John Brennan, the former CIA director who served under President Barack Obama, went on cable television and declared that the 25th Amendment "was written with Donald Trump in mind", urging the president's removal from office even as the Justice Department investigates Brennan himself for allegedly lying to Congress.
The remarks, delivered during an interview with Ali Velshi on MSNBC NOW, came as more than 70 lawmakers have called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked against Trump over his handling of the Iran standoff. Brennan didn't merely join that chorus. He put himself at the front of it.
That a former intelligence chief under active federal investigation would publicly advocate removing a sitting president deserves more scrutiny than it has received. The timing alone raises questions about motive. Fox News Digital reported that the DOJ launched its investigation into Brennan in July 2025, and the probe remains ongoing. His lawyers have been informed he is a target.
During the MSNBC NOW interview, Brennan framed his argument around Trump's authority over the U.S. military and the nation's nuclear arsenal. He pointed to Trump's public statements about Iran as evidence the president is unfit for command.
Brennan told Velshi:
"Allowing someone like this to continue to be the commander in chief and to control the tremendous capabilities of the U.S. military, including our nuclear weapons capability, which he seemed to allude to when he said he's going to just eliminate a entire civilization."
He added: "Again, we really are in very, very troubling times."
The remarks Brennan referenced came from a series of Truth Social posts in which Trump pressured Iran ahead of a Tuesday, April 7, deadline at 8 p.m. Hours before that deadline, Trump posted that "a whole civilization will die tonight," adding, "I don't want that to happen, but it probably will." Right before the deadline expired, Trump announced the United States and Iran had reached a two-week ceasefire agreement following negotiations in Pakistan.
On Sunday, Trump announced on Truth Social that the U.S. Navy would begin blocking all ships entering and exiting the Strait of Hormuz starting Monday.
In other words, the president used leverage, and got a deal. Brennan treated the leverage as grounds for removal.
This was not Brennan's first public broadside. A month earlier on the same program, he described Trump as "flailing" and "clueless" about handling the conflict. The escalation from insults to calling for the 25th Amendment tracks a pattern: Brennan has spent years positioning himself as one of Trump's most vocal critics from the intelligence community.
Brennan's adversarial posture toward Trump stretches back years. After Trump revoked his security clearance, Brennan wrote in a New York Times op-ed that Trump's repeated claims of "no collusion" were "hogwash." He framed the clearance revocation as "a politically motivated decision to revoke my security clearance in an attempt to scare into silence others who might dare to challenge him."
Brennan had previously called Trump's performance at the Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin "nothing short of treasonous." That language, from a man who ran the CIA, was extraordinary by any measure. The Associated Press reported that the White House subsequently reviewed the security clearances of nine other current or former intelligence and law-enforcement officials, including James Clapper, James Comey, Michael Hayden, Sally Yates, Susan Rice, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce Ohr.
The former CIA director's willingness to side against the sitting president on matters of foreign policy has become a defining feature of his post-government career.
Trump, for his part, dared Brennan to sue over the clearance revocation. The Washington Examiner reported that Brennan said he was considering legal action and had been contacted by multiple lawyers about possible representation. "I am going to do whatever I can personally to try to prevent these abuses in the future. If it means going to court, I will do that," Brennan said at the time.
Whatever one thinks of Brennan's policy criticisms, the DOJ investigation casts his public advocacy in a different light. The probe centers on whether Brennan lied during his 2023 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
House Republicans alleged that Brennan denied the CIA used the Steele dossier in preparing the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, the assessment that found Russia was seeking to influence the 2016 presidential election in Trump's favor. The dossier was included in that assessment. Brennan testified that it "was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was done."
Republicans say the evidence contradicts that claim. The DOJ probe has intensified as prosecutors have sought classified testimony bearing on Brennan's role. The Russia interference narrative, built in part on that assessment, became central to the FBI's investigation of Trump's 2016 campaign, an investigation that consumed years of the Trump presidency and shaped American politics in ways still felt today.
Brennan's lawyers have pushed back, questioning whether there is a "legally justifiable basis for undertaking this investigation." But the investigation has not gone away.
Jordan told Fox News last month that the DOJ probe is "heating up" and predicted Brennan would soon face "accountability." That word, accountability, is precisely what Brennan's critics say has been missing from the entire saga of the intelligence community's conduct during and after the 2016 election.
Federal prosecutors have also requested Senate evidence on Brennan's role in the discredited Steele dossier intelligence report, adding another layer to the legal pressure he faces.
The 25th Amendment was ratified in 1967 to address presidential succession and disability. It was not designed as a political override mechanism for policy disagreements, however heated. Its Section 4, the provision Brennan and the 70-plus lawmakers are invoking, requires the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to declare the president unable to discharge his duties. It has never been successfully used to remove a president.
Brennan's claim that the amendment "was written with Donald Trump in mind" is, on its face, historically incoherent. The amendment predates Trump's political career by decades. But the remark reveals how Brennan frames his opposition: not as policy disagreement but as a constitutional emergency requiring extraordinary action.
That framing conveniently shifts attention away from the legal jeopardy Brennan himself faces. A man under investigation for allegedly misleading Congress about intelligence matters is now telling the country that the elected president must be removed. The public should weigh those facts together.
The broader question of executive authority over DOJ investigations runs through this entire episode. Brennan's defenders will frame the probe as political retaliation. His critics will note that the allegations of false testimony before Congress are specific, documented, and serious enough to warrant a formal investigation.
Several questions hang over this story. Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment on Brennan's remarks but did not report a response. The identities of the more than 70 lawmakers calling for the 25th Amendment were not specified. And the exact legal basis of the DOJ investigation, beyond the allegations about the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment and the Steele dossier, remains unclear in public reporting.
What is clear is the pattern. Brennan has spent years attacking Trump from every available platform. He called the president treasonous after Helsinki. He called him "hogwash" on collusion. He called him "flailing" and "clueless" on Iran. Now he says the Constitution itself demands Trump's removal.
Each escalation has come as Brennan's own legal exposure has grown. The man who once ran America's most powerful intelligence agency now regularly takes to cable news to undermine the sitting president, even as federal prosecutors build a case around his own sworn testimony.
When someone facing a DOJ investigation for misleading Congress starts calling for the president to be removed, the public has every right to ask whether that's principled dissent or a very loud distraction.
