The Justice Department has steered its grand jury investigation of former CIA Director John Brennan towards a Florida courthouse with only one federal judge – Aileen Cannon, the Donald Trump appointee who threw out the president's classified documents case.
According to The Washington Sun, prosecutors have subpoenaed Brennan to appear next month before a grand jury in Fort Pierce as a "subject" of a sprawling probe into whether Trump's civil rights were violated.
The outlet reported that the venue was chosen deliberately.
FBI agents are examining conduct by former special counsel Jack Smith's team in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, which gives prosecutors a geographic link to Florida. But the West Palm Beach federal courthouse sits less than three miles from Trump's estate, while Fort Pierce is 54 miles and two counties away.
Running the case from the district's northern edge puts Cannon in charge of any fight over Brennan's testimony. The former CIA director is expected to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights because a separate federal investigation in Washington, D.C., has named him a "target" over allegations that he lied to Congress in 2023 about the Steele dossier.
Stanford Law School professor Robert Weisberg said prosecutors could ask Cannon to review Brennan's testimony privately, decide on her own that it wouldn't incriminate him and order him to answer questions.
If he still refused, she could hold him in contempt and jail him until he talked. If prosecutors later indict him in Fort Pierce, Cannon would most likely preside over that case as well.
Weisberg questioned the government's approach.
“What the government is doing is rather strange and makes me think: Either they don’t know what they’re doing, or … it could be a Trumpian strategy to just make life as miserable and legally expensive as possible, even in cases you can’t possibly win,” he said.
Leslie Caldwell, who led the Justice Department's criminal division under President Barack Obama, criticized the government's effort.
"Unusual would be an understatement," Caldwell said. "Unprecedented would probably be a better word, and ill-advised would be an even better word."
"It has every indicator of a classic vindictive prosecution, where the bullseye is put on certain people's heads and a desperate effort is made to gather evidence after the fact," she added.
The probe has also been in turmoil. Career prosecutor Maria Medetis Long was removed after raising concerns about rushing charges against Brennan. Joseph diGenova, the MAGA loyalist who went on to oversee the Florida investigation, quit this month amid reports that he was moving too slowly.
"If you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem," diGenova told the New York Post.
Brennan has not been charged with a crime.
