, executed and excused America's robotic assassination program. During a speech in 2011, the keeper of the kill list said there had not been 'a single collateral death' from U.S. drone strikes because of their 'exceptional proficiency [and] precision'."

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, however, confirmed that a single U.S. drone strike had killed 42 Pakistanis, "most of them civilians."

Brennan's own scandal

Earlier this year, George Neumayr in the American Spectator suggested there was collusion between Russia and an American campaign – Clinton's.

"One side did collude with foreign powers to tip the election – Hillary's," he wrote. "Seeking to retain his position as CIA director under Hillary, Brennan teamed up with British spies and Estonian spies to cripple Trump's candidacy.

"He used their phone intelligence as a pretext for a multi-agency investigation into Trump, which led the FBI to probe a computer server connected to Trump Tower and gave cover to Susan Rice, among other Hillary supporters, to spy on Trump and his people."

Neumayer said Brennan's CIA "operated like a branch office of the Hillary campaign, leaking out mentions of this bogus investigation to the press in the hopes of inflicting maximum political damage on Trump."

An official in the intelligence community told the Spectator that Brennan's "retinue of political radicals didn't even bother to hide their activism, decorating offices with 'Hillary for president cups' and other campaign paraphernalia."

The Spectator cited a London Guardian report that the criminal leaks against Trump originated in the British press, including claims from Estonia that the Kremlin was funneling cash to the Trump campaign.

"Any other CIA director would have disregarded such a flaky tip, recognizing that Estonia was eager to see Trump lose (its officials had bought into Hillary's propaganda that Trump was going to pull out of NATO)."

As WND reported, speaking on MSNBC on March 2, former deputy assistant Secretary of Defense Evelyn Farkas inadvertently confirmed the former president’s administration spied on Trump’s transition team for political purposes and that she helped leak the information.

"I became very worried because not enough was coming out into the open, and I knew that there was more," she said. "We have very good intelligence on Russia. So then I had talked to some of my former colleagues, and I knew they were trying to also get information to the Hill.

"That's why you have the leaking."

However, intelligence chiefs who have seen the classified information in question, including Obama’s own former director of national intelligence, James Clapper. and former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, said days later they had seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump team and the Russian government.

That meant Farkas' objective could only have been to damage Trump politically.

Communist link

WND founder and CEO Joseph Farah outlined last year how Brennan admitted to support for a communist candidate.

"Brennan recalled undergoing one of the first tests he would endure for a top security clearance, including a polygraph. He was asked the standard question: 'Have you ever worked with or for a group that was dedicated to overthrowing the U.S.?'" he wrote.

Brennan's response? "I froze. This was back in 1980, and I thought back to a previous election where I voted, and I voted for the Communist Party candidate. … I froze, because I was getting so close to coming into CIA and said, 'OK, here's the choice, John. You can deny that, and the machine is probably going to go, you know, wacko, or I can acknowledge it and see what happens.'"

Explained Farah: "He once voted for unrepentant Stalinist Gus Hall, the presidential nominee of the Communist Party USA. Today he remains in a love affair with all things Islam. If you doubt what I am saying, I submit here for your own judgment a three-minute video of a speech he gave in 2010 in which he extols the beauty of the religion of peace – in flawless Arabic:"

WikiLeaks and more

In 2013, Breitbart reported, "An obscure November 2012 WikiLeaks email dump points to former White House counterterrorism adviser and now-CIA chief John Brennan as the person behind the 'witch hunt' of journalists who reported unflattering Obama administration leaks."

It explained: "A little over a week after President Barack Obama’s reelection, WikiLeaks released an email dump of global intelligence files from the private intelligence company Stratfor. One particular email, dated September 21, 2010 discussed President Obama's 'Leak Investigations.'"

It identified Brennan.

Then there was Brennan's Bible-less swearing in.

"When Obama security adviser John Brennan was sworn into office as chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, he put his hand not on a Bible, but on a copy of the Constitution – before it included the Bill of Rights," the report said.

"The White House said of the controversial appointee, whose position in office was filibustered by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul this week for nearly 13 hours, 'Brennan was sworn in with his hand on an original draft of the Constitution, dating from 1787, which has George Washington's personal handwriting and annotations on it.'"

"When Brennan vowed to protect and defend the Constitution, he was swearing on one that did not include the First, Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth Amendments – or any of the other amendments now included in our Constitution," one blogger pointed out. "The Bill of Rights did not become part of our Constitution until 1791, four years after the Constitution that Brennan took his oath on.

"Another angle on why Brennan might not have wanted to swear his oath on the Bible relates to a shocking report by one of the FBI's former top experts on Islam, who says Brennan actually converted to Islam years ago while living in Saudi Arabia," the report continued.

As WND reported, former FBI Islam expert John Guandolo has long warned that the federal government is being infiltrated by members of the radical Muslim Brotherhood. But Guandolo now warns that by appointing Brennan to CIA director, Obama has not only chosen a man "naïve" to these infiltrations, but also picked a candidate who is himself a Muslim.

"Mr. Brennan did convert to Islam when he served in an official capacity on the behalf of the United States in Saudi Arabia," Guandolo told interviewer and radio host Tom Trento.

"That fact alone is not what is most disturbing," Guandolo continued. "His conversion to Islam was the culmination of a counterintelligence operation against him to recruit him. The fact that foreign intelligence service operatives recruited Mr. Brennan when he was in a very sensitive and senior U.S. government position in a foreign country means that he either [is] a traitor … [or] he has the inability to discern and understand how to walk in those kinds of environments, which makes him completely unfit to be the director of Central Intelligence."

Brennan did indeed serve as CIA station chief in Riyadh in the 1990s and he has held the official title of Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. On Jan. 7, Obama nominated Brennan as the next director of the CIA.

A former Marine and combat veteran, Guandolo worked for eight years in the FBI's Counterterrorism Division as a subject-matter expert on the Muslim Brotherhood and the global spread of Islamism. Guandolo boasts he created the Bureau's first counter-terrorism training/education program and twice received United States Attorney's Awards for investigative intelligence.

It was then-WND columnist Diana West who pointed out his empathy toward "jihad."

"What's so scary about Brennan, currently President Obama's top adviser for counterterrorism?" she asked, while Brennan was being nominated for the CIA post.

"More than any other Obama administration official, Brennan has openly cultivated groups in this country that I describe, with good reason, as being of the jihadist persuasion. Simultaneously, Brennan misinforms or dissembles about the nature of jihad itself. How can such a man helm America's premier intelligence institution, which, at least ostensibly, is engaged in thwarting jihad?"

She continued: "His reaction is much the same when it comes to what is called, in military parlance, the 'enemy threat doctrine.' Take jihad. We must not 'describe our enemy as 'jihadists' or 'Islamists,'' Brennan said in 2010, 'because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one's community.'"

Too much freedom?

Also in 2013, it was reported in Brennan's 1980 graduate thesis at the University of Texas he rejected the existence of "absolute human rights."

He said "inflammatory articles" in the media can provoke violence, so "some degree of government censorship" is appropriate.

"House of War: Islam's Jihad Against the World" conveys what the West needs to know about Islam and the violent, expansionary ideology that seeks the subjugation and destruction of other faiths, cultures and systems of government