A declaration filed under penalty of perjury by John Brennan’s own lawyer lays out the exact dates behind his September grand jury subpoena, and describes why Brennan is a “subject,” not a “target,” of the broader Florida investigation.
What the filing says
Kenneth L. Wainstein, a Mayer Brown LLP partner and one of Brennan’s lawyers, filed a proposed “supplemental declaration” on Monday, Sept. 14, as an exhibit to a motion in Brennan’s own lawsuit. The document is declared “pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1746 and upon penalty of perjury” in that lawsuit against the Justice Department, Brennan v. Blanche, in U.S. District Court in Washington.
The declaration is precise about dates. Joseph E. diGenova, then leading the Florida grand jury probe, signed a subpoena on Sept. 9 calling for Brennan to testify before a federal grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, on Oct. 15. Wainstein wrote that he accepted service the next day, Thursday, Sept. 10, and texted diGenova that morning with questions; diGenova said he would “arrange counsel” to respond. “Later in that same day,” Wainstein wrote, “multiple news outlets reported that Mr. diGenova had resigned his position with the Department of Justice.”
‘Subject’ is not ‘target’
The declaration’s central passage describes a call the Friday before, Sept. 11, between Brennan’s lawyers and Kurt Olsen, described in the filing as a member of the prosecution team, and three other members of the prosecution team. Olsen said there were multiple “viable” grand jury investigations, according to Wainstein: a “far-reaching” one in Fort Pierce covering “issues at Mar-a-Lago and beyond” into whether President Trump “had his civil rights violated,” and a separate, narrower one limited to Brennan’s 2023 testimony before Congress.
“Mr. Olsen explained that Director Brennan was a ‘target’ of the narrower investigation, and the investigation for which he was now being subpoenaed was the ‘more wide-ranging conspiracy,’ as to which our client was a ‘subject,’” Wainstein wrote. He added that Olsen called the narrower investigation “still viable” and said its issues might also be part of the larger investigation, “such as being overt acts.”
That distinction comes from the Justice Department’s own rulebook. The Justice Manual, section 9-11.151, defines a “target” as “a person as to whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the judgment of the prosecutor, is a putative defendant.” A “subject” is “a person whose conduct is within the scope of the grand jury’s investigation.” DOJ policy, the manual says, is to advise a grand jury witness of his or her rights if the witness is a “target” or “subject.”
Being a subject does not clear Brennan, and it does not rule out him becoming a target later. What the filing establishes is narrower: according to Wainstein’s account of the Sept. 11 call, prosecutors described Brennan as a subject of the wide-ranging Florida case and as a target only of the separate, narrower one.
How the probe got here
The Florida case traces to July 2025, when Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sent the Justice Department a criminal referral. Attorney General Pam Bondi then ordered a grand jury investigation into whether Obama administration officials committed crimes preparing the 2016 intelligence assessment on Russian election interference — a probe Trump allies have dubbed a “grand conspiracy” investigation. By November 2025 the probe was supervised by Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
In October 2025, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan had separately referred Brennan to DOJ over his 2023 congressional testimony about the CIA’s handling of the Steele dossier — the narrower matter Olsen described. Brennan and his lawyers “have long denied that he lied to Congress,” the Associated Press has reported. Earlier subpoenas in that congressional-testimony probe were later withdrawn in favor of voluntary interviews.
The Florida case grew larger. Former FBI Director James Comey was subpoenaed in March 2026; by then more than 130 subpoenas had gone out since the probe began, and later subpoenas broadened the date range to cover “2016 through present day.” Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was also subpoenaed; his lawyer, Michael Bromwich, called it “a vendetta in search of a crime.” In April 2026, career prosecutor Maria Medetis Long was removed from the case and Todd Blanche, then the acting attorney general, brought in diGenova to lead the investigation. Brennan sued DOJ on July 1, 2026, alleging political motivation and seeking an order to preserve records. DiGenova signed Brennan’s subpoena Sept. 9 — one day before he resigned.
Who is running it now, and what the attorney general says
Olsen told Brennan’s lawyers he was reporting to Quiñones, “and then to the Deputy Attorney General and Attorney General Todd Blanche,” according to the declaration. That matches NBC News reporting that Quiñones now runs the case with support from Main Justice. The Associated Press has separately reported that DOJ has not named a formal replacement for diGenova as lead prosecutor — both can be true, since Quiñones already held the U.S. attorney post.
diGenova told the New York Post after resigning: “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.” After his New York Post remark, diGenova told The Associated Press the comments were taken out of context, adding: “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.” He told ABC News, “I resigned by letter today at 3 o’clock. It was an honor and a privilege to serve the president and the department.” He declined to discuss the circumstances of his resignation with the AP, and CBS News reported he did not comment on why he left. People described as familiar with the matter told CBS News there had been “growing disagreements between senior department officials in Washington over the management of the probe.”
Blanche addressed the departure in a CBS News interview Monday, saying the probe would continue without diGenova; it would not be fair “to get into reasons why he chose to leave,” he said, but “the investigation continues.” Pressed on whether the exit could slow the case, Blanche said, “Nobody is slowing down in any investigations,” adding, “one person doesn’t define an investigation, no matter the investigation.”
What Brennan’s lawyer argued in court Monday
Also Monday, Wainstein and co-counsel Daniel Gelber asked U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb to order DOJ to preserve case-related communications, citing reports of the administration’s use of the Signal messaging app. According to NBC News’ account of the hearing, Wainstein told the court “the government is not going to disclose what it’s destroying” and that “there’s a lot of really underhanded stuff going on in this investigation.” He called running the probe from the courthouse in Fort Pierce — the home court of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed the Mar-a-Lago documents case in 2024, according to the Associated Press — a “pretty unprecedented example of judge shopping.” He said diGenova had been the “strongest champion” of a case against Brennan and that his resignation sent “a very clear message.” Wainstein told the Associated Press, “The reality is there’s no precedent for this situation,” and told CBS News he was “perplexed as to what crime they could be prosecuting,” calling the effort a “blatantly unconstitutional effort to target an innocent man.”
Jeremy Newman, the DOJ attorney who argued for the government, said the department already conceded it has some legal obligation under the Federal Records Act to maintain certain communications. But he argued Brennan lacks standing to seek an order because he has not been charged, and said he could raise the issue if that changes. “There’s no indictment, there’s no charges,” Newman told the court, according to CBS News.
What is not known, and what happens next
No charges have been filed against Brennan in either investigation. Judge Cobb did not rule from the bench Monday; she took the preservation request under advisement. Brennan’s Fort Pierce grand jury appearance, set for Oct. 15, is described by NBC News as only “preliminarily set.” The Justice Department has not publicly named a formal successor to diGenova as lead prosecutor, even as Quiñones continues to oversee the case. In the coverage reviewed for this article, no public comment on the new subpoena from President Trump, the White House or a named Democratic lawmaker had appeared as of Monday.