'Bad actors are clearly concerned': AG Bondi lashes out after John Brennan's lawyers beg chief judge to keep Cannon away from grand jury probe

Several days aft lawyers wrote to the apical justice successful the Southern District of Florida (SDFL), fearing the DOJ is doing everything it tin to guarantee immoderate eventual Russia probe-related lawsuit against ex-CIA Director John Brennan is overseen by the justice who threw retired President Donald Trump's classified documents case, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi caused a disturbance with slams successful blimpish media of "bad actors" moving frightened from "their liability."

The letter from Brennan attorneys Kenneth Wainstein and Natasha Harnwell-Davis, archetypal reported by the New York Times 1 week ago, spanned 16 pages and listed the reasons George W. Bush-appointed Chief Judge Cecilia Altonaga should not let U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon anyplace adjacent a expansive assemblage substance successful which Trump has an axe to grind.

Altonaga once presided over Trump's defamation suit against ABC and George Stephanopoulos, a lawsuit that ABC yet agreed to settee for implicit $15 million. The main justice is besides remembered for reportedly suggesting to Cannon, a Trump appointee, not to oversee the Espionage Act and obstruction prosecution of the then-candidate for president.

The reported unsuccessful persuasion efforts came aft the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously smacked down Cannon's ill-fated decision to name a peculiar master, a determination that hampered the Biden medication DOJ and FBI's probe successful the months aft an August 2022 search for classified documents was acceptable successful question by alleged "surreptitious container movement" astatine Mar-a-Lago.

Cannon's torpedoed peculiar maestro assignment was the archetypal "past decision" that Brennan's lawyers cited to reason she has "consistently favored" Trump successful court, including by catering to his delay tactics. Nowhere was the favoritism clearer, the missive alleged, than erstwhile Cannon dismissed Trump's indictment successful July 2024, citing a solo concurrence from blimpish Justice Clarence Thomas and uncovering that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland unlawfully appointed Jack Smith arsenic peculiar counsel.

Still, there's crushed to judge the signifier of preferential attraction has continued implicit a twelvemonth later, the missive went on.

Brennan's attorneys pointed retired that Cannon, astatine the commencement of 2025, issued an injunction blocking the merchandise of Volume II of Smith's study — the measurement detailing his Mar-a-Lago probe of Trump — and kept the injunction successful spot adjacent aft the existent DOJ ended the cases against his erstwhile co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira. In February, nonprofit groups American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute each attempted to intervene for the intent of bringing Volume II to airy successful the nationalist interest. Their briefs successful favour of disclosure and DOJ's oppositions followed. So did multiple reminders from the would-be intervenors that the contented was "ripe" for a ruling, yet Cannon's docket remained silent for months connected end.

It took different 11th Circuit disapproval successful November of Cannon's "undue delay" for the justice to contradict those motions to intervene just past week, meaning it's been astir a twelvemonth present since the injunction issued.

In mentioning each of these details, the missive claimed there's a existent menace that the DOJ which has "pursue[d] governmental targets" Letitia James and James Comey volition effort to boost its likelihood of bringing palmy revenge prosecutions against "perceived governmental adversaries" of President Trump by "judge-shopping" successful the Fort Pierce Division of the SDFL, wherever Cannon is the lone sitting jurist and "would apt supervise the expansive assemblage probe and preside implicit the litigation of immoderate resulting indictment" — particularly present that Brennan has been deemed a "target" of a expansive assemblage probe and has been subpoenaed.

According to the DOJ's Justice Manual, a "target" is simply a "person arsenic to whom the authoritative oregon the expansive assemblage has important grounds linking him oregon her to the committee of a transgression and who, successful the judgement of the prosecutor, is simply a putative defendant."

Cannon's supervision would beryllium a peculiarly concerning result, the lawyers maintained, considering Trump's unfastened involvement successful seeing the arrests of Brennan oregon different ex-government officials progressive successful the "Obama administration's quality assemblage appraisal […] that detailed" successful 2017 "how Russia waged a covert power run to assistance Trump decision Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton."

The missive slammed Miami U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones' alleged "efforts to funnel this probe to the justice who issued this drawstring of rulings that consistently favored President Trump's positions successful erstwhile litigations." Such enactment "should beryllium seen for what it is," the missive told Altonaga — "prosecutorial judge-shopping[.]"

"For each these reasons, we impulse Your Honor to workout your supervisory authorization arsenic Chief Judge to guarantee the United States Attorney does not steer this substance to the Fort Pierce Division and to the courtroom of Judge Aileen Cannon," the missive concluded.

Against that backdrop, Bondi made the noticeably "weird" choice to remark astir Brennan's missive successful the media with a grand assemblage probe ongoing.

Really weird to spot the United States Attorney General commenting connected an progressive expansive assemblage investigation—let unsocial referring to a imaginable taxable of that probe arsenic a "bad actor."https://t.co/QQiit2EmFO pic.twitter.com/RZXTHOH1wz

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) December 29, 2025

In written responses to John Solomon of Just the News arsenic the AG recovers from eye surgery, Bondi reportedly said Sunday that her DOJ is cracking down connected "government weaponization nationwide" and stated "a ten-year stain connected the country" — a conspiracy — was "committed by high-ranking officials against the American people."

Then she turned to the missive from Brennan's lawyers, railing against "bad actors" whom she says "clearly" person "liability" to fell by requesting "judicial intervention."

"Public reports of a caller missive sent to Cecilia M. Altonaga, the Chief Judge of the Federal District of Florida, by John Brennan's defence attorneys, seeking judicial involution successful immoderate morganatic expansive assemblage probe by the enforcement branch, shows these atrocious actors are intelligibly acrophobic astir their liability and privation to sphere a two-tiered justness system: 1 for them and 1 for everyone else," Bondi reportedly said. "No more."