I’ve expressed my opinion before that the political appointees within the intelligence community as well as some senior career staff are waging an all out war on Donald Trump and his incoming administration. This started with the leak of a supposedly classified briefing in which the intelligence community, particularly Brennan, alleged the Russians had intervened in our election not, as they had said back in the summer, to sow discord but to try to get Trump elected. To date no proof of that has been offered. Last week at least two highly classified items became front page stories. The only way the media found out about them was someone with a very high security clearance leaking them.

In the center of all of these has been CIA Director John Brennan. He’s the guy that assessed the Russians wanted Trump. It was CIA that wimpered about Trump not taking the Presidential Daily Brief but delegating it, when, in fact, that is the norm of all presidents.

Today, Brennan was on FoxNews Sunday and gave an impressario performance at covering Donald Trump with innuendo but maintaining plausible deniability.

WALLACE: I want to end this part of the interview with one more question, which is the same question of the device president-elect fence. Does the intelligence community have any information — I’m not talking about rumors, any information — about contacts between the Trump camp and associates of the Kremlin about discussions during the campaign about hacking the Democrats?

BRENNAN: The intelligence community collects foreign intelligence on foreign parties, entities or people. If in the course of our intelligence collection, we pick up information related to U.S. persons or officials, which we refer to as incidental collection, we share that information with the appropriate authorities. In most instances, that’s the FBI.

And so, if we did come into contact with that type of information, it would have been shared with the FBI, and we would make sure that our intelligence committees then were aware of it as well.

WALLACE: So, is there such information?

BRENNAN: I’d just say, if we came into — if had that type of information, we would share it with the FBI.

WALLACE: I mean, I just would say, that’s not a denial, sir.

BRENNAN: Well, I wouldn’t confirm or deny something like that on your program, as much as I respect you, Chris.

See what he does there. Have you ever been in a bar and tried to convince that hot, never very bright chick, that you were something exciting, like maybe a CIA assassin. But, being an ethical guy you won’t lie to her, so you start dropping hints, and then she asks “are you a CIA assassin,” and you say, “oh I would NEVER say that I was in a foreign country killing people with poison. I would NEVER claim that.”

That is exactly what Brennan did.

The left, as represented by [groan] Tommy Christopher sees the same thing:

Brennan’s response is an extraordinary departure from the standard non-denial, and included a very detailed description of how such hypothetical evidence would be collected, which Wallace did not ask him about.

Brennan volunteered that hypothetical twice, each time pointing the finger at the FBI as an answer to Wallace’s questions about the existence of information on Trump’s collusion with Russia. If such evidence existed before the election, this insulates Brennan from the charge that he did not act properly on such information. It is also a very different response than if Brennan had simply said at the start that he would neither confirm nor deny the existence of such information.

The fact that Brennan volunteered this information twice, unprompted, is significant — if Wallace had asked him about how such intel would be treated, that would be different, but it appears Brennan was pointing viewers in a specific direction, and did so without any obvious lead from Wallace.

Note that they are doing exactly what Brennan seems to want. Christopher (ugh) immediately sees this as evidence against Trump. They prove the innuendo effective.

Brennan has a clear opportunity to say he can neither confirm nor deny the story. But he doesn’t. He goes on and on about how such a contact would be handled if it happened. And “you can guaran-damn-tee that if we did have this information we gave it to the FBI.” (Wait– The FBI Is Investigating Allegations That Russia Has Compromising Information on Trump.) If you can’t watch the whole video, just watch the last ten seconds to see his smirk as he pushes his non-denial denial. His closing is so soft and weaselly that he might as well have said “hell, yeah.”