John Brennan accuses Justice Department of possible judge shopping and grand jury leaks
Former CIA director John Brennan listens during a panel at The Center on National Security at Fordham Law School in Manhattan
By Katelyn Polantz, Tierney Sneed, CNN
(CNN) — Former CIA director John Brennan is accusing the Justice Department of “irregular activity,” including possible judge shopping and improper leaks to the media, in a letter from his defense attorney that also disclosed Brennan is the target of a grand jury investigation launched out of Florida.
The letter sent to the chief judge of Florida’s Southern District court on December 22 confirms a serious investigative avenue the Trump administration is pursuing about a years-ago intelligence assessment about Russian meddling in the US election that put President Donald Trump on the defensive. It also raises questions about the Justice Department’s politics and decision-making.
Brennan’s defense attorney Ken Wainstein is calling on Chief Judge Cecilia Altonaga to scrutinize alleged Justice Department efforts to funnel the proceedings to the courthouse of Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee and the sole judge in the US courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, which sits at the northern end of the Southern District.
The criminal investigation into Brennan, who has not been charged with any crimes, is “examining the circumstances surrounding the production” of a 2017 intelligence report related to the 2016 presidential election and Russia’s attempts to interfere in the public’s perception of Trump, according to the letter to Altonaga, who oversees the grand jury proceedings.
Wainstein says the Justice Department appears to be using the grand jury and case assignment procedures of the court to land a possible indictment before Cannon, who has sided with Trump in court previously.
Brennan’s lawyer also discloses that his team believed the investigation has bounced around other Justice Department prosecutors’ offices, without charges emerging, including in eastern Pennsylvania and eastern Virginia, before it landed before the grand jury in South Florida. Brennan has been subpoenaed for materials by the Florida-based grand jury, as have more than two dozen others, CNN previously reported. The letter says prosecutors have formally informed Brennan he is a “target” in the probe, a term used by prosecutors to indicate that they are preparing to bring charges against an individual.
The Justice Department, Wainstein says, is looking to move the grand jury activity to the single-judge courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida — the smallest of a handful of busy federal courthouses in the Southern District of Florida. Cannon is best known for dismissing the criminal classified documents mishandling indictment Trump faced in 2023 and is the only federal judge sitting in Fort Pierce.
Wainstein asks Altonaga to use her authority “to ensure the United States Attorney does not steer this matter to the Fort Pierce Division and to the courtroom of Judge Aileen Cannon” — essentially asking Altonaga to potentially force a recusal of Cannon from any indictment of Brennan, so the case can be assigned randomly to another judge in the district.
The letter makes clear that Brennan is taking issue with the conduct of prosecutors in the investigation — an approach that is likely to continue in court proceedings if he is charged with a crime. Wainstein also links the Brennan investigation to several other Justice Department moves in recent months in which Trump’s political foes have been targeted, only to see criminal cases sputter in court. They include the dismissed cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James.
“Were we in a normal time, we might hesitate to question the propriety of the government’s actions in the grand jury process. However, we are no longer in a normal time,” Wainstein wrote on Tuesday.
Wainstein also points out how Trump has publicly criticized Brennan for perpetuating what the president has termed a hoax of Russian interference in the election. Current Trump-appointed intelligence community leadership have recently said they believed Brennan should be criminally investigated for his involvement in the intelligence community assessment about the election.
Grand jury activities are strictly protected as secret under law.
Questions persist as to how a criminal case could be pursued by the Justice Department around actions taken in 2017, several years after the apparent window for any possible charges would have passed, in 2022. It’s also not clear why the Justice Department believes it may be able to investigate the case out of Florida. Brennan wasn’t based there when leading the CIA, and the intelligence report was produced in the area around the nation’s capital.
The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In response to CNN’s request for comment from Altonaga and Cannon, a court official for the Southern District of Florida said, “The Court has no response.”
At least one prominent Trump ally has repeatedly touted his belief in recent weeks that the Southern District of Florida courthouse was hosting a grand jury investigation linking back to the 2016 federal investigative and intelligence inquiries into Russian interference in that presidential election, which Trump won against Hillary Clinton.
During that election, several top Trump campaign operatives welcomed Russia-backed support of Trump, a special counsel investigation found, including the release of hacked Democratic documents to the public and an extensive Russian-funded social media campaign to sew political discord among the electorate. And the US intelligence community, including the CIA then led by Brennan, worked on an assessment regarding intelligence they had gathered on Russia’s intent to interfere in politics.
Brennan’s lawyer alleges that public comments made by the ally, conservative political strategist Mike Davis, about an investigation into the assessment show that the Justice Department is improperly leaking grand jury information. Davis told CNN that Wainstein’s allegations were “False, defamatory, and desperate.”
The-CNN-Wire
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