Subject: Brennan Sues Several
Former CIA Director John Brennan sued the Trump administration on Wednesday. The Defendants include Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, the Director of the CIA, the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. Attorney in Southern Florida, and Trump himself, as well as others. Brennan is going on the offensive, instead of waiting to get indicted, asking a Judge to order the government to preserve records he will need to establish that the prosecution is a vindictive one if he does get indicted.

John Brennan Profile Photo
“Being perceived as the President’s adversary has become risky in recent years,” Brennan’s complaint starts out. That line is from an order written by Judge Boasberg in the District of Columbia, who quashed subpoenas issued in a DOJ inquiry into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. “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,” the complaint continues.

That’s the situation Brennan finds himself in. He’s one of the subjects of a grand jury investigation that is underway in the Southern District of Florida. The investigation appears to be an effort to prosecute many of the key people involved in the investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election. Trump has never been able to let go of it, despite the indications that Russia strongly preferred a Trump presidency to a Hillary Clinton presidency.

It’s important to say at the outset that Russian interference in the election isn’t the same thing as collusion with Trump or with the Trump campaign. Those are two separate matters. But it appears that with Trump’s desire to rewrite his history comes a belief that the two are the same or at least deeply related. Brennan believes he is likely to be indicted and is applying to the Court in the District of Columbia for assistance in assuring the government doesn’t destroy any materials or communications he will need to establish that any prosecution of him is vindictive and should be dismissed on that basis.


It’s an extraordinary lawsuit, to say the least, but then the circumstances that necessitated it are, too.


Brennan explains his career before Trump in one simple statement: “Director Brennan is a former longtime public servant who provided more than 33 years of nonpartisan government service working for six administrations — three Republican and three Democratic — in a wide variety of national security and intelligence positions. His public service career culminated in his term as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (‘CIA’) from March 8, 2013, to January 20, 2017.” Despite Brennan’s history, Trump has repeatedly expressed animosity toward him over the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that concluded Russia interfered in the 2016 election.


It’s been suggested that Brennan is a subject in two investigations being conducted by DOJ:

“[A]n alleged ‘grand conspiracy’ involving Director Brennan and a number of Obama and Biden Administration officials. This fictitious ‘grand conspiracy’ is ill-defined but is apparently based on the theoretical premise that the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the other Trump-related investigations in the succeeding years were all the product of a conspiracy to deny President Trump his civil rights.”
An investigation centered “on an October 21, 2025 referral from Congressman Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which asserts without valid support that Director Brennan made false statements about the ICA in a 2023 interview with the House Judiciary Committee”—shades of the now-dismissed first indictment of former FBI Director Jim Comey.
At this point, it’s widely understood that Trump is using the DOJ like a political tool, investigating and prosecuting enemies while protecting friends. Brennan’s complaint spells some of that out in the context of the two investigations he believes may result in his indictment. He indicates “Justice Department officials have engaged in a variety of inappropriate activities in their attempt to build a prosecutable case,” including:

Treating Brennan, in public statements, like he’s guilty before he has been charged, let alone convicted
Disclosing grand jury information, which violates the Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure
Retaliating against career prosecutors “who have balked at” participating in the execution of Trump’s revenge agenda
“Forum shopping” for a district with “a sufficiently pliant United States Attorney”
“Judge shopping” for a friendly judge—that’s the only way that investigating conduct that occurred in the District of Columbia in the Southern District of Florida could make any sense. The complaint puts it like this: “The scale of this manipulative activity came into focus throughout the fall of 2025, and by December 2025, it became clear that the government was seeking to circumvent standard processes and engineer assignment of the investigation and eventual prosecution of Director Brennan to the docket of a particular judge.” We all know who that Judge is.

Brennan’s concern that he will be indicted and need to argue a vindictive prosecution defense is more than just conjecture. He argues that “the President has affirmatively demanded that his Justice Department serve up a prosecution,” pointing to a Truth Social post that called on “Blanche to indict Director Brennan, Hillary Clinton and President Obama.” Trump subsequently posted a mocked up picture of Brennan and others in orange prison-style jumpsuits. The complaint concludes that “Acting Attorney General Blanche has made clear that this direction to consider President Trump as the ‘chief client’ and act as ‘his lawyers’ translates into allowing the President to dictate the Justice Department’s prosecutorial decision-making.”

The heart of the lawsuit is the claim that “Absent this Court’s Intervention, There is a Serious Risk that Highly Relevant Internal Government Materials and Communications Will Not be Preserved, Which Would Prevent Director Brennan from Vindicating His Constitutional Rights.” Brennan offers extensive support for the position he takes, which is that “Officials across the Executive Branch are exhibiting that same cavalier attitude about their duty to preserve records.” Those are records he will need to argue vindictive prosecution, and it’s a smart choice to take the issue head on instead of discovering down the road that necessary evidence can’t be found any longer. He cites to numerous cases where Judges have found DOJ has been less than candid in its engagement with the courts.

Brennan asks the court to issue one of two orders. First, he asks for an injunction “to require the government to preserve any and all materials and communications that are potentially relevant to the consideration of Director Brennan’s constitutional challenges to any future criminal charges.” Alternatively, he asks the court to issue a writ of mandamus ordering the Defendants to preserve all of the records he has identified as necessary to establish a vindictive prosecution defense. It’s an unusual request for an unusual situation, and the complaint takes care to identify a number of different legal bases for taking the action, as well as offering great specificity about the items that shouldn’t be permitted to disappear.

While some might suggest that, pre-indictment, a potential defendant shouldn’t draw attention to himself, given the way this administration has conducted itself, it seems like a logical step to take. The simple fact that the grand jury is operating in the Fort Pierce Division in the Southern District of Florida—Judge Aileen Cannon’s domain—suggests that what’s happening here is completely out of bounds.

Lawsuits like this one rarely make it into the daily headlines with the context they deserve. It’s easier to reduce it to “Brennan sues Trump” and move on. But studying the complaint, as we do tonight, tells a more precise story than a headline can. That precision is the whole point. It’s the difference between knowing something happened and understanding why it matters.

Civil Discourse exists to give you that second thing. Not commentary for its own sake, but the legal literacy that comes with decades of experience to look at a complaint like Brennan’s and understand exactly what he’s asking for, why, and what it reveals about how this Justice Department is operating.

Joyce Vance
https://joycevance.substack.co...