Brennan signals his intent to claim vindictive prosecution if he is indicted.
Facing a steady drumbeat of indications that the Justice Department could soon seek to indict him, former CIA director John Brennan took the unusual step Wednesday of asking a federal court to intervene before any charges have been filed.
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In a lawsuit filed in Washington, Brennan’s attorneys asked a judge to order top officials at the Justice Department to preserve all records related to the investigation of the Obama-era intelligence director. They said they intend to use those files as part of a defense argument that any prosecution of Brennan stems from a vindictive drive by President Donald Trump’s administration to seek revenge against a longtime critic.
“This administration has adopted a policy of using criminal process and prosecution to punish the President’s perceived adversaries,” Kenneth L. Wainstein, an attorney for Brennan, wrote. “It is against this backdrop that the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John O. Brennan, is being vindictively singled out for investigation and prosecution.”
A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the filing. But top department officials, including acting attorney general Todd Blanche, have made no secret in recent months that they have Brennan in their sights.
For months a team of lawyers under the U.S. attorney in Miami have summoned former intelligence officials for interviews and issued a flurry of subpoenas as part of a broad conspiracy investigation, the largest and most legally complicated effort the Justice Department has launched in its bid to pursue Trump’s perceived political adversaries.
The theory, as Justice Department officials have described it, is that Brennan and other government officials violated Trump’s civil rights via a years-long conspiracy stretching back to President Barack Obama’s time in office. Those efforts, investigators have said, include the probes into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign as well as the efforts to prosecute Trump after his first term in office.
Prosecutors have also been examining testimony Brennan gave to Congress in 2023 about intelligence reports tied to the Russia probe. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, referred Brennan to the Justice Department for potential prosecution on charges that he lied during his testimony.
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Brennan has denied any wrongdoing and, through his attorneys, repeatedly characterized the efforts to prosecute him as a baseless attempt by the Trump administration to harass and intimidate a prominent rival.
In their lawsuit Wednesday, Brennan’s lawyers acknowledged the unusual nature of their request, which comes before there is even a case filed against Brennan in court. But they maintained their request was justified, citing examples of other investigations — including those targeting former Federal Reserve chair Jerome H. Powell and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) — in which courts have recently ruled that the Justice Department has abandoned traditional legal procedures.
Brennan’s lawsuit names as defendants Trump, Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and the prosecutors in Florida who have been overseeing the probe of Brennan and other government officials.
“Government conduct in this case makes it abundantly clear that the driving force behind the investigations targeting Director Brennan is the President’s obsession with punishing him for his lawful conduct as CIA Director and for his constitutionally protected criticism of the President and the President’s policies,” Brennan’s attorneys wrote in the filing.
“That … is why Director Brennan will have an extremely strong basis to challenge those charges as the product of vindictive and selective prosecution,” they said.
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This is a developing story and will be updated.
