Federal Prosecutors Are Judge Shopping in Florida to Go After John Brennan

There’s something rotten happening inside the Justice Department right now, and it smells like revenge dressed up in prosecutorial robes.

Joe diGenova, a Trump loyalist who once called John Brennan a traitor on television, signed a subpoena for the former CIA director just days before he resigned from his Justice Department post last week. The timing alone should make anyone who values actual justice deeply uncomfortable. This isn’t how legitimate investigations work. This is how political hit jobs operate when people think nobody’s watching closely enough.

Brennan’s legal team learned that he’s caught up in what prosecutors are calling a “far-reaching” investigation running out of Fort Pierce, Florida. You know what’s in Fort Pierce? One federal judge. Just one. And her name is Aileen Cannon, the same Trump-appointed judge who bent over backwards during the classified documents case to give the former president every possible advantage. That’s not coincidence. That’s strategy.

The whole setup reeks of forum shopping, which is precisely what Brennan’s attorney Ken Wainstein argued in court Monday. When you want a friendly judge, you don’t file where the crime happened or where the defendant lives. You file where you know the black robe behind the bench will see things your way. It’s legal system manipulation, plain and simple.

Here’s what makes this especially galling. The Justice Department is supposedly investigating whether Trump’s civil rights were violated. Read that again. The federal government, under a president who spent four years attacking intelligence officials, is now using taxpayer resources to investigate whether those same officials violated his rights by doing their jobs. The circular logic would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.

Brennan isn’t just facing one investigation either. There’s another probe running out of Washington looking into his congressional testimony. Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who denied the 2020 election results, told Brennan’s team that the former CIA director is a “target” in the narrower investigation and a “subject” in the broader conspiracy probe. When prosecutors start using words like “far-reaching conspiracy,” you’re not talking about isolated misconduct anymore. You’re talking about creating a narrative that justifies going after political enemies.

The real kicker? The Trump administration has been conducting official government business on Signal, an encrypted messaging app that auto-deletes messages. Brennan’s lawyers are now in court asking a judge to force the Justice Department to preserve communications about their client’s case. Think about that. They have to go to court to make prosecutors save evidence about their own prosecutorial decisions because they’re worried the government will destroy records showing political motivation.

This isn’t how nations built on the rule of law operate. This is banana republic stuff.

DiGenova’s resignation right after signing that subpoena sends a message louder than any press release could. Even he apparently recognized how this looked. When the most aggressive champion of your case walks away before testifying, reasonable people should ask why.

The broader pattern here matters more than one case against one former intelligence official. When government prosecutors start weaponizing grand juries to settle political scores, the entire system becomes compromised. Grand juries are supposed to protect citizens from unfounded criminal charges. They’re not supposed to be tools for presidents to punish critics or investigate whether their feelings got hurt by tough questions.

Limited government means limiting the government’s power to abuse the justice system for political purposes. That principle doesn’t change based on who’s in office or which party controls the levers of power. Either we believe in restraining government overreach or we don’t.

What’s happening to John Brennan should concern every American regardless of political affiliation. You might despise the man’s politics or his time in government. That’s fine. But watching prosecutors play games with venue selection, watching them launch “far-reaching conspiracy” investigations based on Trump’s grievances, watching them potentially destroy evidence about their own motivations? That should terrify anyone who values liberty over revenge.

The Justice Department owes the public answers about what’s really happening in Fort Pierce. Until we get them, the only reasonable assumption is that this investigation exists to satisfy one man’s vendetta against the intelligence community that dared to question him. That’s not justice. That’s just vindictiveness wearing a prosecutor’s badge.

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