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.