The Justice Department asked two Senate committees earlier this year to hand over transcripts and records related to former CIA Director John Brennan. The committees were given a deadline of February 23. Two months past that date, the Senate has delivered nothing, and the delay is now dragging on a federal grand jury investigation based in Fort Pierce, Florida.
The bottleneck sits squarely in the chamber run by Republican Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota. And it raises an uncomfortable question for the GOP majority: Why is a Republican-controlled Senate slow-walking evidence that Republican prosecutors need to pursue accountability for one of the most consequential intelligence scandals of the last decade?
Just the News reported that Assistant Attorney General Patrick Davis sent letters to both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee requesting the materials. The letters sought "fully unredacted copies of classified and unclassified transcripts of the Committee's interviews, depositions, briefings, and hearings with any witnesses, as well as any written responses provided by witnesses." Davis wrote that the department needed the records "for our official use in an ongoing law enforcement matter."
The requested materials fell into three categories: records tied to the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment titled "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections"; documents related to the Steele dossier and its inclusion in that assessment; and materials concerning allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian officials.
Those categories go to the heart of the Russia-collusion narrative that consumed American politics for years. The ICA portrayed Vladimir Putin as assisting Donald Trump in winning the 2016 election. Brennan, who led the CIA under President Obama, was a central figure in the production and promotion of that assessment. He has since been told he is the target of the grand jury investigation.
Brennan denies wrongdoing. Last summer he told reporters what he has said before, framing the probe as political retaliation.
"I think this is unfortunately a very sad and tragic example of the continued politicization of the intelligence community, of the national security process."
His attorneys went further in December, sending a letter to a federal judge in Miami arguing there was no "legally justifiable basis" for the investigation. Brennan currently works as a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, and one talent agency listed his speaking fees between $50,000 and $75,000.
Whatever Brennan's lawyers claim, the Justice Department plainly disagrees. And House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio referred Brennan to DOJ for criminal prosecution back in October, alleging false statements to Congress in 2023 and possible obstruction. The House had already voted to transmit similar evidence to the department.
The Senate has not.
Transmitting committee records to the executive branch requires the Senate to introduce a resolution and hold a floor vote. That is the procedural reality. But the political reality is that Thune's team has told the Justice Department he is trying to secure unanimous consent to transmit the evidence, a path that lets any single senator block the transfer by objecting.
Thune's team said he is negotiating with Democrats "to avoid a floor vote that could slow down other legislation." In other words, the majority leader would rather not spend floor time on a vote that might inconvenience his legislative calendar. The 60-vote filibuster threshold adds another layer of complication.
This is not the first time Thune's handling of the filibuster and floor management has frustrated conservatives. President Trump has openly fumed about Thune's unwillingness to end the filibuster and his inability to muster votes for the Save America Act, a conflict that has put the majority leader at odds with his own party's base.
The pattern is familiar. The House acts. The Senate stalls. Procedural nicety becomes the excuse for inaction. And the people waiting for accountability, in this case, federal prosecutors running a grand jury, are left empty-handed.
While the Senate dithers, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has been ramping up resources in both Florida and Washington to develop the Brennan case. This week, the career prosecutor who had been running the probe was sent back to her regular post in Miami. Her replacement carries a considerably heavier résumé.
Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. Attorney and former Independent Counsel, was dispatched to Florida and is set to start Monday as the new lead prosecutor on Russia collusion matters. DiGenova's career includes leading the corruption prosecution of then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, a case that secured a dozen convictions. He also prosecuted convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard and served as Independent Counsel in a Bush-era probe into workers who improperly accessed Bill Clinton's passport records before the 1992 election.
Bringing in a prosecutor of that stature signals the Justice Department is not treating this as a back-burner matter. The question is whether the Senate will match that seriousness.
Prosecutors were recently allowed to read one Senate Intelligence Committee report inside a secure room, a small concession that falls far short of what the Davis letters demanded. The Intelligence Committee's spokesperson did not immediately respond to comment requests. A DOJ spokeswoman also did not respond.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley's office pushed back on the suggestion that his committee is dragging its feet. A spokesperson pointed to Grassley's long record on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
"Senator Grassley has released a deluge of information related to Crossfire Hurricane over the past decade, including the defective annex to the Intelligence Community's assessment of Russian election interference, which then-DNI Ratcliffe declassified and provided to Grassley upon his request."
The spokesperson added that Grassley "has made public records he's received throughout multiple Congresses regarding Crossfire Hurricane, including the declassified Durham and Clinton Annexes, and left no stone unturned."
Making records public, however, is not the same as transmitting fully unredacted classified and unclassified transcripts to a grand jury investigation. What the DOJ asked for is specific, comprehensive, and legally distinct from what Grassley has released to the press over the years. The formal transfer still requires that Senate vote, the one Thune has not scheduled.
The broader frustration among Republicans who want the Senate to act is not limited to the Brennan probe. Fights over the filibuster and election legislation have exposed the same tension: a GOP majority that controls the chamber on paper but struggles to move its own priorities through procedural chokepoints that Democrats exploit and Republican leadership tolerates.
One option remains if the Senate continues to stall. The Justice Department could escalate by serving the Senate with a grand jury subpoena for the records. That would force a direct confrontation between the executive and legislative branches, a step DOJ has so far declined to take.
Whether Blanche and diGenova choose that path may depend on how much longer Thune's unanimous-consent strategy goes nowhere. Every week that passes without a vote is another week the Fort Pierce grand jury operates without evidence the House has already turned over.
The political dynamics make the delay even harder to justify. Republicans hold the Senate majority. The Judiciary chairman says he supports transparency. The majority leader's own party wants answers on the Russia-collusion investigation. And yet the records sit behind a procedural wall that one floor vote could tear down.
With the Senate political landscape shifting and midterm pressures building, Republican voters are entitled to wonder what exactly their majority is for if it cannot even hand prosecutors the evidence they need to investigate alleged misconduct at the highest levels of the intelligence community.
Several details remain unclear. The identity of the career prosecutor reassigned to Miami has not been publicly disclosed. The specific Senate Intelligence Committee report that prosecutors were allowed to read in the secure room has not been named. And no one has explained what, if any, records have actually been transmitted to DOJ by either committee since the February 23 deadline passed.
What is clear is the gap between words and action. Grassley's office says it supports full transparency. Thune's office says it is working on it. Meanwhile, a grand jury in Fort Pierce waits, a veteran prosecutor arrives Monday ready to work, and the Senate majority that promised accountability on the Russia-collusion saga has yet to cast a single vote to deliver the goods.
Republican voters did not send a majority to Washington to negotiate with Democrats over whether to cooperate with their own Justice Department. If the Senate cannot manage a floor vote to support a lawful investigation, the procedural excuse starts to look a lot like a choice.
