Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Former CIA Director John Brennan Subpoenaed Over Russiagate Conspiracy Against Trump

President Barack Obama meets with John Brennan, Deputy National Security Advisor for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security, in the Oval Office, Jan. 4, 2010. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

Former CIA Director John Brennan must testify under oath about his role in a grand conspiracy to frame President Donald Trump as a Russian puppet, according to a new legal filing.

Brennan will be compelled by a subpoena to testify on Oct. 15, 2026, before a federal grand jury sitting in Fort Pierce in Southern Florida, the legal filing shows..

The filing reveals the Justice Department (DOJ) is pursuing two probes, including a far-reaching conspiracy investigation to include “issues at Mar-a-Lago and beyond,” an apparent reference to the 2022 FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago over classified records, and another narrower one related to Brennan’s sworn statements before Congress.

Brennan’s attorney Ken Wainstein revealed the subpoena in a filing in Brennan’s case against the Department of Justice. Brennan has accused Trump’s Justice Department of violating his constitutional rights in pursuit of “phantom criminal conduct.”

Reached through his law firm, Wainstein declined to comment.

The subpoena was signed by former Counselor to the Attorney General Joseph E. diGenova on Sept. 9, 2026. diGenova abruptly resigned as top prosecutor on the Russiagate conspiracy case the next day, on Sept. 10.

The legal filing by Brennan’s attorney includes diGenova’s protestation to the New York Post that “if you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.”

It also includes further clarifying remarks he made to the Associate Press indicating that there is indeed evidence of criminal behavior, but that there was a dispute about pacing: “There’s plenty of evidence in all of these cases to prove the theories of prosecution. It just takes time to get there, and some people want to get there a little faster than others — and you can’t do that.”

diGenova first took the reins of the case in April 2026 and was pursuing broad charges, per several reports. Anonymous officials accused him of falling down “rabbit holes.”

diGenova’s requests for a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) in which he could review highly classified documents and more attorneys were a source of tension with the Department of Justice, according to CNN.

The Justice Department and the FBI face several other challenges, including unearthing the classified evidence. Some of the Russiagate documents declassified by the Trump administration had been hidden away at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, for years.

There is also the challenge of the statute of limitations.

The scheme to paint Trump’s 2016 election win as a Russian plot began roughly a decade ago, and most federal crimes have a five-year statute of limitations. But in a conspiracy, the statute of limitations clock only starts ticking after the last “overt act” taken in furtherance of the conspiracy, according to the DOJ website. At least one witness has been contacted by the Justice Department about the 2022 raid of Mar-a-Lago, per CNN.

The Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, leads the case, and the Fort Pierce court is run by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump-friendly judge.

Documents declassified by the Trump administration have revealed that President Barack Obama’s intelligence chief spun, cherrypicked and in some cases wholly manufactured raw intelligence reports to support the narrative — predetermined in leaks to the media — that Russian President Vladimir Putin had a “clear preference” for Trump and “aspired to help his election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton.”

Though technically endorsed by the “big three” — the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency — just five CIA analysts under Brennan wrote an infamous Jan. 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that kicked off years of Russiagate speculation and frenzy, according to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report declassified on July 23.

The analysts were plucked from a “Fusion Cell” Brennan had formed months earlier to examine Russian election interference, according to a CIA self-assessment declassified on July 2.

Those analysts worked hand-in-glove with Brennan, churning out an assessment in less than a week in the days leading up to Christmas. Brennan hid the “sensitive intelligence” — the unverified, slanted and irrelevant raw intelligence reports — from other elements of the intelligence community until a two-day review process. The review happened using a card copy that was shuttled between Langley, Washington, DC, and Fort Meade, the report indicates.

Brennan included the Steele dossier, a salacious opposition research document commissioned by Democrats, in drafting the ICA.

The media hectored Trump over these supposed ties to Russia for years, bogging down his first term.

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan referred Brennan to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution in October 2025 for lying under oath to Congress about the ICA. Despite Brennan’s denials under oath, Brennan made the ultimate decision, along with then-FBI Director James Comey, to include information from the dossier in the ICA, overruling senior CIA officers who objected to its inclusion, Jordan said.