Jack Smith team secretly met ex-CIA chief John Brennan in 2023, but FBI agents left notes blank

Then-Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team secretly met at the CIA in late 2023 with former Director John Brennan to discuss “expert testimony” in the classified documents prosecution of President Donald Trump, and the FBI agents who attended the interview left blank their notes of what transpired, according to bombshell memos released Monday.

The autumn 2023 interaction with Smith’s team occurred just months after Brennan testified before the House Judiciary Committee about the now-discredited Russia collusion case. Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, alleged in an October 2025 criminal referral to the Justice Department that Brennan’s testimony was false.

“On 3 November 2023, FBI Washington Field Office (WFO) and Special Counsel personnel met with former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John BRENNAN at CIA Headquarters in McLean, Virginia,” a typed FBI summary of the meeting states.

“The purpose of the meeting was to discuss expert testimony to National Defense Information in the forthcoming captioned investigation,” the summary written five days after the Brennan interaction added. “No documents were shown in this meeting. The original Agent notes will be maintained in the attached IA.”

Two agents’ notes are attached to the memo, but they are entirely blank except for the date of the meeting, the location, Brennan’s name and the government attendees.

The memos were released Monday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force. You can read them here.

Nothing about the substance of the meeting was recorded in the agents’ notes even though the U.S. attorney’s manual (formally named the “Justice Manual“) requires agents in most cases to take substantive notes of contacts with witnesses. In standard FBI practice, agents typically take rough notes by hand during an interview and later convert them into an official FD-302 Interview Report Form.

“Although not required by law, generally speaking, witness interviews should be memorialized by the agent,” the manual states, “Agent and prosecutor notes and original recordings should be preserved, and prosecutors should confirm with agents that substantive interviews should be memorialized.”

The interaction with Brennan was part of the FBI code-named investigation “Plasmic Echo,” which later became the genesis of Smith’s charges accusing Trump of mishandling classified information taken to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida after his first term ended.

Those charges were dismissed after a federal judge ruled that Smith was not legally appointed as a special counsel because he was not confirmed by the Senate as required by the Constitution’s Appointments clause.

The timing and nature of Smith’s contact with Brennan is likely to generate intrigue in Washington, first because he was a vociferous critic of Trump on television, a status which would make him an unusual neutral expert for a Florida jury to hear from in a case against the president.

And secondly, Brennan’s interaction with prosecutors and agents occurred just a few short months after the ex-CIA boss gave testimony in Congress that has generated widespread controversy and a criminal referral. Brennan recently got a grand jury subpoena over that matter.

In a contentious Senate hearing last week, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., tore into Smith’s perceived partisanship in launching two anti-Trump investigations and indictments. At that hearing, Hawley ridiculed Smith’s claims to non-partisanship, asserting —  supported by unearthed memorandums and emails — that Smith’s actions “were in fact all about politics from day one […] it was an nothing other that an attempt to interfere, politically in a presidential election.”

Brennan accused of false testimony and obstruction of justice from different quarters

The House Judiciary Committee last year formally referred Brennan for prosecution, alleging he gave false testimony in 2023 about his role in trying to bring the discredited Steele Dossier into the assessment. Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe also sent a criminal referral about Brennan to the FBI following his CIA “lessons-learned” review earlier in July.

After his tenure as CIA director, Brennan continued to stand by the Intelligence Community conclusions over which he presided, even as evidence emerged that called into question the basis for the investigation into the president. He continues to be a paid “Senior National Security and Intelligence Analyst” for left-leaning MSNOW and charges tens of thousands of dollars in speakers’ fees.

At the height of Robert Mueller’s probe of alleged Russian collusion, for example, Brennan wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in which he said President Trump’s claims of “no collusion” were “hogwash.” The retaliatory screed came after the president revoked Brennan’s security clearance.

Brennan’s role in the ginned up “Russian Collusion” hoax

“The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted a criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of ‘Trump Incorporated’ attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets,” Brennan wrote, arguing Trump’s revocation of his security clearance was designed to silence those who dared to challenge him.

Brennan’s actions at the beginning, middle, and end of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation and narrative are likely to feature prominently in the questions prosecutors will want him to answer in front of the grand jury.

Brennan’s fingerprints were on the opening of the federal probe that became the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump and his campaign. Brennan previously testified to Congress in 2017 that the U.S. Intelligence Community had gathered evidence of contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government by July 2016 to initiate an investigation. It was at that point, he told lawmakers, that the CIA set up a special group with both the FBI and the NSA to probe alleged Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.

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