In a reversal, prosecutors who are trying to establish a perjury case against John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, have rescinded subpoenas issued just days ago that had required witnesses to testify before a grand jury in Washington, according to people familiar with the matter.
The withdrawal on Monday night of the subpoenas, which the Justice Department had issued over the weekend, was a shaky start for a new phase of the investigation. The department last week removed a career prosecutor who had been overseeing the matter, Maria Medetis Long, who was said to have objected to moving forward with it.
The department brought in an outspoken Trump loyalist, Joseph diGenova, 81, to take over the inquiry into Mr. Brennan, which is part of a larger effort to investigate former officials who have scrutinized President Trump. Mr. diGenova was formally sworn in on Monday morning, and it is not clear whether he played a role in the issuing of the subpoenas over the weekend.
Justice Department officials on Monday did not explain the reason for the change of plans when informing lawyers for the witnesses, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
The inquiry is focused on statements Mr. Brennan made to Congress in 2023 related to a January 2017 intelligence community assessment about Russia’s interference in the election, including a judgment that Moscow aspired to improve Mr. Trump’s chances of winning.
Several former national security officials involved in helping draft the assessment had agreed to cooperate for voluntary interviews with F.B.I. agents, according to the people familiar with the matter. But after Ms. Medetis Long’s ouster, the department issued subpoenas over the weekend requiring them to instead testify before a grand jury in Washington next week.
The move took some veteran prosecutors by surprise. Normally, if a witness is willing to cooperate, F.B.I. agents almost always want to interview them rather than have prosecutors question them before grand jurors without knowing what they will say. F.B.I. interviews also avoid the extra complications raised by the prospect of discussing classified information before grand jurors.
When the subpoenas were pulled back Monday evening, law enforcement officials indicated that their plans had reverted to scheduling voluntary interviews, the people said.
Whatever else it portends, the decision brought to light that the Trump administration was moving the inquiry into Mr. Brennan to Washington rather than continuing to investigate it from Florida. There, a team of prosecutors had used a grand jury in Miami to issue subpoenas asking for documents. Any attempt to indict Mr. Brennan would most likely have to be in Washington, where his deposition took place.
Mr. diGenova is a former Reagan-era U.S. attorney and former Trump campaign lawyer who, as a political commentator, has disparaged the various investigations into Mr. Trump. On Monday evening, the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, posted a photo on social media of himself with Mr. diGenova and several prosecutors in Miami working on the Brennan inquiry, writing “welcome to the fight, Joe!”
The effort underway in Florida, under Jason A. Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney in Miami, is not limited to Mr. Brennan. It is a sprawling investigation seeking to find a basis to satisfy Mr. Trump’s desire to bring criminal charges against a wide range of former officials who scrutinized him, based on a far-fetched premise pushed by his allies of a “grand conspiracy” against him.
By this account, a unified plot to violate Mr. Trump’s constitutional rights began with the investigation into Russia and its possible ties to his 2016 campaign, and extended to Mr. Trump’s later indictments over election subversion and mishandling of classified documents.
But the attempt to build a perjury case against Mr. Brennan, who has been an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump since leaving office in 2017, appears to be the most advanced part of that effort.
The same team in Florida is still dealing with lawyers for witnesses, however, and there has been no sign that prosecutors working for the U.S. attorney in Washington, Jeanine Pirro, have become involved. The department has given Mr. Reding Quiñones special authority that allows him to bring cases in venues outside Florida.
The Brennan matter is focused on statements the former C.I.A. director made during a 2023 deposition to Congress about the relationship between the 2017 assessment and the Steele dossier, a compendium of later-discredited political opposition research about Mr. Trump and Russia.
The F.B.I. had wanted to include information from the dossier in the assessment, but C.I.A. analysts balked because its sourcing was unknown. Mr. Brennan told lawmakers that “the C.I.A. was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the intelligence community assessment.” Ultimately, as a compromise, a summary of the dossier was attached to the assessment as an appendix, as Mr. Brennan had long said.
Documents the Trump administration declassified last summer showed that C.I.A. analysts also objected to including the information in an appendix, too, but portrayed Mr. Brennan as pushing back in support of the compromise. Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and a Trump ally, made a criminal referral, arguing that Mr. Brennan’s testimony about C.I.A. opposition was a false statement. Mr. Brennan’s lawyer, Kenneth L. Wainstein, has said it was not.
Devlin Barrett contributed reporting from Washington, and Alan Feuer from New York.
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.
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