Trump Wants Revenge for the Russia Investigation. The Administration Is Going After a Familiar Face.

[justaprogressive]

CIA Director John Ratcliffe is using his position to go after President Donald Trump’s domestic critics.

It is bad enough, though not uncommon, for an agency head to politicize intelligence—to cherry-pick information or contort facts and analyses to fit the perceptions and policies of the president. George W. Bush’s CIA director, George Tenet, did this to bolster the White House view that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. And Ratcliffe himself indulged in it during the brief spell when he was director of national intelligence at the end of Trump’s first term.

However, it is a betrayal of the agency’s charter, a demolition of its overall credibility, and by the way not at all common, for a director to harness the agency’s assets to prop up the president’s image and wreck the reputations of individuals who dare tarnish it.

Late last month, Ratcliffe publicly released a “tradecraft review” of the intelligence community’s assessment in 2016, during the final days of Barack Obama’s presidency, which had concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin interfered in that year’s U.S. election in order to help Trump win.

In an exclusive interview with the New York Post, which was picked up by other news agencies, Ratcliffe said the review showed claims of Russian tampering in the election were strictly political. Accusing the former president and his FBI Director James Comey, DNI James Clapper, and CIA Director John Brennan, Ratcliffe told the pro-Trump New York tabloid, “This was Obama, Comey, Clapper, and Brennan deciding, ‘We’re going to screw Trump.’ ” They “silenced all the career [intel] professionals and railroaded the process.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/07/russia-trump-james-comey-john-brennan-cia-john-ratcliffe-russiagate.html]

[Walleye]

1. Paranoia strikes deep. For godsake, Putin admitted to it in so many words.

[Danascot]

2. This is going to blow up in trump's face

There's too much evidence in the public domain of Russia's interference in the election. It will revive all the details of the operation, to trump's detriment.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. DOJ says Comey and Brennan, perceived Trump foes, are under criminal investigation

When it comes to the president's perceived enemies facing investigations, the former CIA director and former FBI director have plenty of company.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/doj-says-comey-brennan-perceived-trump-foes-are-criminal-investigation-rcna217731

Fox News raised a few eyebrows Tuesday night with an unexpected report: Former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, the network said, are facing criminal investigations from Donald Trump’s Justice Department. Another conservative media outlet, The Washington Times, published a similar report soon after.....

And while those comments were difficult to take seriously, given Trump’s record of breathtaking dishonesty, the underlying issue is apparently quite real. NBC News reported:

The Trump administration has put two repeated targets of President Donald Trump under criminal investigation, although details of what exactly they are being investigated for or how far the Justice Department intends on taking the probes are unclear. [Brennan and Comey] are facing criminal investigations, according to a statement that a Justice Department spokesperson provided to reporters.

.....But let’s not miss the forest for the trees: Brennan and Comey have long been targets, not just of the president’s far-right base — both men appeared, for example, on FBI Director Kash Patel’s so-called enemies list, filled with those he identified as “government gangsters” — but also of the president himself.

What’s more, they join a long and growing list.

In April, for example, Trump signed two first-of-their-kind executive orders targeting a pair of officials from his first term who defied him. There was barely a pretense in the orders that the targeted former officials — Christopher Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Miles Taylor, a former high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official — had done anything wrong. Indeed, the closer one looked at the stated rationales in support of the directives, the more ridiculous they appeared.....

And did I mention that, over the last several weeks, a Democratic mayor, a Democratic U.S. House member, the staffer of a different Democratic U.S. House member, a sitting judge and a labor leader have all been criminally charged, detained or taken into custody by Trump administration officials? Because that happened, too.

There are also ongoing Trump administration investigations into Media Matters, ActBlue, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York Attorney General Letitia James and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

Axios recently reported, “In the final days of the 2024 campaign, Axios identified a list of perceived adversaries who fit what Trump ominously described as ‘the enemies from within.’ As president, he has taken steps to retaliate against virtually all of them.”

That was four months ago. The problem is vastly worse now, and there’s no reason to believe conditions will improve anytime soon.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. Maddow Blog-Republicans cheer dubious DOJ investigations into Comey and Brennan in all the wrong ways

When a GOP senator equates the former directors of the FBI and CIA with insects worthy of “fumigation” without cause or evidence, there’s a problem.

Republicans cheer dubious DOJ investigations into Comey and Brennan in all the wrong ways.
When a GOP senator equates the former directors of the FBI and CIA with insects worthy of “fumigation” without cause or evidence, there’s a problem.
www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— hateGOP (@hategop.bsky.social) 2025-07-10T18:46:43.552Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/republicans-cheer-dubious-doj-investigations-comey-brennan-wrong-ways-rcna217991

There’s no obvious reason why the Justice Department would launch dubious investigations into former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey. Indeed, Brennan, an MSNBC senior national security analyst, sat down with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace hours after the DOJ confirmed the investigation and described himself as “clueless” as to why the probe is even happening.

But as The New York Times reported, the answer to the underlying question isn’t altogether mysterious.

The Trump administration appears to be targeting officials who oversaw the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, examining the actions of the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and the former C.I.A. director John O. Brennan, according to people familiar with the situation. John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director and a harsh critic of his Democratic-appointed predecessors, has made a criminal referral of Mr. Brennan to the F.B.I., accusing him of lying to Congress, officials said. The bureau is also scrutinizing Mr. Comey for his role in the Russia investigation, other officials said, although the exact basis for any inquiry remains unclear.

The Times’ report hasn’t been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, though it dovetails with all available information. In fact, Republican conspiracy theories about Donald Trump’s Russia scandal made Brennan and Comey targets, not just of the president’s far-right base — both men appeared, for example, on FBI Director Kash Patel’s so-called enemies list, filled with those he identified as “government gangsters” — but also of the president himself......

And then there was Republican Sen. Ashley Moody of Florida, who appeared to tell a national television audience that she considers Comey and Brennan to be insects worthy of fumigation.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3ltk6kppsex2o

Link to tweet

“Democrats ... keep talking about that Trump is bringing retribution and that he’s using these institutions for political reasons — this is not retribution, this is fumigation,” the appointed senator told Fox News. “You’ve had radicals roaming in these institutions like termites, destabilizing them, weakening them.”

In case this isn’t obvious, there’s no publicly available evidence (at least at this point) to suggest Comey or Brennan broke any laws or did anything wrong. In fact, Comey is a lifelong Republican to whom Trump was blowing kisses as recently as his first term.

But that apparently didn’t stop Moody — a sitting member of the Senate Judiciary Committee — from targeting the former directors of the FBI and CIA with dehumanizing rhetoric.

If recent history is any guide, as the strange investigations move forward, this problem is likely to get worse before it gets better.