On Wednesday’s Breitbart News Daily, SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam talked with Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney about the testimony of former CIA Director John Brennan on Tuesday to the House Intelligence Committee about Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Kassam played a clip of Brennan giving a rather convoluted answer to a question about whether any evidence of actual “collusion” between the Trump 2016 campaign and the Russian government has been uncovered. Brennan ultimately admitted no such evidence has been found.
“I think the bottom line of it was that he doesn’t have evidence that it actually happened, and that’s a key point,” Gaffney observed.
“What I think he’s stating there, and has elsewhere, is if there is reason to suspect that our government is being suborned or our government is otherwise now under undue influence from foreign agents – or a candidate is, or an election may be – that there is a duty to look into it,” he said of Brennan’s testimony.
“The question just keeps coming back: ‘So, was there, in fact, the kind of evidence that would suggest actually this wasn’t just a possibility but happened?’ That seems to still be absent, which is all the more amazing, given the amount of time and energy that’s being expended – to say nothing of money that’s being expended – investigating this lack of evidence by investigative and legislative branch folks,” said Gaffney.
Kassam asked if the public might become bored with the “Russians are under the bed” refrain from President Trump’s adversaries.
“I happen to think the Russians are a very big problem,” Gaffney responded. “I hope what comes out of this is a heightened awareness that they are not our friends.”
“One of the things I believe very much needs to be done is rather than chase the will o’ the wisps, let’s get these investigators looking into actual evidence, abundant evidence, in fact, that exists of assorted Democratic officials – including, notably, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama – who engaged in activities with the Russians,” he added.
“Collusion, I think, is not too strong a term for it, certainly suborning of them and of our national interest,” Gaffney said. “Those should absolutely be looked at against the prism of the Russians not being our friends. I didn’t see John Brennan expressing any interest in those sorts of investigations at all, either when he was in office or now, for that matter.”
He advised the Trump administration not to attempt blocking investigations and, instead, “insist that the investigators, both Robert Mueller and the congressional investigators, broaden the focus of their investigations to ensure that we get an actual investigation into the full extent of Russian influence operations, whether they were aimed at this past election or previous elections or simply stealing our technology or otherwise subverting our national interest.”
“There’s a lot of that to explore,” said Gaffney. “It would be the height of folly, and I think a waste of all of that effort and resources and so on, if the focus is so narrow that it is only looking under the lamplight, as they say, not where the drunk dropped his keys.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
Ask me anything
Explore related questions