WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday rejected a lawsuit from John Brennan that sought to force the Justice Department to preserve investigative records so that the former CIA director can challenge any eventual criminal case against him as a selective and malicious prosecution.
A lawyer for Brennan conceded during arguments last month that the request for a court order was unusual but said it was necessary given what he called the Justice
Department's pattern of vindictiveness in its pursuit of Brennan and its recent track record of erasing or failing to preserve communications and records in other matters.
The lawsuit contends that the records being sought would demonstrate that any prosecution of Brennan, who has been investigated for months by the Trump administration Justice Department but not charged, is the product of a political vendetta to punish one of President Donald Trump's perceived adversaries.
But U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb denied Brennan's request, saying his arguments were too speculative and that the former CIA director had not proven that the Justice Department was failing to preserve records that would be relevant to a future malicious prosecution defense.
“Brennan’s allegations — that he is being targeted by the Trump Administration not because of his conduct, but because he has opposed the current president — are deeply concerning,” Cobb wrote. “If he was eventually able to prove those allegations true, that would certainly suggest that his potential prosecution is vindictive. But even taking all of Brennan’s allegations to be truthful at this stage, the injury he alleges is simply too attenuated from the actions he seeks to enjoin to warrant a finding of standing here.”
As CIA director in the final years of President Barack Obama's Democratic administration, Brennan was a key figure in the U.S. intelligence community's conclusion that Russia had interfered in sweeping fashion in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Trump, who went on to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton for the White House. That assessment has for years infuriated Trump, who spent much of his first term shadowed by an investigation into whether his campaign had conspired with Russia.
Brennan, over the last year, has been entangled in Justice Department investigations into whether he made false statements before the House Judiciary Committee in 2023 and in a broader Florida-based inquiry into whether he and other former intelligence and law enforcement officials engaged in a conspiracy to keep Trump from power.
He has been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in the broader conspiracy investigation, though the date of his appearance has been postponed. His lawyers have said they've been told by prosecutors that he remains a target in the separate and more discrete false-statements investigation.
He has vigorously denied any wrongdoing, with his defense lawyer, Ken Wainstein, telling Cobb during arguments last month that the notion of a broad anti-Trump conspiracy was “fiction.”
“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," Wainstein said.
It is unclear whether Brennan will face charges, but his attorneys sued in July to put the government on notice that they would challenge any prosecution on vindictive prosecution grounds. They said any records they received from the government through a court order would be helpful in backing up their argument.
Cobb was nominated in 2021 by President Joe Biden, who earlier served as Obama's vice president.
