Ex-CIA Director John Brennan seeks court order requiring records from
investigations be preserved
[July 02, 2026]
By ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former CIA Director John Brennan sued the Trump
administration Wednesday, demanding a court order that would require
officials to preserve records from investigations that he says are
targeting him for “what amounts to phantom criminal conduct.”
The lawsuit says the records would shed light on the motivations of
government officials who are investigating Brennan and would form the
basis of defense efforts to dismiss any eventual indictment on grounds
that the case constitutes a vindictive prosecution.
Such an argument, his lawyers said, would be supported by the more than
100 verbal or written statements that President Donald Trump has made
since 2017 lambasting Brennan and by the Republican president's
directives to his Justice Department to initiate investigations of
Brennan “without regard to factual or legal justification.”
“To fully consider those motions, the reviewing judge would need to
scrutinize the motivations of the Justice Department officials who
directed, oversaw, or undertook those actions to determine whether they
violated Director Brennan’s rights, and specifically whether they were
motivated by a desire to vindictively prosecute him as an act of
retribution,” Brennan's lawyers wrote in the lawsuit filed in federal
court in Washington.
Without an order, the lawsuit contends, the records are at risk of being
lost or intentionally deleted.
The lawsuit amounts to a preemptive strike of sorts on months-long
investigations into Brennan and other perceived adversaries of the
president, and represents another effort by Brennan's legal team to
sound the alarm on inquiries they believe are part of a pattern of
politically motivated probes driven by the White House. It asserts that
Brennan is being targeted in a vindictive and selective manner arising
from Trump'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.
“That is the reason he is being singled out for investigation of
concocted theories of criminal activity, and that will be the dominant
reason for any criminal charges resulting from that investigation. That
is also why Director Brennan will have an extremely strong basis to
challenge those charges as the product of vindictive and selective
prosecution,” the lawsuit says.
Investigators based in Florida are examining whether Brennan made a
false statement to Congress in 2023 related to an assessment by
intelligence agencies documenting Russian interference in the 2016
presidential election, when Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton. The
other investigation aims to determine whether former law enforcement and
intelligence officials conspired over the last decade to undermine
Trump, including during the course of the Russian interference
investigation.
Brennan has denied any wrongdoing.
The complaint seeks a court order requiring the preservation of all
government records relevant to the investigations, including emails,
calendar entries and communications — whether public or private — from
Trump or other White House officials about the inquiries and efforts to
advance them.
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In this June 16, 2016 file photo, former CIA Director John Brennan
testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott
Applewhite, File)
“Given these strong indicia of vindictiveness, Director Brennan expects
that he will forcefully challenge any eventual indictment as the product
of an unconstitutionally vindictive and selective prosecution,” the
lawsuit says, adding that the judge presiding over any criminal case
would look to those records for a glimpse of the government's motives.
The lawsuit says there's a “very real risk” that the requested
communications will not be available by the time any indictment is
brought, either because of technology changes that make deletion of
records more routine or automatic or because of a Trump administration
habit of “failing to observe their legal obligation to maintain such
records.”
“Given the government’s questionable recent history with respect to its
record preservation and other legal obligations, however, Director
Brennan has a well-founded concern that those records and communications
will not be preserved until such time as the court can review them for
evidence of unconstitutional vindictiveness,” Brennan's lawyers wrote.
The lawsuit names as defendants Trump and other top officials from his
administration, including acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI
Director Kash Patel, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and CIA
Director John Ratcliffe.
Other defendants include Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for
the Southern District of Florida, and Joe diGenova, a Reagan
administration prosecutor who returned to the Justice Department in
April to serve as a special counselor to the attorney general and help
oversee the investigations.
Brennan's lawyer, Ken Wainstein, wrote in December to the chief judge of
the federal court in Florida asking that the Justice Department be
prevented from steering investigations related to Brennan to a “favored”
Trump administration judge, Aileen Cannon, who in 2024 dismissed the
classified documents prosecution against Trump.
Asked about Brennan's lawsuit, Justice Department spokeswoman Emily
Covington said in a statement, “While we cannot comment on the
existence, or lack thereof, of an investigation, it is certainly rich
that John Brennan is accusing anyone of a ‘retribution campaign.’”
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Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed
to this report.
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