Former CIA Director John Brennan sues DOJ over dual criminal probes

WASHINGTON (CN) — Former CIA Director John Brennan in a Wednesday lawsuit slammed two Department of Justice criminal probes into him as clearly vindictive prosecution and the result of years of animosity between Brennan and President Donald Trump.

In the lawsuit, brought in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Brennan challenges the two criminal probes brought against him linking him to a grand conspiracy against Trump and for making false statements to Congress.

With criminal charges potentially looming, Brennan is asking U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb to intervene and ensure the Justice Department, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida does not destroy relevant internal documents.

“President Trump has been condemning and calling for Director Brennan’s prosecution for years,” Brennan wrote in the 46-page lawsuit. “Administration officials from the Acting Attorney General to the FBI Director and the Counselor overseeing the Brennan investigations have been publicly declaring Director Brennan a criminal, not only before securing a conviction in court but even before a full investigation and an indictment. And, certain officials in the Department of Justice are engaging in demonstrably irregular prosecutorial activity in order to gin up a case that will satisfy the president’s direction.”

Brennan denounced the two federal investigations as tracking “phantom criminal conduct.”

The first probe centers on an apparent grand conspiracy involving Brennan and officials from the Obama and Biden administrations to gin up the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election and other Trump-related investigations as a means to “deny President Trump his civil rights.”

The second probe regards an Oct. 21, 2025, criminal referral by Ohio Representative Jim Jordan as chair of the House Judiciary Committee that Brennan made false statements about the Jan. 6, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment — which concluded Russia had interfered in 2016 to boost Trump’s candidacy — in a 2023 interview before the committee.

According to Brennan, the Justice Department began approaching federal grand juries in the Southern District of Florida in November 2025 and January 2026 regarding the two investigations and obtained two sets of grand jury subpoenas.

On April 18, 2026, another federal grand jury in Washington issued subpoenas throughout the intelligence community for individuals who worked on the Intelligence Community Assessment to testify, but the subpoenas were withdrawn to instead request voluntary interviews.

Brennan asserts the Justice Department has violated prosecutorial norms and have likely violated his civil rights, which would serve as the basis to challenge any resulting charges and support a motion to dismiss any indictment as the product of selective and vindictive prosecution.

Due to the chance the Trump administration could delete many of the relevant internal documents regarding the investigations, Brennan seeks to get ahead and obtain a preliminary injunction to preserve any and all communications and materials that are potentially relevant.

Brennan pointed to the Trump administration’s targeting of the president’s perceived political enemies such as former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

He specifically quoted Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s observation when quashing a set of subpoenas against Powell and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors that the perception of being “the president’s adversary has become risky in recent years.”

“Chief Judge Boasberg captured the reality that this administration has adopted a policy of using criminal process and prosecution to punish the president’s perceived adversaries,” Brennan wrote.

Former President Barack Obama tapped Brennan to lead the foreign intelligence agency between 2013 and 2017, until Trump replaced him with former CIA Director Mike Pompeo soon after the start of his first term.

Brennan established the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of Trump’s 2016 campaign for problematic ties with the Russian government, which ultimately resulted in Trump firing FBI Director James Comey.

Comey successfully had an initial indictment charging him with false statements during a Senate committee hearing dismissed in the Eastern District of Virginia in November, after arguing then-interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District Lindsay Halligan was illegally appointed.

The Justice Department has since brought another criminal case against Comey in the Eastern District of North Carolina for posing an image online of seashells arranged in the number “86” and “47.” The number 86 is often used to denote removal or elimination, and President Donald Trump is the 47th U.S. president.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

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