Former CIA Director John Brennan sued the Justice Department and top Trump administration officials Tuesday, seeking a court order to force preservation of records in the federal investigations targeting him.
Brennan's legal team wrote in a 46-page complaint filed Tuesday in federal court in Washington, "This Administration has adopted a policy of using criminal process and prosecution to punish the President's perceived adversaries," and said he is being "vindictively singled out for investigation and prosecution."
The lawsuit says Brennan has been the focus of two Justice Department criminal probes since the beginning of Mr. Trump's second administration: one centered on allegations that Brennan lied to Congress in 2023 about the U.S. intelligence community's assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and a second "grand conspiracy" probe examining whether Obama- and Biden-era officials were part of a long-running conspiracy to keep Mr. Trump out of political office.
Brennan asked a federal judge to order Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Justice Department, as well as the White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency, to "preserve materials and communications potentially relevant to Director Brennan's legal and constitutional challenges to any future criminal charges."
The complaint singles out the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida, Jason Reding Quiñones, and Joseph DiGenova, a counselor to the acting attorney general who was tapped to lead one ongoing DOJ criminal investigation into Brennan after the career prosecutor overseeing the probe was removed from the case, and the matter has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden nominee.
Law enforcement veterans are expressing deep concerns that the Justice Department's criminal investigation into Brennan is being systematically stacked with politically motivated personnel, the filing says, and it identifies hires including Kurt Olsen and John Yoo; Olsen made the Fulton County election case referral to the FBI that prompted agents to execute a search warrant earlier this year that seized dozens of boxes of ballots and other materials, and DiGenova said Yoo will be "on hand to advise investigators on constitutional legal questions and assist with motions and appellate issues."
A Justice Department spokesperson said, "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.'" Brennan's lawyers argue any "eventual indictment" against him will be challenged as "unconstitutionally vindictive and selective," and they warned the loss of relevant records would "impair, perhaps fatally, the ability of the court reviewing Director Brennan's challenges to do so on the full record of contemporaneous communications and materials that is needed to divine the true intentions behind the prosecutors' decisions and actions."
Brennan's attorneys argued in the filing that the administration's recent changes to records retention depart from longstanding record-keeping practices and said officials are investigating Brennan for "phantom criminal conduct." "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," the filing said.
A source close to Brennan said he will "vigorously challenge" any indictment the administration secures and added, "Since President Trump first entered politics, he has repeatedly singled out Director Brennan for criticism, and we believe these investigations are the latest effort to retaliate against him for his lawful conduct as CIA Director and his constitutionally protected speech. If an indictment is ever returned, Director Brennan will vigorously challenge it as the product of vindictive and selective prosecution. Today's filing seeks only to ensure that the Government preserves the evidence that will be necessary for the courts to evaluate Director Brennan's constitutional claims."
Brennan's filing cites other recent court actions in which judges quashed subpoenas or led to dismissals: last week a federal judge in Minnesota quashed six grand jury subpoenas served against state and local government offices, including Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, ruling the subpoenas were retaliatory and unlawful; in March a federal judge in Washington, D.C. quashed a pair of grand jury subpoenas sent to the Federal Reserve Board as part of a since-closed criminal probe, finding they were a pretext to pressure Chairman Jerome Powell; and last year former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James challenged indictments on grounds of "vindictive and selective" prosecutions, though those cases were dismissed after a judge found the interim U.S. attorney who had secured the indictments had been unlawfully appointed to the role.