Just remember that this man ran intelligence efforts for the US. For two years, former CIA director John Brennan appeared on media outlets, most prominently MSNBC, and insinuating that he had inside knowledge about Donald Trump’s collusion with the Russians. Now that Robert Mueller has exonerated Trump on collusion, Brennan now says that, er … he must have gotten out a little over his skis:

Brennan on MSNBC: Well, I don't know if I received bad information but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was. I am relieved that it's been determined there was not a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government over our election. pic.twitter.com/V2D7Cg9KsV

— Woj Pawelczyk (@Woj_Pawelczyk) March 25, 2019

Oopsie! His bad. The egg on Brennan’s face looks similar to that on any number of pundit faces after this weekend. Pundits get paid to opine, however, and that involves batting averages, for better or worse. (In this case, almost entirely worse.) Brennan’s case is much different, however. He didn’t just represent himself as an analyst — Brennan represented himself as an insider with inside knowledge of the case. And media outlets, again mainly MSNBC, slurped that misinformation-as-truth down enthusiastically.

ABC’s Terry Moran highlights a recent example of Brennan on MSNBC misinforming viewers about his knowledge of Russia and collusion, predicting two weeks ago that Mueller was about to drop indictments on Trump and everyone else. The only wish Brennan had was that Mueller avoid March 15th for the big reveal because of its historical relevance as “the ides of March” and the assassination of Julius Caesar.

As Moran points out now, Brennan needs to answer for his part in a character assassination instead. And so does MSNBC:

John Brennan has a lot to answer for—going before the American public for months, cloaked with CIA authority and openly suggesting he’s got secret info, and repeatedly turning in performances like this. pic.twitter.com/EziCxy9FVQ

— Terry Moran 🇺🇸 (@TerryMoran) March 25, 2019

He used the prestige of his position as DCI to advance his argument that the president was a criminal and a traitor. What he did makes it harder for future DCIs to maintain the confidence of the country; he poisoned that high office with partisan hackery.

— Terry Moran 🇺🇸 (@TerryMoran) March 25, 2019

Brennan’s part of a larger accounting over Russiagate as well. Kim Strassel wonders whether we will get an answer as to how Brennan, Clapper, and the Obama administration finagled FISA to spy on its political opponents. Strassel focuses on the FBI but this applies to Brennan too, who was in charge of US intelligence at the time — and has certainly represented himself as in the loop on the operation:

Attorney General William Barr has reported to Congress that special counsel Robert Mueller has cleared President Trump and his campaign team of claims of conspiring with Russia during the 2016 election. This is more than an exoneration. It’s a searing indictment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as a reminder of the need to know the story behind the bureau’s corrosive investigation.

Mr. Mueller’s report likely doesn’t put it that way, but it’s the logical conclusion of his no-collusion finding. The FBI unleashed its powers on a candidate for the office of the U.S. presidency, an astonishing first. It did so on the incredible grounds that the campaign had conspired to aid a foreign government. And it used the most aggressive tools in its arsenal—surveillance of U.S. citizens, secret subpoenas of phone records and documents, even human informants.

The wreckage is everywhere. The nation has been engulfed in conspiracy theories for years. A presidency was hemmed in by the threat of a special counsel. Citizens have gone to jail not for conspiracy, but for after-the-fact interactions with Mr. Mueller’s team. Dozens more have spent enormous amounts of money and time defending their reputations.

We spent two years waiting for the answer on questions that turned out to be baseless. Let’s hope we don’t wait two years to get accountability for those who, like Brennan, politicized counterintelligence and provided misleading and outright false testimony to further their partisan agendas.