Brennan probes face new scrutiny as Trump allies take charge

John Brennan’s legal exposure has widened into a test of whether the Justice Department can pursue a politically charged case without appearing to predetermine the result. The former CIA director is now under two criminal probes led by the Miami-area U.S. Attorney’s Office, one focused on whether he lied to Congress in a 2023 interview about the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and another sprawling “grand conspiracy” inquiry into Obama- and Biden-era officials.

The personnel changes inside that effort have sharpened the scrutiny. In April, the Justice Department removed career prosecutor Maria Medetis Long from the Brennan case after she reportedly raised concerns about the strength of the evidence. Joseph DiGenova, a longtime Trump ally and former Trump lawyer, was then brought in to take over the investigation, and Victoria Toensing was sworn in on Tuesday as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida. People familiar with the matter said Toensing is working on the Brennan-related cases. Prosecutors and defense lawyers alike know that replacing a career lawyer with politically aligned appointees can be legal and ordinary in some circumstances, but it can also erode confidence when the target is a long-time political foe of the president.

That concern has only grown as FBI agents have interviewed current and former CIA employees at agency headquarters in McLean, Virginia. About a dozen CIA officers who worked on the 2017 assessment were questioned about Brennan’s role in shaping the report and about the influence of the Steele dossier. The assessment concluded that Russia mounted cyber-espionage and influence operations to help Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, a finding later affirmed by the Justice Department, a bipartisan Senate committee and a CIA review.

The investigative trigger appears to include a House Judiciary Committee referral dated Oct. 21, 2025. Committee Republicans, led by Jim Jordan, alleged Brennan knowingly made false statements during a transcribed interview on May 11, 2023. They said he falsely denied that the CIA relied on the Steele dossier in drafting the post-election assessment and falsely testified that the agency opposed including it. The referral also cited newly declassified material saying a CIA officer drafted the dossier annex, Brennan and then-FBI Director James Comey made the final decision to include dossier material, and Brennan overruled senior CIA officers who objected.

The worry among former Justice Department veterans is not only who is being investigated, but who is conducting the investigation. Reports that FBI agents Rose Marketos and Jack Eckenrode have been assigned to the matter deepened that unease, given their ties to the FBI Director’s Advisory Team and their past political associations. After DiGenova took over, cooperating witnesses were subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in Washington, a move legal experts described as unusual in such a sensitive case. The department has portrayed the personnel changes as “healthy and normal,” but former prosecutors have rejected that view as too neat for a case this charged. For now, the Brennan probes are testing a basic safeguard of American law enforcement: whether the line between accountability and politicized prosecution still holds.