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Ex-CIA Director Brennan Issued Subpoena09/15 06:11
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 reality 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. The
subpoena to Brennan is among a flurry that have been recently issued.
Wainstein said he was informed by a prosecutor that Brennan remains a target
in an investigation into whether he lied to Congress about the creation of a
U.S. intelligence community assessment detailing Russian interference on
Trump's behalf in the 2016 election. Brennan and his lawyers have called that
allegation false. Subpoenas demanding testimony before a grand jury in the
false statements probe were issued last spring, then abruptly withdrawn in
favor of voluntary interviews.
He said that while he could not easily explain what crime the Justice
Department could credibly accuse Brennan of committing, it was hardly a
speculative or premature concern to believe his client was at substantial risk
of being indicted given the Trump administration's efforts to target him.
"The message is very clear to the personnel at DOJ about what needs to
happen," he said.
The prosecutor who'd been leading the probe has resigned
The subpoena was delivered on the same day that Joe diGenova, the prosecutor
who had been leading what is casually known as the "grand conspiracy"
investigation, abruptly resigned amid what a person familiar with the matter
has described as frustration from the Justice Department and White House over
the pace and management of the probe.
In an interview with The New York Post, diGenova responded to criticism of
his management of the investigation by saying, "If you want indictments where
there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem."
When reached by The Associated Press, diGenova said the comments were taken
out of context, adding: "There's plenty of evidence in all of these cases to
prove the theories of prosecution. It just takes time to get there, and some
people want to get there a little faster than others -- and you can't do that."
The Justice Department has not publicly announced a replacement for
diGenova. The member of the investigative team with whom Wainstein spoke was
Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who unsuccessfully pushed the Justice Department in 2020
to back Trump's false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
Brennan's defense team said among the communications they were seeking, and
would use in mounting a vindictive prosecution argument, are any messages
showing Trump or White House officials directing the Justice Department to
pursue their client. They said the preservation order they sought was
especially necessary because of what they described as the Trump
administration's pattern of failing to preserve records.
The Justice Department called the request premature and speculative and said
Brennan had no right to demand the preservation since he was not a criminal
defendant and it was not clear that he would ever be charged.
Cobb, a federal judge in Washington, did not immediately rule on Brennan's
request.
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