Prosecutor Joe diGenova resigned the same day the subpoena was delivered
Former CIA director John Brennan has been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, on 15 October as part of a Justice Department investigation examining whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired against Donald Trump, his lawyer said Monday.
Brennan’s attorney, Ken Wainstein, disclosed the subpoena in a court filing on Monday, saying prosecutors last Thursday presented him with a subpoena for Brennan to appear before the grand jury. The subpoena is among a flurry that have been issued in recent weeks.
Wainstein said he was told the subpoena relates to a “far-reaching” criminal inquiry examining a loosely defined theory — that government officials who have investigated Trump over the last decade, including over Russian election interference in 2016 and his more recent retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate, conspired to deprive Trump of his civil rights.
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 displeasure from the Justice Department and the White House over the pace and management of the investigation.
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, according to the Guardian’s reporting, unsuccessfully pushed the Justice Department in 2020 to back Trump’s claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from him — claims the Guardian characterized as false.
Wainstein said a prosecutor told him Brennan remains a target in a separate Washington-based investigation into whether he lied to Congress in 2023, a charge the former CIA director and his attorneys have consistently denied. Subpoenas demanding Brennan’s testimony before a grand jury in that false-statements probe were issued in the spring, then abruptly withdrawn in favor of voluntary interviews.
The subpoena’s disclosure came hours ahead of a court hearing in Washington in a lawsuit Brennan has brought. The former CIA director is seeking a court order that would require the preservation of all records from the investigations targeting him, saying such documents would be essential for him to challenge any potential indictment on vindictive-prosecution grounds.