Declassified documents contradict what special counsel in anti-Trump case told Congress

Former special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers he “never met” former CIA director and outspoken Trump critic John Brennan when asked whether Brennan provided any consultation or advice during his tenure, but documents just declassified by the White House reveal that members of Smith’s team met with Brennan while they were preparing the dossier of classified documents against President Donald Trump.

The revelation about Brennan’s meeting with special counsel Smith’s team adds another wrinkle to Republicans’ broader review of Smith’s investigations into Trump, which has included allegations of political bias, overreach and other investigative missteps.

“Jack Smith was a tool of the Biden administration to put Trump in jail,” said Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and former Trump impeachment lawyer, who described Smith’s work as “a partisan weapon who broke the rules, lied in court and engaged in bad faith throughout” in a 2025 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. Another critic, investigative journalist John Solomon, recently described the investigations as part of a “10-year plot to block Donald Trump from using U.S. government resources.”

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Former U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith testifies before the House Judiciary Committee regarding its investigations into President Donald Trump, in the Rayburn House office building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, January 22, 2026. (SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images)

Two deputy special advisers working under Smith joined FBI agents for a November 2023 meeting with Brennan at CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, according to documents declassified Monday by the White House. The meeting was held “to discuss expert testimony from National Defense Information at the upcoming trial,” indicating that prosecutors were exploring the possibility of using the former CIA chief’s national security expertise to prepare their case against Trump.

Meanwhile, Smith appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week as part of the Republican-led panel’s oversight of its investigations into Trump. During the hearing, GOP lawmakers pressed Smith over allegations of political bias, over-investigation and misconduct in the Arctic Frost 2020 election investigation and its classified documents case known as “Plasmic Echo.”

In particular, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked Smith if he had ever received “any consultation or advice” from Brennan, including during his tenure as special counsel.

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Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, speaks during a hearing in Washington, September 16, 2025. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“Have you ever received any consultation or advice from John Brennan, former Director of the CIA, whether during your tenure as Special Advisor or otherwise? If so, when and for what purpose?” asked Grassley.

“I’ve never met John Brennan,” Smith replied.

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Grassley’s question, however, was broader than whether Smith personally met with Brennan, and the newly declassified documents show that prosecutors working directly under Smith met with the former CIA director as they prepared the government’s case against Trump.

“This meeting took place during Jack Smith’s time as special advisor and constitutes ‘consultation or advice’ from John Brennan to Smith and his team,” Grassley told Fox News Digital. “Smith’s response before the Senate Judiciary Committee was, to say the least, very evasive and misleading.”

During the hearing, Grassley later returned to the issue, asking Smith if he had ever had a conversation with Brennan.

“I have no recollection of having a conversation with John Brennan,” Smith responded.

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One image shows former CIA Director John Brennan in front of a Central Intelligence Agency patch. (William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC Newswire/NBCUniversal via Getty Images; Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

In addition to the memo describing the 2023 Brennan meeting, the declassified communiqué also included two pages of notes bearing CIA headquarters headings, where the lines of text under Brennan’s name are blacked out by government redactions, leaving the rest of the lined pages blank.

Brennan was not CIA director during the period covered by the Smith classified documents affair, and the released documents do not indicate that he had direct knowledge of Trump’s alleged handling of the documents.

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Grassley, along with other GOP lawmakers and critics, have accused the former special counsel of overstepping the bounds of the investigation and political bias, including pointing to documents showing that his investigation into Arctic Frost obtained financial information involving thousands of Trump donors and phone records of Republican lawmakers, among other investigative steps. Grassley separately raised questions about the origins and conduct of the prosecution of Smith over classified documents.

Smith, meanwhile, rejected allegations that his investigations were politically motivated and maintained that his decisions were based on evidence and defended the work of his team’s prosecutors and investigators.

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Fox News Digital reached out to Smith’s attorneys for comment on the Brennan meeting, as well as the Justice Department, but did not receive a response.