NewzA lawyer for former CIA Director John Brennan says Brennan has been subpoenaed to testify next month before a Florida grand jury. WASHINGTON (AP) — Former CIA Director John Brennan has been subpoenaed to testify before a Florida grand jury in a Justice Department investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired against President Donald Trump, and is the target of a separate inquiry into whether he made false statements before Congress, one of his lawyers said Monday. Ken Wainstein, an attorney for Brennan, disclosed the existence of the subpoena as he argued for a court order requiring the Justice Department to preserve all records from the investigations.
He said those documents would be a “fertile source” of information about the government’s determination to indict Brennan, an outspoken Trump critic, and would be needed for the defense to challenge any potential prosecution of the ex-CIA chief as unconstitutionally vindictive and selective. “The realty is there’s no precedent for this situation,” Wainstein said in acknowledging the extraordinarily unusual nature of his preservation request. “I’ve spent decades in and around the Justice Department.
I’ve never even conceived of a situation like this” in which the Justice Department is “blatantly trying to frame somebody for a crime that is complete fiction.” In pressing his case to U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, he cited what he said was “judge-shopping” by the Justice Department, directives by Trump to pursue perceived adversaries like Brennan and the replacement or resignations of prosecutors said to have raised internal doubts or concerns. “There’s a lot of really underhanded stuff going on” in these investigations, Wainstein said.
The subpoena is related to a “far-reaching’ investigation The subpoena was presented last Thursday and requires Brennan to appear Oct. 15 before a grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida. That’s the home court of a Trump-appointed judge named Aileen Cannon, who in 2024 dismissed a Justice Department prosecution charging Trump with illegally retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Wainstein said he was told that the subpoena relates to a “far-reaching” criminal probe examining a loosely defined theory that the government officials who have investigated Trump over the last decade, including over Russia election interference in 2016 and his more recent retention of top-secret records at Mar-a-Lago, conspired to deprive Trump of his civil rights.
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