Congress
Jordan calls on DOJ to prosecute ex-CIA Director Brennan
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan is asking the Justice Department to prosecute former CIA director John Brennan for allegedly lying to Congress more than two years ago.
It’s the latest move in the GOP’s campaign to leverage the justice system against President Donald Trump’s political adversaries.
In a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Ohio Republican claimed Brennan, who led the CIA during a probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, “knowingly made false statements during his transcribed interview” with the panel back in May 2023.
Jordan’s allegations center around Brennan’s comments at that time regarding the so-called Steele dossier — a series of largely discredited memos created by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, that accused Trump and his allies of orchestrating a sweeping election conspiracy with the Kremlin.
Steele delivered his dossier to the FBI in 2016, and a summary of its allegations was appended to an intelligence community assessment — ordered by outgoing President Barack Obama after Trump was first elected — about Russia’s involvement in that year’s presidential campaign.
“Brennan’s assertion that the CIA was not ‘involved at all’ with the Steele dossier cannot
be reconciled with the facts,” Jordan wrote in the new letter to Bondi. “Brennan’s testimony … was a brazen attempt to knowingly and willfully testify falsely and fictitiously to material facts.”
Trump has long harbored hostility towards Brennan for his role in probing Russia’s ties to the 2016 campaign — and the fact that, once Brennan left office, the ex-CIA director continued to be an outspoken critic of the president.
Brennan is also reportedly already under investigation by the DOJ, but his attorney did not immediately return a request for comment.
Criminal referrals from Congress typically carry limited weight with the Justice Department, particularly in matters in which the evidence forming the basis for a potential criminal charge has been public for years. But Trump has made no secret in recent weeks that he expects his prosecutors to criminally charge his political opponents and has publicly pressured Bondi to act quickly in all these cases. In this environment, a referral from a close Trump ally in Congress might draw the president’s attention and spur officials to action.
After a public plea to Bondi to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey, for instance, Trump also engineered the ouster of a top federal prosecutor who resisted bringing those cases — instead installing his former personal lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, to a powerful U.S. attorney position.
In less than three weeks, Halligan brought charges against Comey and James, who now say they’re being targeted as part of Trump’s political vendetta.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Congress
Johnson touts ‘bipartisan’ path for FISA reauthorization, but obstacles remain
Speaker Mike Johnson is raising the possibility of a “bipartisan” path forward on extending a key spy authority after negotiations among House Republicans blew up late last week.
“We’re confident that we’ll be able to find strong bipartisan consensus that builds off of the really meaningful reforms that we included in the legislation the last time we reauthorized it,” Johnson said during a news conference Tuesday morning.
The emergency short-term reauthorization Congress cleared last week expires April 30, putting pressure on lawmakers to reach a deal quickly.
Among the options GOP leaders are discussing: If the Senate can advance a three-year extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with policy changes, the House could then pass it with a majority of Republicans and some Democrats, according to three people granted anonymity to share direct knowledge of ongoing conversations.
It’s also possible Johnson could put that measure on the House floor under an expedited procedure that does not require prior adoption of a party-line rule, but would need a two-thirds majority voting in the affirmative to secure passage. House GOP leaders still need to appease hard-liners who have very specific demands for new guardrails on warrentless surveillance practices as part of any reauthorization measure.
House Democratic leaders, meanwhile, aren’t promising cooperation — and they’re skeptical Johnson is as close to a deal as he might suggest.
“His confidence meter was always pretty high, and then he put a bill on the floor that had zero consensus among his caucus, and looked like the disaster that it was after midnight,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California told reporters Tuesday.
He added that he has not had “any discussions” yet with Republican counterparts on next steps for Section 702, and “absent those conversations, it’s going to be hard to find bipartisan consensus.” Aguilar also said that Democrats would follow the leads of House Intelligence Chair Jim Himes of Connecticut and Jamie Raskin of Maryland.
Johnson is planning to meet Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Darin LaHood of Illinois later Tuesday as the pair of Republicans works with Democrats on a bipartisan FISA extension plan, according to two people granted anonymity to share private scheduling.
Congress
Graham releases blueprint for GOP immigration enforcement funding plan
Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham unveiled a fiscal blueprint Tuesday paving the way for the GOP’s party-line immigration enforcement plan.
The budget resolution is the first step in Republicans’ two-step plan to deliver a bill funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol and other agencies to President Donald Trump’s desk by his self-imposed June 1 deadline.
Senate Republicans are aiming to adopt the budget resolution this week. Senate Majority Leader John Thune can lose as many as three GOP members so long as Vice President JD Vance is available to break ties.
“Republicans are doing something that must be done quickly, and that our Democrat colleagues are trying to prevent us from doing. That something is simple: fully fund Border Patrol and ICE at a time of great threat to the United States,” Graham (R-S.C.) said in a statement.
The budget resolution tasks the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee with drafting the subsequent immigration enforcement bill.
The resolution gives the committees until May 15 to hand over text. It sets a ceiling of $70 billion for the Judiciary Committee’s portion and $70 billion for the Homeland Security panel’s portion. While the language would allow for a larger bill, a Graham aide said Tuesday that Republicans are aiming to keep the measure to about $70 billion.
Senate Republicans are expected to take an initial vote on the budget resolution as soon as Tuesday afternoon. After that they’ll need to complete a marathon session known as a vote-a-rama before they can approve the fiscal blueprint and send it to the House.
Democrats are expected to force several amendments related to cost-of-living concerns. Senate conservatives could also try to expand the scope of the bill, though GOP leaders hope to avoid making any changes to Graham’s text.
House Republicans could take their own vote next week. They are also waiting to grant approval of a Senate-passed deal to fund the rest of the Department of Homeland Security. Speaker Mike Johnson has delayed action on the measure amid hard-right demands that the Senate move on the immigration enforcement funding bill first.
Some House conservatives want the Senate to complete the entire reconciliation process, which allows ICE funding to bypass a Democratic filibuster, before they take up the larger DHS deal. That could drag the agency’s shutdown deep into May.
Senate Republicans are aiming to put the final immigration enforcement bill on the floor the week of May 11.
Congress
‘Many families are struggling’
Rep. Lisa McClain of Michigan offered a rare acknowledgment from a GOP leader Tuesday that the U.S. economy might not be in tip-top condition. McClain, the Republican Conference chair, said at a news conference that “even with bigger [tax] refunds, many families are struggling right now, and I get it.”
That’s a departure from the message President Donald Trump sent at a event in Las Vegas last week, where he said “everything’s doing really well” and played down the impact of higher energy prices since he ordered military strikes on Iran.
“But we also owe it to the American people to be honest about how we got here, to make sure we don’t ever go back again,” McClain, the No. 4 party leader added, saying Americans are “digging out of a hole” from former President Joe Biden’s administration.
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