by WorldTribune Staff, December 23, 2025 Real World News
The legal team of ex-CIA Director John Brennan has confirmed their client is a “target” of a criminal grand jury investigation in Florida.
In a letter sent on Monday to U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga, a George W. Bush appointee to the bench who supervises the Miami federal district court, defense lawyers Ken Wainstein and Natasha Harnwell Davis asked to have the proceedings halted on the grounds that the Trump Justice Department is “judge shopping.”
Wainstein and Davis say in the letter they have been informed by U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quinones in Miami that the grand jury is investigating Brennan’s role in the long discredited Trump-Russia collusion investigation, including a CIA assessment that Russian leader Vladimir Putin tried to help then-GOP candidate Donald Trump win the 2016 election.
“Whistleblower evidence released by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe has called into question that assessment, revealing career intelligence experts disagreed with the conclusions made in the rushed report released to the public at the end of the Obama Administration,” Just the News reported on Monday.
The evidence also showed that Brennan personally pressed to have a discredited document known as the Steele dossier included in the assessment contrary to his testimony to Congress, prompting both Ratcliffe and Gabbard to refer Brennan for possible prosecution.
“We have been formally advised by prosecutors of the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida that Director Brennan is a target of grand jury investigation NS 1840-020 in the Miami Division (24-06), which is examining the circumstances surrounding the production of the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment about Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election in the United States,” Brennan’s lawyers wrote Altonaga.
The lawyers alleged that the grand jury probe is the result of pressure by President rump on Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue the president’s past critics and persecutors and that the goal is to rig the judicial system so that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed an indictment against Trump brought by ex-Special Counsel Jack Smith, lands the Brennan case.
“As explained below, it has become clear that irregular activity is taking place in connection with that grand jury investigation, which is affecting our client’s rights to fair and impartial treatment by the criminal justice system,” the lawyers alleged. “One example is the violation of grand jury secrecy rules, by which information about the investigation is being leaked to the media (see below at pages 15-16).
“Another example of irregular activity – which is even more troubling and potentially harmful to our client’s rights – relates to the government’s apparent effort to manipulate grand jury and case assignment procedures to ensure that this investigation and any resulting prosecution will be overseen by a particular District Judge of its preference,” the letter added, citing Cannon by name.
The lawyers added: “Given the corrosive effect of judge shopping on the perceived fairness and impartiality of the criminal justice system – particularly when conducted by a federal prosecutor – we wish to alert the Court to the evidence underlying our concern.”
Brennan likely to be indicted by Miami grand jury, attorneys say added by Editor Two on
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