Tulsi Gabbard slams Biden admin for hypocrisy of Bannon conviction, while Clapper, Brennan weren’t charged

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Brennan allegedly lied to Congress and were never charged, Gabbard wrote.

Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist under the Trump administration, was convicted on two charges of contempt of Congress after a federal jury found him guilty for ignoring a subpoena from the House Jan. 6 Committee on Friday. The two misdemeanour counts each carry a minimum of 30 days and a maximum of one year in jail, in addition to a fine of $100 to $100,000, reported Axios.

Bannon is the first close Trump adviser to be convicted resulting from the House committee's probe into the affront on the U.S. Capitol last January following Trump's election loss.

Clapper has allegedly lied to Congress on multiple occasions, the most notable of which occurred right before National Security Agency (NSA) employee Edward Snowden infamously leaked classified documents.

In March 2013, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked Clapper under oath if the federal government was collecting "any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans." Clapper replied, "No, sir. … Not wittingly."

Three months later, Snowden released documents revealing the NSA was collecting communications records on millions of Americans.

In March 2014, Brennan allegedly lied to Congress when he denied allegations from then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein that CIA officials hacked the computers of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers who were were assembling a report on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," Brennan said in response to Feinstein's allegations. "We wouldn’t do that. That’s just beyond the scope of reason in terms of what we’d do."

Months later, The New York Times reported "An internal investigation by the C.I.A. has found that its officers penetrated a computer network used by the Senate Intelligence Committee in preparing its damning report on the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program."

This isn't the first time Gabbard voiced frustrations with the unequal treatment of those involved with the Jan. 6 Capitol riots versus intelligence officials.

"The mob who stormed the Capitol to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country," Gabbard said in a Twitter post a few months after the affront on the Capitol building.

"But let us be clear, the John Brennans, Adam Schiffs and the oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally-protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style 'surveillance' are also domestic enemies — and much more powerful, and therefore dangerous, than the mob which stormed the Capitol."