Jack Smith sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee and swore he’d never met John Brennan. Simple question, simple answer. Except now we know that answer was, at best, carefully parsed legal speak designed to dodge the real issue. Members of Smith’s prosecutorial team absolutely met with Brennan while preparing their case against Donald Trump. The documents proving it just got declassified by the White House, and they tell a story that should alarm anyone who still believes in equal justice under law.
Two assistant special counsels working directly under Smith traveled to CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, back in November 2023. They brought FBI agents along for the ride. The purpose, according to the freshly declassified records, was discussing expert testimony related to National Defense Information for the upcoming trial. Translation? They wanted Brennan’s gravitas and national security credentials to bolster their prosecution of Trump over classified documents.
You know what’s rich about all this? Brennan has been one of Trump’s most vocal critics since day one. This is the same guy who’s been a fixture on cable news, breathlessly predicting Trump’s downfall and questioning everything from his mental fitness to his loyalty to America. He signed that infamous letter about Hunter Biden’s laptop being Russian disinformation. He’s accused Trump of treason on national television. And Smith’s team thought he’d make a credible, objective expert witness?
The timing matters here. This meeting happened while Smith was building what his team called “Plasmic Echo,” the classified documents case. They were clearly shopping for heavyweight testimony that could sway a jury, someone with three letters after their name who could make Trump look reckless with national secrets. But bringing in Brennan wasn’t about finding an objective expert. It was about finding someone whose animosity toward Trump was already well established and fully baked into the public record.
Senator Chuck Grassley asked the right question during that hearing. Did Smith receive consultation or counsel from Brennan during his time as special counsel? Smith’s answer danced around the truth. He said he’d never met Brennan personally, which might technically be accurate if he wasn’t in that specific meeting. But his team sure did meet with him, and they did it for reasons directly tied to prosecuting Trump. That’s the kind of careful wordplay that makes Americans distrust their government.
Alan Dershowitz, who defended Trump during impeachment and knows a thing or two about constitutional law, didn’t mince words. He called Smith a tool of the Biden administration whose sole purpose was putting Trump behind bars. Dershowitz wrote that Smith operated as a partisan weapon that broke rules, lied to courts, and acted in bad faith throughout the investigation. Coming from a legal scholar who’s spent decades in courtrooms and classrooms, that’s a devastating assessment.
This revelation fits into a broader pattern that investigative reporter John Solomon recently described as a ten year conspiracy to stop Trump using the full resources of the United States government. Whether you call it a conspiracy or just bureaucratic resistance, the effect is the same. Agencies that are supposed to serve all Americans got weaponized against one political figure who threatened the established order in Washington.
The meeting at Langley adds another layer to Republican scrutiny of Smith’s entire operation. Lawmakers have been hammering away at allegations of political bias, overreach, and investigative missteps in both the classified documents case and the election interference probe Smith ran. Every new detail that emerges seems to validate those concerns rather than dispel them.
Here’s what should bother everyone, regardless of political affiliation. The special counsel system exists to ensure investigations remain above partisan politics. When prosecutors start coordinating with political opponents of their target, that entire premise collapses. It doesn’t matter if you think Trump mishandled documents or tried to overturn an election. The process has to be clean, or none of it means anything.
The declassified documents show us what many suspected all along. Smith’s investigation wasn’t some neutral fact finding mission conducted by dispassionate lawyers. It was a coordinated effort that drew in Trump’s most committed adversaries and put them to work building a case. That’s not justice. That’s politics wearing a prosecutor’s badge.
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