Former CIA Director John Brennan got into a war of words at an event at George Mason University on Thursday with a counterintelligence expert who asked him why he called some reporting from Hunter Biden's laptop “bearing all the classic hallmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Thomas Speciale, a national security consultant and former senior adviser to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, twice criticized Brennan over his decision to sign the letter from 51 intelligence officers considering an October 2020 New York Post report about the contents of Biden's laptop as evidence of Russian election interference.
“Why sign this?” Speciale asked Brennan, the video was posted on Saturday at X concerts. Brennan then appears to approach Spele and points at his chest.
“We never said it was disinformation. We said it was Russian influence operations, which is what they do. There's a big difference,” he said.
After Thursday's conference, I confronted former CIA Director Brennan directly about his signing of the 51 intelligence officer memo knowing Hunter Biden's laptop was real and not Russian disinformation. Follow his answer. pic.twitter.com/blg86oBLRb
— Thomas A. Spele II (@Speciale4VA) November 1, 2025
The memo, released to the media in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, represents a counterintelligence offensive against Donald Trump and election interference by the highest echelons of the intelligence community, Speciale said.
“The emergence on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, most of which are related to his work on the board of directors of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic hallmarks of a Russian information operation,” the 2016 memo said. “We want to emphasize that we do not know whether the emails provided to the New York Post by President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani are genuine or not, and that we have no evidence of Russian involvement—it's just that our experience leads us to strongly suspect that the Russian government played a significant role in this matter.”
The two-round confrontation took place on event hosted by the Michael W. Hayden Center for Intelligence, which also featured the center's namesake, former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Special previously pressed Brennan in front of a university audience on why he included the Steele dossier, a salacious opposition research document commissioned by Democrats, in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) project on Trump and Russia. The document has started years of Russiagate media madness, consuming most of Trump's first term. (RELATED: REPORT: Intel Officials Warned Steele's Dossier Sources Were 'Highly Sketchy')
Speciale also asked about Gabbard's declassified documents showing that Clapper encouraged then-National Security Advisor (NSA) Mike Rogers, who had expressed doubts about the assessment's credibility, to compromise on “normal conditions” and join the ICA as a “team sport.” (RELATED: Obama Intelligence Chief James Clapper Tells NSA Chief to Join 'Our Story' on Russiagate Intel)
Brennan declined to answer Special's question. Hayden then chanted “Next, further, further,” as shown in the video.
Last night, at a conference with former CIA Director Brannon, I confronted him about the false dossier and the Russian collusion hoax. Listen to his answer. FYI – I was not invited outside of working hours. pic.twitter.com/sE96meMpHA
— Thomas A. Spele II (@Speciale4VA) October 31, 2025
“I wanted to get answers to basic questions based on my personal interests. These are the people we, as career intelligence experts, look up to. Why would you do that?” Speciale reported this in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF).
On October 21, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan referred Brennan to the Justice Department for prosecution for lying under oath to Congress regarding the ICA. He cited evidence declassified by Gabbard showing that Brennan, along with then-FBI Director James Comey, made the final decision to include information from the dossier in the ICA and overruled the decision of senior CIA officers who objected to its inclusion.
