Ex-Obama officials face federal grand jury probe into whether they promoted false Trump-Russia ties
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Published Aug. 4, 2025
Updated Aug. 4, 2025, 6:36 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is opening a federal grand jury investigation of former Obama administration officials who allegedly conspired to whip up a scandal about President Trump’s purported links to Russia during the 2016 election campaign, The Post has learned.
The major legal development opens the door to criminal charges against prominent cabinet members who served President Barack Obama, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey.
It was not immediately clear whether the grand jury would be based in heavily Democratic Washington, DC, or elsewhere.
An email released by Gabbard showed that Obama ordered an intelligence assessment that found Russia intervened to help Trump defeat Clinton — though Gabbard said US intercepts actually showed that Russia expected Clinton to win and held back damaging material on her for later release.
“This is like proof, irrefutable proof that Obama was seditious, that Obama led, was trying to lead a coup — and it was with Hillary Clinton, with all these other people, but Obama headed it up,” Trump said last month.
Brennan, 69, is believed to be under investigation for allegedly lying to Congress in May 2023 about ex-British spy Christopher Steele’s dossier of salacious claims against Trump.
Steele was paid by research firm Fusion GPS after it had been hired by Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee to put together an opposition file on Trump. The dossier he produced helped underpin the later investigations.
Brennan told Congress in May 2023 that “the CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier” in a major intelligence agency report — but records show he actually wrote at the time that “I believe that the information warrants inclusion” in the Obama-ordered assessment.
Comey, 64, was interviewed in May by the Secret Service after posting an image interpreted as a threat against Trump and was accused by Republicans of lying to Congress in 2017.
Giving false testimony to Congress carries a penalty of up to five years in prison — but has a five-year statute of limitations. Treason does not have a statute of limitations, but no American has been convicted of that charge since 1949.
It’s possible that prosecutors could develop a novel legal theory to revive seemingly expired charges, as performed by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last year when he won a 34-count felony conviction against Trump for falsifying business records to conceal 2016 hush money payments.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Christopher Steele was paid by the Washington Free Beacon to produce his eponymous dossier. In fact, Steele was only hired by Fusion GPS after it was subcontracted to the Clinton campaign.
