Federal prosecutors have taken the unusual step of secretly requesting evidence from the Senate concerning former CIA Director John Brennan, Just The News reported late Thursday (local time).

Prosecutors are investigating whether President Donald Trump and his associates weaponized intelligence agencies and law enforcement.

The move suggests a focus on Brennan's now-debunked claims over a decade ago that Trump's 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia.

According to Just The News, the team of U.S. Attorney Jason A. Redding Quiñones in Miami began reaching out to the Senate and intelligence committees last month, and formalized their request for documents, transcripts, and testimony in writing last Friday, according to multiple people familiar with the move.

Senate lawyers and prosecutors are negotiating the best way to transfer the evidence, and a visit by the prosecution team to Washington within days is also being considered.

The House Judiciary Committee formally referred Brennan, who served as CIA director under the Obama administration, for prosecution last year. Brennan is accused of making false statements in 2023 about his role in helping Hillary Clinton. The statute of limitations for perjury before Congress has not yet expired, Just The News reported.

The materials requested by prosecutors from the Senate date back nearly a decade and suggest a potential ongoing conspiracy involving Brennan's interactions with the Senate. The last known dates of contact between Brennan and the Senate are June 23, 2017, and May 16, 2018, dates that are beyond the typical five-year statute of limitations.

Earlier, FBI Director Kash Patel recommended that the investigation into the 2016 Russian collusion allegations (codenamed "Crossfire Hurricane") and the special counsel Jack Smith's indictment of Trump a decade later should be considered a continuous criminal conspiracy to deprive American citizens of their civil rights through weaponized intelligence and law enforcement statements and allegations targeting Trump and his associates over decades.

This would allow prosecutors to indict crimes that have passed the statute of limitations if they are considered part of an ongoing conspiracy.

Attorney General Pam Bondi tasked Quiñones with reviewing evidence of criminal activity and potential conspiracies accumulated over decades, and his team began collecting evidence before a federal grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida.

This is the same court where Smith's indictment against Trump for mishandling classified documents was dismissed.

Brennan, who served as CIA director under President Barack Obama and is now a national security and intelligence analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, is one of the targets of this investigation for his involvement in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election.

The assessment, released at the end of the Obama administration, concluded that Russia had developed a "clear preference" for Trump in the election and that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an influence operation "to undermine public confidence in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and harm her electability and likability as well as her presumed ability to effectively govern."

CIA Director John Ratcliffe released a report fiercely criticizing the U.S. intelligence community's assessment of Russian influence in the 2016 election. He sent a criminal referral for Brennan to the FBI following the CIA's "lessons learned" review in early July.

Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, also submitted declassified evidence to the Justice Department in July regarding allegations that senior U.S. intelligence officials politicized information related to Russia and the 2016 election during the Obama administration, which she described as a "treasonous conspiracy."

In October, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan stated that Brennan had "made numerous false statements intentionally and knowingly regarding material facts," which he said contradicted records obtained by the House Intelligence and CIA Select Committees.

A key allegation against Brennan is that he forced the inclusion of Christopher Steele's discredited dossier into official reports, despite opposition from the CIA.

NNP=Hong Sung-goo, Chief Reporter / Special Correspondent NNP info@newsandpost.com