Former CIA Director John Brennan has been served with a federal grand jury subpoena in Florida as part of a Justice Department investigation into whether former intelligence and law enforcement officials conspired against President Donald Trump. Ken Wainstein, an attorney for Brennan, revealed the subpoena on Monday during a court hearing where he urged a judge to order the Justice Department to preserve all records tied to the inquiries. Wainstein argued that these documents are crucial for defending Brennan against what he described as a selective and vindictive prosecution driven by the Trump administration. The subpoena commands Brennan to appear on October 15 before a grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, the home district of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. According to Wainstein, the subpoena stems from a wide-ranging criminal probe investigating a theory that officials who scrutinized Trump over the past decade conspired to violate his civil rights. Brennan also remains the target of a separate investigation examining whether he made false statements to Congress regarding a 2016 intelligence assessment on Russian election interference. Brennan and his legal team have consistently maintained that the allegation is entirely false. Wainstein accused the Justice Department of engaging in judge-shopping and underhanded tactics, noting that he has never encountered a situation where the agency tried to frame someone for a complete fiction. The subpoena was delivered on the same day that Joe diGenova, the prosecutor leading the grand conspiracy investigation, abruptly resigned amid reports of tension regarding the pace of the probe. DiGenova later disputed claims that he resigned due to a lack of evidence, stating that building the cases simply takes time. The Justice Department opposed the record-preservation request, calling it premature and speculative because Brennan has not yet been formally charged as a criminal defendant. U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb did not immediately issue a ruling on the defense’s request to preserve the investigative records.
Source: npr.org
