CIA director John Brennan has yet to read the unverified 35-page Trump dossier, and he says he doesn’t believe the document deserves much of his attention.
“First of all, this is not intelligence community information,” Brennan told The Wall Street Journal in an interview on Monday.
“I would have no interest in trying to give that dossier any additional airtime,” he continued, adding that he has not read the dossier, which was compiled by a former British spy named Christopher Steele.
The dossier, which is actually a collection of memos, was first reported by BuzzFeed last week. It contains salacious allegations that Russian spies have compromising material on Trump.
Trump has denied the document’s claims, which were gathered by Steele from Russian government sources.
The document has been circulating around various U.S. and foreign spy agencies for months. Numerous reporters in the Washington, D.C. media world have also seen the document.
Brennan said he first saw the document “many months” ago when reporters began asking him about it.
Brennan addressed other issues in the interview. He hit back at Trump for accusing him in a recent tweet of leaking the dossier.
“Was I a leaker of this? No,” Brennan said on Monday.
He said that the FBI took the lead on the investigation of the document and the allegations linking the Russian government to members of Trump’s campaign team.
He also told The Journal that the FBI made the decision to tell Trump in a Jan. 6 classified briefing that the dossier was floating around in media and intelligence circles.
Vice President Joe Biden said last week that he and President Obama were also briefed on the existence of the document. He said that intelligence officials provided the information out of fear that it would leak to the media.
“There was an interest on the part of the bureau to make sure that the president-elect was aware of and informed of” the dossier,” Brennan told The Journal.
He noted that the dossier was not part of the hacking report that was explained during the classified briefing with Trump. FBI director James Comey told Trump of the existence of the dossier in a one-on-one session after the larger classified briefing. (RELATED: Intel Vets Say Dossier A ‘Complete Fraud’)
The fact that Brennan has not read the dossier would seem to further undermine its veracity. So far, none of the information laid out in the document has been proven accurate. And several claims in the memos have been disproved, including the allegation that Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, visited a Russian agent in Prague over the summer to discuss ways to help the Trump campaign.
