Trump target goes on the offensive as prosecution threat looms

Former CIA Director John Brennan's lawyers have moved preemptively against the Trump administration, filing a lawsuit in federal court that lays the groundwork to fight any future charges as an act of political retribution.

The suit filed in Washington asks a judge to order President Donald Trump and top Justice Department officials to preserve all records related to two ongoing investigations into their client – one of the president's most reviled enemies – and legal experts note that such requests targeting a case that doesn't yet formally exist are unusual, reported the New York Times.

Brennan's lawsuit reflects how aggressively defense lawyers are now moving to counter what they describe as Trump's escalating use of the courts against his political adversaries — intervening earlier and earlier in the investigative process rather than waiting for charges to materialize.

Central to the lawyers' argument is the claim that the process driving the Brennan investigations has been backward from the start. Rather than following evidence toward a conclusion, they contend prosecutors settled on Brennan as a target first and then went searching for a viable legal theory to justify pursuing him. That argument is bolstered, the lawyers say, by the unorthodox path the investigations have taken.

The Justice Department reportedly struggled to find prosecutors willing to lead the inquiries before ultimately assigning them to Jason Reding Quiñones, a Trump loyalist serving as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and steering proceedings toward Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee who previously issued rulings favorable to the president during the classified documents case.

The lawyers also pointed to the removal of career prosecutor Maria Medetis Long from the case, who was replaced by Joseph DiGenova — a Trump loyalist who has publicly branded Brennan "evil" and a "traitor." Brennan's team cited DiGenova's inflammatory public statements as further evidence that the investigations are being driven by animus rather than an objective assessment of the facts and law.

"There is more than ample evidence that any charges arising from the criminal investigations into Director Brennan derive directly from the president's and prosecutors' vindictive desire to punish Director Brennan," the lawyers wrote in their filing, arguing the effort stems from his conduct as CIA director and his subsequent public criticism of Trump as a private citizen.

The Justice Department has not yet responded to the filing but is expected to do so in court in the coming days. The case marks the latest escalation in a broader legal standoff between the administration and figures it has targeted, with Brennan's lawyers now seeking to get ahead of a prosecution they say has been improperly engineered against their client from the outset.