Reacting to the Republican criticism of the way US President Barack Obama addressed the Christmas Eve jet bomb threat, the White House terrorism czar charges the GOP with trying to gain political momentum from the incident.

According to Reuters, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Monday, John Brennan charged the Republicans with using the incident as a "political football" for their own gains.

The GOP camp says that the Obama Administration is making a mistake by treating the issue of Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdul-Mutallab, who allegedly tried to blast a Detroit-bound trans-Atlantic plane on Christmas Day, as a legal criminal case.