Former CIA Director John Brennan appeared on MSNBC with Chris Hayes to talk about the results of the IG report. Like former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who has come under fire for his role in the FBI surveillance of the Trump team and then when he was fired, joined CNN as a “analyst,” Brennan was involved in the Trump-Russia probe and after he left his CIA position became an “analyst” of NBC and MSNBC. Now both CNN and MSNBC both are interviewing their analysts and giving them a chance to try to justify themselves.

Pro tip? They’re not doing a very good job of it.

On CNN, McCabe blamed it on putting it too much responsibility on the “lowest level of agents.” Well, that’s one way to describe himself, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

Brennan did something similar.

Hayes asked Brennan his take and Brennan pawned it all off on “mistakes” and an “overly aggressive” FBI (leaving out his role, of course).

From Daily Caller:

“Clearly, there were mistakes made based on the inspector general’s report. And I know a lot of people attribute it to either incompetence or politicization. I might attribute it to these FBI agents who were doing their level best to try to prevent Russian interference in the election. They were probably overly aggressive,” Brennan told the news outlet.

By following and spying on people who were not colluding with Russia? And continuing it after they were told so? Where is Brennan’s defense of Carter Page being an asset for the CIA? Or admonishment of the FBI for lying about it? Not seeing it anywhere here.

Surely, if they were concerned about collusion with Russia, maybe they shouldn’t have been relying upon information they likely knew was Russian disinformation paid for by the Democrats? You know, if you were truly interested in not having Russian interference in the election?

“They didn’t pay careful enough attention to some of the details. They may have ignored some aspects of the work that was uncovered. But I think the IG was very clear that politicization did not seem to creep into any aspect of their work …. ”

Indeed that’s not true, Horowitz made it clear during his testimony on Wednesday that he found lots of bias.

Brennan feigned concern about the process being politicized, but then said Republicans had engaged in this “partisan activity” when the only evidence is against Democrats or officials doing things that benefitted Democrats.

“One of the things I’m most concerned about is the oversight responsibilities of the Congress that I feel really have been affected by partisanship on both sides. Looking back over the last two decades. The Republicans are not the only ones that engaged in this partisan activity. I experienced some of it on the Democratic side when I was director of CIA and at the White House. And those oversight responsibilities are very, very important and fundamental to the good operation of the government,” Brennan told MSNBC.

Hopefully U.S. Attorney John Durham has a few relevant questions for James Comey, Andrew McCabe and John Brennan. Mark Brennan’s comment now and we’ll come back to it early next year when Durham has his say.