John Brennan’s unhinged blowup over ‘Dirty 51’ letter, Hunter Biden laptop shows he’s worried

It was satisfying to see former CIA Director John Brennan lose his cool when he was cornered in his comfortable lair among cronies in Virginia last week about his various plots against Donald Trump.

Brennan was basking in the adulation of friends and assorted gullible future spooks as he sat on stage as part of an intelligence panel at the Hayden Center at George Mason University outside Washington, DC, Thursday night.

But his smug demeanor cracked when he was confronted by whistleblower Thomas Speciale during audience question time.

Speciale asked Brennan why he overrode objections from CIA Moscow specialists to force the discredited and perverted Steele dossier into the 2017 intelligence assessment that launched the Russiagate scheme to frame Donald Trump as a Russian asset.

“Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?” Brennan told the experts he was railroading.

Speciale is a 30-year career Army intelligence officer and was an intelligence strategist at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence at the time the Russiagate intelligence assessment was cooked up, so he knew what he was talking about when he laid out the damning facts.

Everything he put to Brennan on Thursday night is backed by emails and documents declassified in July by current CIA Director John Ratcliffe, which showed the intelligence assessment was deliberately corrupted by Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Stage fright

Before savoring Speciale’s gut punch to Brennan, it’s worth setting the scene.

Brennan, who regularly has accused Trump of treason, is currently under criminal referral to the Department of Justice for allegedly lying to Congress.

He sat on stage with two fellow signatories of the bogus “Dirty 51” letter that falsely claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation: Michael Hayden, former NSA chief and CIA director under George W. Bush, and Larry Pfeiffer, former CIA analyst and chief of staff to Hayden who now runs the Hayden Center.

Hayden, 80, is also a virulent anti-Trumper, who tried his best to sabotage Trump’s first term.

A few months in, he cosigned an open letter declaring Trump “unqualified” to be president and a “clear and present danger” to national security.

He went on to joke about Trump being executed for treason and about putting Edward Snowden on a “kill list.”

No wonder he was eager to sign the Dirty 51 letter which had been instigated by the Biden campaign to give Joe Biden a defense against evidence of influence peddling from his son’s abandoned laptop.

The Columbia Journalism Review, no less, says Hayden “has a long history of making misleading and outright false statements, and by the estimation of many lawyers, likely committed countless felonies during the Bush administration.” Hayden headed the illegal secret NSA warrantless wiretapping program that spied on millions of Americans.

But for some reason, instead of being exiled in disgrace, he is treated like royalty at George Mason as the founder of the center that bears his name.

On Thursday, Hayden, who hails from the Biden school of coherence, managed to get in a few poison darts about Tulsi Gabbard, the current director of national intelligence.

“The DNI is gone,” he said.

Brennan jumped in to finish the thought: “I don’t think it’s any secret that Tulsi Gabbard didn’t have any intelligence experience or background when she was nominated.”

Cue laughter from the audience.

The BS defense

Then, in a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, Brennan said: “A lot of people are very concerned about the ongoing politicization of the intelligence community as a result of the leadership of the ODNI, CIA, whatever.”

Hah! He’d know.

None of the ex-spooks on stage with a doting audience laughing at their every snide comment expected Speciale to prick their bubble.

“What was your justification for supporting the dossier that was known to be false being used as source material in the [intelligence assessment]?” Speciale asked after a detailed preamble, as Brennan shifted in his chair and grew agitated.

“I don’t know who put you up to this,” Brennan finally exploded. “Or what role you played or who you are but it’s a bunch of bulls–t you just passed on. It’s bulls–t.”

Speciale calmly replied: “Nobody put me up to this, sir. I’m here on my own.”

“It’s bulls–t,” Brennan kept repeating.

“The emails are clear sir,” Speciale replied coolly as an official off-camera tried to shut him up by shrieking, “Next! Next! Next! Next! Next! Next! Next! Next! Next! Next!”

To his credit, Speciale continued politely badgering Brennan over a Stella Artois at a drinks event afterward, asking why he signed the Dirty 51 letter saying Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation.

“You misrepresented that,” angrily snapped Brennan, moving in close to Speciale and poking at his chest. “We never said it was disinformation. We said it was Russian influence operations, which is what they do.”

Brennan, 70, still thinks the sly wording of the letter is a defense. The letter said that the New York Post story about the Hunter Biden laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

The letter also falsely claimed that a “ ‘laptop op’ fits the bill” for Russians who wanted to undermine Biden so that Trump would win the 2020 election.

Disinfo on ‘disinfo’

But the real “op” was the Dirty 51 letter, which was instigated by then-Biden senior adviser Antony Blinken, and organized by another Hayden Center grandee, former acting CIA Director Mike Morell, who wrote in an email to Brennan that the letter was a “talking point” for Biden to use in his final debate against Trump.

Morell leaked the letter to Politico, which published it under the headline “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”

Brennan had no problem with Politico’s characterization as he and other signatories fanned out across the air waves reinforcing the lie for the two weeks until Election Day.

Everyone knew the purpose of the Dirty 51 letter, and it worked like a charm.

After The Post had been censored by Twitter and Facebook, the letter killed our laptop exclusive story stone-cold dead until after Biden was safely in the White House.

Brennan knew what he was doing when he abused the lofty position he held at the top of America’s national security establishment.

Having held so much power, he thought he was untouchable.

But his unhinged reaction to Speciale shows he must be worried that accountability is finally knocking on his door.