Trump Justice Department Stacks Brennan Probe With Loyalists, Sources Say

Law enforcement veterans are raising concerns that the Trump Justice Department has stacked its criminal investigation of former CIA Director John Brennan with personnel who hold strong political ties to the president.

Brennan faces two probes run by the Miami-area U.S. Attorney's Office. One examines whether he lied to Congress in 2023 about the intelligence community's assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The second is a broad inquiry into whether Obama- and Biden-era officials took part in a long-running effort to keep President Trump out of office.

Last month, the Justice Department removed the senior career prosecutor overseeing the Brennan case after she questioned the strength of the evidence. It replaced her with Joseph DiGenova, a longtime Trump ally, to lead both investigations.

On Tuesday, DiGenova's wife, Victoria Toensing, a former federal prosecutor and Trump supporter, was sworn in as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida. A source with direct knowledge confirmed she is working on the Brennan and grand conspiracy cases.

Sources familiar with the investigations say some line prosecutors and FBI agents assigned to the cases may carry political motivations that could undermine impartiality. One FBI agent previously sought to investigate claims that Italian military satellites hacked U.S. voting machines in the 2020 election. A second agent worked on the failed prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey and lobbied senators to confirm Kash Patel as FBI director.

Those agents, Rose Marketos and Jack Eckenrode, both served on the Director's Advisory Team at the FBI, a group set up by Patel and staffed by agents who support his policy goals. Several agents from that team have been assigned to high-profile cases involving people Trump has identified as political adversaries.

Marketos and Eckenrode did not respond to requests for comment. An FBI spokesperson said accusations of political bias are false and similar to conduct by former officials under the previous administration.

One line prosecutor recently added to the case, Chris DeLorenz, previously clerked for U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon during the dismissal of criminal charges against Trump over classified records. DeLorenz was detailed to the probe despite limited prosecutorial experience after working in the deputy attorney general's office.

A federal grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, where Cannon is the only U.S. District judge, is now examining the grand conspiracy allegations.

Stacey Young, a former Justice Department lawyer who leads the nonprofit Justice Connection, said career attorneys and agents take seriously their power to charge crimes. She said that until this administration, they were expected to drop cases when no crime occurred. Now, she said, those who say they cannot justify charges against perceived enemies of the president are replaced by loyalists.

Critics have said the investigation has been tainted by politics from the start. Trump has long criticized Brennan, calling him crooked and suggesting he should pay a price. Mike Davis, a legal surrogate for Trump, pushed for a sweeping conspiracy case against former Obama and Biden officials with Brennan at its center.

The case was met with skepticism from career Justice Department lawyers. It was transferred to the Southern District of Florida after prosecutors in Philadelphia determined there was not enough evidence to proceed, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Seasoned agents and prosecutors say their concerns have grown as more personnel with pro-Trump perspectives have joined the teams.

One agent now involved in the Brennan and grand conspiracy cases is Marketos, who previously worked on a public corruption squad in the Washington Field Office that investigated Trump and was disbanded last year. During recent witness interviews, she asked about the Clinton plan intelligence, a reference to a 2016 election conspiracy theory that was later discredited by a Republican-appointed special counsel.

Criminal defense lawyers who have dealt with Marketos told CBS News she has taken a secondary role in interviews and conducted herself professionally. During her time on the public corruption squad, she told colleagues she believed Trump won the 2020 election, several sources said.

Without her supervisor's knowledge, she sought permission to travel to Rome to speak with a source who claimed Italian military satellites had hacked Dominion voting machines to flip votes against Trump. Her supervisor later discovered that Justice Department officials laughed at the request and that several sources had partisan political ties. He denied the request after learning that the former acting deputy attorney general had called the allegation pure insanity and shut down the investigation around July 2021.

An internal Justice Department directory lists Marketos as assigned to the Office of Congressional Affairs, though she has spent little time there. CBS News could not determine how she came to be assigned to the Brennan case, which is being run in Florida while she is based in the Washington area.

Marketos has spent much of the past year on temporary assignment to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which has been tasked by Director Tulsi Gabbard with identifying political weaponization in the intelligence community. The office referred the grand conspiracy case for investigation last year.

Former FBI agent James Davidson, now president of the FBI Integrity Project, said it is a staggering indictment of current standards that someone who cannot distinguish a fringe conspiracy theory from a federal crime is now tasked with investigating a former CIA director.

Eckenrode, a longtime agent who returned to the bureau after Patel became director, previously served on the investigative team for former special counsel John Durham. He publicly endorsed Patel's nomination and criticized the FBI's handling of the Russia investigation. Eckenrode was one of two agents assigned last year to investigate whether former FBI Director James Comey lied to Congress. A magistrate judge later criticized the agents for potential misconduct in that case.

DiGenova, who is leading the Brennan investigations, previously represented Trump's 2020 campaign in its failed effort to overturn the election results. He has long criticized Brennan's role in the Russia assessment. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said DiGenova must ensure he is acting ethically.

U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones posted a photograph this week of DiGenova, Toensing and others outside the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, writing that good things are building in the Southern District of Florida.