Former CIA Director John Brennan sues DOJ, Trump officials over criminal probes

Former CIA Director John Brennan sued the Justice Department and top Trump administration officials Wednesday, seeking a court order to force the preservation of records in the ongoing federal investigations targeting him. The lawsuit represents an unusual step for Brennan, a longtime political opponent of President Trump who has been the focus of two Justice Department criminal probes since the beginning of Mr. Trump's second administration. One is centered on allegations that Brennan lied to Congress in 2023 about the U.S. intelligence community's assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The second is a sprawling "grand conspiracy" probe examining whether Obama- and Biden-era officials were part of a long-running conspiracy to keep Mr. Trump out of political office. "This Administration has adopted a policy of using criminal process and prosecution to punish the President's perceived adversaries," Brennan's legal team wrote in a 46-page complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington . "It is against this backdrop that former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John O. …