In recent developments, after attorneys expressed concerns to the chief judge of the Southern District of Florida (SDFL) about the Department of Justice’s attempts to ensure any potential Russia investigation involving former CIA Director John Brennan is handled by the judge who previously dismissed President Donald Trump’s classified documents case, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi made waves. She criticized “bad actors” in conservative media, suggesting they are trying to avoid accountability.

The letter from Brennan’s legal team, Kenneth Wainstein and Natasha Harnwell-Davis, was initially brought to public attention by the New York Times a week ago. Spanning 16 pages, it detailed why Chief Judge Cecilia Altonaga, appointed by George W. Bush, should ensure that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is not involved in a grand jury case potentially influenced by Trump’s interests.

Previously, Altonaga presided over Trump’s defamation lawsuit against ABC and George Stephanopoulos, which was eventually settled for more than $15 million. She is also known for reportedly advising Cannon, a Trump appointee, against overseeing the prosecution related to the Espionage Act and obstruction charges when Trump was a presidential candidate.

The unsuccessful attempts to sway Cannon came after the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously overturned her decision to appoint a special master. This move had delayed a Department of Justice and FBI investigation following the August 2022 search for classified documents allegedly hidden at Mar-a-Lago.

Brennan’s attorneys pointed to Cannon’s disrupted special master appointment as the first instance of her “consistent favoritism” towards Trump, which included accommodating his delay strategies. The letter highlighted this bias, especially when Cannon dismissed Trump’s indictment in July 2024, referencing a single concurrence from conservative Justice Clarence Thomas and questioning U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s authorization of Jack Smith as special counsel.

Still, there’s reason to believe the pattern of preferential treatment has continued over a year later, the letter went on.

Brennan’s attorneys pointed out that Cannon, at the start of 2025, issued an injunction blocking the release of Volume II of Smith’s report — the volume detailing his Mar-a-Lago investigation of Trump — and kept the injunction in place even after the current DOJ ended the cases against his former 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 purpose of bringing Volume II to light in the public interest. Their briefs in favor of disclosure and DOJ’s oppositions followed. So did multiple reminders from the would-be intervenors that the issue was “ripe” for a ruling, yet Cannon’s docket remained silent for months on end.

It took another 11th Circuit criticism in November of Cannon’s “undue delay” for the judge to deny those motions to intervene just last week, meaning it’s been nearly a year now since the injunction issued.

In mentioning each of these details, the letter claimed there’s a real threat that the DOJ which has “pursue[d] political targets” Letitia James and James Comey will try to boost its odds of bringing successful revenge prosecutions against “perceived political adversaries” of President Trump by “judge-shopping” in the Fort Pierce Division of the SDFL, where Cannon is the only sitting jurist and “would likely supervise the grand jury investigation and preside over the litigation of any resulting indictment” — especially now that Brennan has been deemed a “target” of a grand jury investigation and has been subpoenaed.

According to the DOJ’s Justice Manual, a “target” is 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.”

Cannon’s supervision would be a particularly concerning result, the lawyers maintained, considering Trump’s open interest in seeing the arrests of Brennan or other ex-government officials involved in the “Obama administration’s intelligence community assessment […] that detailed” in 2017 “how Russia waged a covert influence campaign to help Trump defeat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.”

The letter slammed Miami U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones’ alleged “efforts to funnel this investigation to the judge who issued this string of rulings that consistently favored President Trump’s positions in previous litigations.” Such activity “should be seen for what it is,” the letter told Altonaga — “prosecutorial judge-shopping[.]”

“For all these reasons, we urge Your Honor to exercise your supervisory authority as Chief Judge to ensure the United States Attorney does not steer this matter to the Fort Pierce Division and to the courtroom of Judge Aileen Cannon,” the letter concluded.

Against that backdrop, Bondi made the noticeably “weird” choice to comment about Brennan’s letter in the media with a grand jury probe ongoing.

Really weird to see the United States Attorney General commenting on an active grand jury investigation—let alone referring to a potential subject of that investigation as 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 as the AG recovers from eye surgery, Bondi reportedly said Sunday that her DOJ is cracking down on “government weaponization nationwide” and stated “a ten-year stain on the country” — a conspiracy — was “committed by high-ranking officials against the American people.”

Then she turned to the letter from Brennan’s lawyers, railing against “bad actors” whom she says “clearly” have “liability” to hide by requesting “judicial intervention.”

“Public reports of a recent letter sent to Cecilia M. Altonaga, the Chief Judge of the Federal District of Florida, by John Brennan’s defense attorneys, seeking judicial intervention in any legitimate grand jury investigation by the executive branch, shows these bad actors are clearly concerned about their liability and want to preserve a two-tiered justice system: one for them and one for everyone else,” Bondi reportedly said. “No more.”