Former CIA director John Brennan is accusing the Justice Department of “irregular activity,” together with possible judge shopping and improper leaks to the media, in a letter from his protection legal professional that additionally disclosed Brennan is the goal of a grand jury investigation launched out of Florida.
The letter despatched to the chief judge of Florida’s Southern District courtroom on December 22 confirms a critical investigative avenue the Trump administration is pursuing a few years-ago intelligence evaluation about Russian meddling within the US election that put President Donald Trump on the defensive. It additionally raises questions concerning the Justice Department’s politics and decision-making.
Brennan’s protection legal professional Ken Wainstein is looking 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 only judge within the US courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, which sits on the northern finish 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 associated to the 2016 presidential election and Russia’s makes an attempt to intrude within the public’s notion of Trump, based on the letter to Altonaga, who oversees the grand jury proceedings.
Wainstein says the Justice Department seems to be utilizing the grand jury and case project procedures of the courtroom to land a possible indictment earlier than Cannon, who has sided with Trump in courtroom beforehand.
Brennan’s lawyer additionally discloses that his crew believed the investigation has bounced round different Justice Department prosecutors’ workplaces, with out prices rising, together with in jap Pennsylvania and jap Virginia, earlier than it landed earlier than the grand jury in South Florida. Brennan has been subpoenaed for supplies by the Florida-based grand jury, as have greater than two dozen others, NCS beforehand reported. The letter says prosecutors have formally knowledgeable Brennan he’s a “target” within the probe, a time period utilized by prosecutors to point that they’re making ready to carry prices in opposition to a person.
The Justice Department, Wainstein says, is trying to transfer the grand jury exercise to the single-judge courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida — the smallest of a handful of busy federal courthouses within the Southern District of Florida. Cannon is greatest identified for dismissing the prison labeled paperwork mishandling indictment Trump confronted in 2023 and is the one federal judge sitting in Fort Pierce.
Wainstein asks Altonaga to make use of 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” — primarily asking Altonaga to probably drive a recusal of Cannon from any indictment of Brennan, so the case could be assigned randomly to a different judge within the district.
The letter makes clear that Brennan is taking problem with the conduct of prosecutors within the investigation — an strategy that’s prone to proceed in courtroom proceedings if he’s charged with a criminal offense. Wainstein additionally hyperlinks the Brennan investigation to a number of different Justice Department strikes in current months wherein Trump’s political foes have been focused, solely to see prison circumstances sputter in courtroom. They embody the dismissed circumstances in opposition to former FBI Director James Comey and New York legal professional normal 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 additionally factors out how Trump has publicly criticized Brennan for perpetuating what the president has termed a hoax of Russian interference within the election. Current Trump-appointed intelligence neighborhood management have lately mentioned they believed Brennan needs to be criminally investigated for his involvement within the intelligence neighborhood evaluation concerning the election.
Grand jury actions are strictly protected as secret beneath regulation.
Questions persist as to how a prison case could possibly be pursued by the Justice Department round actions taken in 2017, a number of years after the obvious window for any possible prices would have handed, in 2022. It’s additionally not clear why the Justice Department believes it might be able to examine the case out of Florida. Brennan wasn’t primarily based there when main the CIA, and the intelligence report was produced within the space across the nation’s capital.
The Justice Department didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
In response to NCS’s request for remark from Altonaga and Cannon, a courtroom official for the Southern District of Florida mentioned, “The Court has no response.”
At least one outstanding Trump ally has repeatedly touted his perception in current weeks that the Southern District of Florida courthouse was internet hosting a grand jury investigation linking again to the 2016 federal investigative and intelligence inquiries into Russian interference in that presidential election, which Trump gained in opposition to Hillary Clinton.
During that election, a number of high Trump marketing campaign operatives welcomed Russia-backed assist of Trump, a particular counsel investigation discovered, together with the discharge of hacked Democratic paperwork to the general public and an intensive Russian-funded social media marketing campaign to stitch political discord among the many citizens. And the US intelligence neighborhood, together with the CIA then led by Brennan, labored on an evaluation concerning intelligence that they had gathered on Russia’s intent to intrude in politics.
Brennan’s lawyer alleges that public feedback made by the ally, conservative political strategist Mike Davis, about an investigation into the evaluation present that the Justice Department is wrongly leaking grand jury data. Davis instructed NCS that Wainstein’s allegations have been “False, defamatory, and desperate.”