Former CIA Director John Brennan, already a target of a Justice Department investigation into whether he lied to Congress about the Steele dossier, went on cable television and called for President Donald Trump to be removed from office using the 25th Amendment. The remarks came during an appearance on MSNBC NOW with host Ali Velshi, as Fox News Digital reported.
Brennan, who served as CIA director under President Obama, told Velshi that the 25th Amendment "was written with Donald Trump in mind", a claim that would have surprised the amendment's actual authors, who ratified it in 1967. He then escalated his rhetoric further.
"Allowing someone like this to continue to be the commander in chief and to control the tremendous capabilities of the U.S. military, including our nuclear weapons capability, which he seemed to allude to when he said he's going to just eliminate a entire civilization."
That the former head of America's premier intelligence agency would push a constitutional mechanism for presidential removal, while under active criminal investigation by the very government he wants to intervene, tells you everything about how certain corners of the Washington establishment operate. The rules apply to everyone else.
The Justice Department launched its investigation into Brennan in July 2025. His lawyers, cited through the Associated Press, confirmed he has been identified as a target of the probe, a designation that in federal practice signals prosecutors believe there is substantial evidence linking a subject to criminal conduct.
The investigation centers on the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, which concluded that Russia sought to influence the 2016 presidential election in Trump's favor. That assessment included material from the now-discredited Steele dossier. Brennan testified before the House Judiciary Committee in 2023 that the dossier "was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was done."
House Republicans say that claim was false. And the evidence they've assembled tells a very different story than the one Brennan offered under oath.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, formally referred Brennan to the DOJ for alleged false statements to Congress. In his referral letter, Jordan wrote that Brennan's assertion that the CIA was "not involved at all" with the Steele dossier "cannot be reconciled with the facts." Jordan cited declassified CIA and House Intelligence materials indicating Brennan pushed to include dossier material in the assessment despite objections from senior CIA officers.
The pattern that emerges from these records is not ambiguous. Declassified materials have repeatedly shown how Obama-era officials and institutions worked against Trump in ways that were later denied under oath or minimized in public testimony.
The investigation has only intensified. House Republicans voted behind closed doors to transfer classified transcripts tied to Brennan directly to the Justice Department at DOJ's request, the Washington Examiner reported. A prior House Intelligence Committee report, completed in 2020 but not declassified until last year, found that Brennan manipulated intelligence to support the claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help Trump win in 2016.
Jordan told Fox News last month, in an appearance on "Hannity," that the DOJ probe is "heating up" and predicted Brennan would soon face "accountability."
Federal prosecutors have also reportedly made a secret and rare request to the U.S. Senate for documents, transcripts, and testimony related to Brennan, Just The News reported. A CIA review released in 2025 under Director John Ratcliffe reportedly concluded that Brennan "showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness", a polished way of saying he bent the intelligence to fit a political conclusion.
When senior CIA officers demanded that Brennan remove the Steele dossier from the Intelligence Community Assessment, according to Jordan's referral letter, Brennan "refused to remove it." Confronted about the dossier's lack of verification, Brennan's reported response, preserved in the declassified record, was telling: "Yes, but doesn't it ring true?" That is not an intelligence standard. That is a political one.
The broader investigative picture, as the Washington Times detailed, traces a Dec. 9, 2016 White House meeting that included Brennan, then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and Secretary of State John Kerry. Jordan described that meeting as the moment "where they altered the process, didn't follow the normal intelligence community assessment and how that process works, altered the plan, and went out and briefed the President."
That Russia interference narrative became central to the FBI's collusion investigation of Trump's 2016 campaign, an investigation that whistleblowers later said was plagued by anti-Trump bias and procedural failures from the start.
Against this backdrop, Brennan chose to go on television and urge the removal of the sitting president. More than 70 lawmakers, all Democrats, have joined the call to invoke the 25th Amendment against Trump, citing his Truth Social posts about Iran and the Strait of Hormuz.
The timeline of events that triggered the outcry tells a more complicated story than the one Brennan and his allies prefer. On Easter Sunday, Trump posted on Truth Social giving Iran a deadline of Tuesday, April 7, at 8 p.m. Hours before that deadline, he posted that "a whole civilization will die tonight," adding, "I don't want that to happen, but it probably will."
Then, right before the deadline, Trump announced that the United States and Iran had reached a two-week ceasefire agreement following negotiations in Pakistan that weekend. On Sunday, he announced on Truth Social that the U.S. Navy would begin blocking all ships entering and exiting the Strait of Hormuz starting Monday.
The rhetoric was blunt. The result was a ceasefire. Democrats focused on the rhetoric and ignored the result, a pattern that has become reflexive every time the president's negotiating style offends Washington's sensibilities.
Brennan himself had already previewed his posture. About a month before the MSNBC appearance, he suggested Trump was "flailing" and "clueless" about handling the conflict. His latest remarks simply escalated the same line of attack, from criticism to an explicit call for removal.
Brennan's lawyers, for their part, have pushed back on the DOJ probe, questioning whether there is a "legally justifiable basis for undertaking this investigation." Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment; no response was reported.
The core question is not whether a former CIA director has the right to criticize a sitting president. Of course he does. The question is whether a man under active criminal investigation for allegedly lying to Congress about his role in a discredited intelligence operation has the standing to lecture anyone about fitness for office.
Brennan led the CIA when President Obama ordered the investigation into allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. He oversaw the assessment that included unverified dossier material over the objections of his own analysts. He then testified under oath that the dossier played no role, testimony that House Republicans, armed with declassified records, say was false. And now prosecutors are requesting classified transcripts and Senate records to build what appears to be a tightening case.
This is not a man operating from a position of moral clarity. This is a man operating from a position of legal exposure, and using the loudest megaphone available to change the subject.
The long trail of legal and investigatory maneuvers targeting Trump stretches back nearly a decade. What makes Brennan's case distinctive is that the same man who helped set those maneuvers in motion now faces the machinery of accountability himself.
He doesn't want to talk about that. He wants to talk about the 25th Amendment.
Washington is full of people who believe accountability is something that happens to other people. Brennan may be about to learn otherwise.
