Joe diGenova signed a subpoena on Wednesday seeking testimony from John Brennan before a federal grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, then resigned from the Justice Department later on Thursday. That sequence now sits at the center of a court fight in Washington, where Brennan’s lawyers are trying to make sure the government does not erase communications that could matter later.
The move matters because Ken Wainstein said Brennan’s testimony was preliminarily set for Oct. 15, meaning the subpoena was not a vague placeholder but a step tied to a specific date. Wainstein and Daniel Gelber went before U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb on Monday to press for an injunction that would force the government to preserve records and messages while they consider a future claim that the case is a vindictive prosecution driven by Donald Trump.
The dispute reaches beyond one subpoena. Kurt Olsen told Brennan’s team on Friday that there were multiple viable grand jury investigations into Brennan, including one that he described as far-reaching and running through Fort Pierce, with issues at Mar-a-Lago and beyond. He also said another inquiry in Washington, D.C., is looking at Brennan’s statements before Congress, which is why Wainstein has framed Brennan as a target in the narrower matter and a subject of the more wide-ranging conspiracy investigation.
That distinction is doing real work in court. Brennan’s side wants communications preserved now because any later fight over motive depends on what the government said and when it said it. Wainstein told Cobb that the government is not going to disclose what it is destroying, added that there is a lot of really underhanded stuff going on in the investigation, and called the Fort Pierce setup a pretty unprecedented example of judge shopping. He also said the case should not be treated as if public officials are denied the regular rules, and noted that diGenova had called Brennan a traitor years ago.
For now, the subpoena exists, the October date is on the calendar, and the preservation fight is live. What remains unclear is the exact testimony or material the grand jury wants from Brennan, and that gap is what makes Monday’s court filing so important: if the records are not preserved now, the argument over whether this was a fair prosecution or a vindictive one may be much harder to make later.
