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That Donald Trump’s Justice Department had decided to go after former CIA Director John Brennan had been obvious for quite a while. One year ago this week, the DOJ confirmed an ongoing criminal investigation into the longtime intelligence official who led the CIA during Barack Obama’s second term.....

This week, however, Brennan and his lawyers started pushing back in a new and important way, filing a new lawsuit related to the probe, which he sees as politically motivated. The suit specifically asked a federal judge to require the president and several prominent members of his team to preserve records related to the Brennan investigation, in the expectation that the former CIA director will respond to possible charges by accusing the administration of vindictive retribution.

It’s not entirely clear why, exactly, the investigation into Brennan was launched in the first place — it appears to have something to do with his congressional testimony related to Trump’s Russia scandal — though as The New York Times reported, the former CIA director “has long been one of President Trump’s most reviled political enemies.”

The same Times report added, “Almost everything about the inquiries into Mr. Brennan … has been unorthodox, suggesting that prosecutors focused first on him as a target and only then set about looking for a crime with which he might be charged.”

It’s worth emphasizing for context that Brennan was also included on FBI Director Kash Patel’s so-called enemies list, filled with those he identified as “government gangsters,” and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt last year condemned the former CIA director as a “disgraceful” individual for reasons she did not explain.