Jack Smith team secretly met John Brennan at CIA headquarters – the agents’ notes are raising eyebrows

BS BULLETIN:

Newly released FBI records show Special Counsel personnel and FBI agents met former CIA Director John Brennan at CIA headquarters in November 2023.
The stated purpose was to discuss possible expert testimony involving national defense information in the Trump classified-documents case.
Attached agent notes identify the meeting, Brennan and attendees — but contain virtually nothing about what was actually discussed.

Newly released FBI records are shedding light on an unusual meeting between investigators working with then-Special Counsel Jack Smith and former CIA Director John Brennan — and raising questions about why so little of the substance appears in the agents’ notes.

The records show FBI Washington Field Office personnel and members of the Special Counsel operation met Brennan at CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, on Nov. 3, 2023.

According to the FBI summary, the purpose was to discuss potential expert testimony concerning national defense information for the prosecution that grew out of the classified-documents investigation of Donald Trump.

No documents were shown during the meeting, according to the memo. But what investigators wrote down about the conversation is remarkably sparse.

Last week, Sen Charles Grassley asked Jack Smith if he had received “consultation or counsel” from former CIA Director John Brennan.

After a pause, Smith replied, “I’ve never met John Brennan.”

But he knew at the time his team had met with Brennan in late 2023 under the guise of Brennan serving as an “expert witness” in the documents case.

Really wish the names of the prosecutors were not redacted but I’m guessing they are Jay Bratt and David Harbach—and either JP Cooney or James Pearce.

Thank God Judge Cannon shut down this farce.

— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) October 5, 2026

Two sets of agent notes attached to the released material contain identifying information including the date, location, Brennan’s name and government personnel present, but essentially no account of the substance of the discussion. The typed FBI summary itself was prepared five days after the meeting and states that the original agent notes would be maintained with the investigative file.

The disclosure becomes particularly interesting in light of Smith’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee just last week. Sen. Chuck Grassley asked Smith whether he had ever received consultation or counsel from Brennan during his tenure as special counsel or at any other time.

“I’ve never met John Brennan,” Smith answered.

Grassley: “Have you ever received consultation or counsel from John Brennan?”

Jack Smith: “I never met John Brennan.”

But that wasn’t the question. The answer is YES. Because we now know he received counsel from John Brennan when his team met on 11/3/2023. https://t.co/u7me5Adm38

— Erikaaa (@ErikaCA47) October 5, 2026

The newly released documents do not contradict that statement on their face. They establish that personnel associated with Smith’s Special Counsel operation participated in the Brennan meeting, not that Smith himself attended.

Later in the hearing, Grassley returned to the issue and asked whether Smith had ever had conversations with Brennan. Smith responded that he had no recollection of having a conversation with him.

The newly released records therefore add a distinction that was not apparent from that exchange: whatever Smith’s personal contact with Brennan may or may not have been, investigators working on his classified-documents case sought Brennan’s input as a potential expert witness.

The lack of substantive notes may now draw scrutiny as well.

The Justice Department’s Justice Manual generally calls for witness interviews to be memorialized and for original agent and prosecutor notes to be preserved. Standard FBI practice also commonly involves agents converting interview notes into a formal report.

The Brennan meeting occurred while Smith was prosecuting Trump over classified documents kept at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office. That prosecution was ultimately dismissed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who ruled Smith’s appointment as special counsel violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause.

Brennan, meanwhile, is now himself facing renewed federal scrutiny.

His attorney recently disclosed in court papers that Brennan received a federal grand jury subpoena in a broader investigation examining allegations that Trump and his allies were improperly targeted by intelligence and law-enforcement agencies.

That makes the newly disclosed 2023 encounter an unusual intersection of two stories that have now come full circle: Brennan, one of Trump’s most prominent intelligence-community critics, was being consulted by investigators prosecuting Trump — and investigators are now examining conduct involving Brennan himself.

MY QUICK TAKE

Here’s the part worth watching: not whether Jack Smith personally shook Brennan’s hand. The documents don’t say he did, and Smith says he didn’t.

The better question is why the Special Counsel operation prosecuting Donald Trump was sitting inside CIA headquarters discussing potential testimony with one of Trump’s loudest and most historically significant intelligence-community adversaries — and why the contemporaneous agent notes tell us almost nothing about the conversation.

Brennan wasn’t some retired CIA director who disappeared into his garden after government service. He was a central public combatant in the Trump-Russia wars and one of Trump’s fiercest critics.

That doesn’t automatically disqualify him from possessing relevant expertise. It does make the paper trail awfully important. And somehow, at precisely the meeting where you’d really like a paper trail, the paper seems to have developed amnesia.