A Trump loyalist who resigned from the Justice Department last week signed a subpoena seeking testimony from John Brennan just before his departure, the former CIA director’s lawyer told a court today.
Joe diGenova signed a subpoena on Sept. 9 aimed at compelling Brennan to testify before a federal grand jury sitting in Fort Piece, attorney Ken Wainstein wrote in a declaration.
After Wainstein reached out to diGenova on Sept. 10 upon accepting service of the subpoena, diGenova wrote that he would “arrange counsel” to speak with them. Brennan’s testimony was preliminarily set for Oct. 15.
On Friday, Wainstein said, 2020 election denier Kurt Olsen — now part of the prosecutorial team in the Southern District of Florida — told Brennan’s team that there were multiple “viable” grand jury investigations “including a ‘far-reaching’ investigation in Fort Pierce that includes ‘issues at Mar-a-Lago and beyond’ into whether President Trump had his civil rights violated.”
Another investigation is running out of District of Columbia, looking into Brennan’s statements before Congress, Olsen confirmed.
“Mr. Olsen explained that Director Brennan was a ‘target’ of the narrower investigation, and the investigation for which he was now being subpoenaed was the ‘more wide-ranging conspiracy,’ as to which our client was a ‘subject.’ However, he explained that the narrower investigation was ‘still viable,’ and that the issues in the narrower investigation might also be part of the larger investigation, such as being overt acts,” Wainstein wrote.
NBC News reported in March that the Justice Department was stepping up its investigation into Brennan and reported in May that the FBI was conducting interviews with current and former CIA officers as part of the investigation.
DiGenova told NBC News on Friday that there was a specific event which sparked his departure, but wouldn’t go into details about the matter.
“Everybody was in their lane, and then some lanes got crossed, and then I decided to leave,” diGenova told NBC News.
After diGenova’s departure, the investigation is being run by U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones with support from Main Justice, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Brennan’s team, citing reports of the Trump administration’s widespread use of Signal to conduct official government business, is seeking an injunction to force the government to preserve communications about the Brennan case.
“Director Brennan seeks nothing more than to ensure that the government does what it is already obliged to do — preserve all records and communications relevant to the government’s preordained decision to investigate and prosecute him,” his team wrote in a filing last month.
Brennan’s team also notified the court of another federal court’s order which found that the government had violated the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and did “not dispute that high-level officials at DHS and FEMA used the Signal messaging app on their personal cell phones for government business and then deleted those messages.”
Attorneys for Brennan and the government will be in court at 1:30 p.m. for a hearing in the case.