Justice Department lawyer raised doubts in Brennan prosecution probe, Reuters says

A senior Justice Department lawyer in Miami was removed from the John O. Brennan investigation after raising doubts about whether the evidence justified moving toward charges, a sign of internal caution inside a politically charged case that has been watched closely for months.

Maria Medetis Long, a top prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida and head of its national security section, notified attorneys connected to the matter late Thursday that she was no longer working on the case. The move came as the Justice Department examined whether Brennan made false statements in his 2023 congressional testimony about the intelligence finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to aid Donald Trump.

The department said the reassignment was routine and designed to help offices allocate resources effectively. But the timing drew attention because Long had been one of the career prosecutors helping to lead a sensitive inquiry involving a former CIA director and a longstanding dispute over the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian election interference.

The underlying assessment dates to December 9, 2016, when President Barack Obama directed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of Russian activities and intentions in the election. Brennan, who helped oversee the intelligence community during that period, has remained a target of Trump allies for years. House Republicans referred Brennan to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution on October 21, 2025, alleging that he made willfully and intentionally false statements about the Russia assessment and the Steele dossier.

The probe has gathered momentum in recent months. In March 2026, the Justice Department requested House Intelligence Committee records related to Brennan, and on March 24 the committee voted to give federal prosecutors classified records tied to the matter. That sequence suggested investigators were moving closer to a charging decision even as concerns surfaced inside the department about the strength of the evidence.

The removal of a career prosecutor from such a high-profile national security investigation is notable because Justice Department practice depends on insulating charging decisions from political pressure, especially when the subject is a former senior intelligence official and the allegations involve testimony before Congress. In this case, the dissent appears to have come from within the professional ranks themselves, underscoring the tension between aggressive pursuit of politically sensitive cases and the traditional caution of federal prosecutors asked to prove intent, false statements and materiality beyond a reasonable doubt.