Ex-CIA Director John Brennan issued subpoena in Trump "grand conspiracy"
investigation, lawyer says
[September 15, 2026]
By ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former CIA Director John Brennan has been subpoenaed
to testify before a Florida grand jury in a Justice Department
investigation into whether former law enforcement and intelligence
officials conspired against President Donald Trump, and is the target of
a separate inquiry into whether he made false statements before
Congress, one of his lawyers said Monday.
Ken Wainstein, an attorney for Brennan, disclosed the existence of the
subpoena as he argued for a court order requiring the Justice Department
to preserve all records from the investigations. He said those documents
would be a “fertile source” of information about the government's
determination to indict Brennan, an outspoken Trump critic, and would be
needed for the defense to challenge any potential prosecution of the
ex-CIA chief as unconstitutionally vindictive and selective.
“The reality is there's no precedent for this situation,” Wainstein said
in acknowledging the extraordinarily unusual nature of his preservation
request. “I've spent decades in and around the Justice Department. I've
never even conceived of a situation like this” in which the Justice
Department is “blatantly trying to frame somebody for a crime that is
complete fiction.”
In pressing his case to U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, he cited what he
said was “judge-shopping” by the Justice Department, directives by Trump
to pursue perceived adversaries like Brennan and the replacement or
resignations of prosecutors said to have raised internal doubts or
concerns.
“There's a lot of really underhanded stuff going on" in these
investigations, Wainstein said.
The subpoena is related to a "far-reaching' investigation
The subpoena was presented last Thursday and requires Brennan to appear
Oct. 15 before a grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida. That's the home
court of a Trump-appointed judge named Aileen Cannon, who in 2024
dismissed a Justice Department prosecution charging Trump with illegally
retaining classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Wainstein said he was told that the subpoena relates to a “far-reaching”
criminal probe examining a loosely defined theory that the government
officials who have investigated Trump over the last decade, including
over Russia election interference in 2016 and his more recent retention
of top-secret records at Mar-a-Lago, conspired to deprive Trump of his
civil rights. The subpoena to Brennan is among a flurry that have been
recently issued.
Wainstein said he was informed by a prosecutor that Brennan remains a
target in an investigation into whether he lied to Congress about the
creation of a U.S. intelligence community assessment detailing Russian
interference on Trump's behalf in the 2016 election. Brennan and his
lawyers have called that allegation false. Subpoenas demanding testimony
before a grand jury in the false statements probe were issued last
spring, then abruptly withdrawn in favor of voluntary interviews.
He said that while he could not easily explain what crime the Justice
Department could credibly accuse Brennan of committing, it was hardly a
speculative or premature concern to believe his client was at
substantial risk of being indicted given the Trump administration's
efforts to target him.
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Former CIA Director John Brennan testifies on Capitol Hill in
Washington, May 23, 2017, before the House Intelligence Committee
Russia Investigation Task Force. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais,
File)
“The message is very clear to the personnel at DOJ about what needs
to happen,” he said.
The prosecutor who'd been leading the probe has resigned
The subpoena was delivered on the same day that Joe diGenova, the
prosecutor who had been leading what is casually known as the “grand
conspiracy” investigation, abruptly resigned amid what a person
familiar with the matter has described as frustration from the
Justice Department and White House over the pace and management of
the probe.
In an interview with The New York Post, diGenova responded to
criticism of his management of the investigation by saying, “If you
want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical
problem.”
When reached by The Associated Press, diGenova said the comments
were taken out of context, adding: “There’s plenty of evidence in
all of these cases to prove the theories of prosecution. It just
takes time to get there, and some people want to get there a little
faster than others — and you can’t do that.”
The Justice Department has not publicly announced a replacement for
diGenova. The member of the investigative team with whom Wainstein
spoke was Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who unsuccessfully pushed the Justice
Department in 2020 to back Trump's false claims that the 2020
election had been stolen from him.
Brennan's defense team said among the communications they were
seeking, and would use in mounting a vindictive prosecution
argument, are any messages showing Trump or White House officials
directing the Justice Department to pursue their client. They said
the preservation order they sought was especially necessary because
of what they described as the Trump administration's pattern of
failing to preserve records.
The Justice Department called the request premature and speculative
and said Brennan had no right to demand the preservation since he
was not a criminal defendant and it was not clear that he would ever
be charged.
Cobb, a federal judge in Washington, did not immediately rule on
Brennan's request.
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