2026-05-20T17:49:00-0400 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
执法部门资深人士表达了深切担忧，认为特朗普政府司法部针对前中央情报局局长约翰·布伦南的刑事调查正系统性地安插带有政治动机的人员，意图发起党派性起诉。
布伦南是迈阿密地区联邦检察官办公室牵头的两项刑事调查的目标。第一项调查正在评估他2023年就美国情报界对2016年大选俄罗斯干预的评估向国会撒谎的指控。第二项是规模庞大的“重大阴谋”调查，审查奥巴马和拜登时期的官员是否参与了长期阴谋，旨在阻止特朗普总统当选公职。
上个月，司法部突然撤换了负责布伦南案的资深职业检察官，原因是她对证据的可信度表达了担忧，随后由坚定的特朗普盟友约瑟夫·迪杰诺瓦接手这两项调查。
周二，迪杰诺瓦的妻子维多利亚·图宁——前联邦检察官、保守派评论员、坚定的特朗普盟友——在佛罗里达南区宣誓就任联邦检察官。迪杰诺瓦拒绝透露她是否正在参与布伦南案和重大阴谋调查，但一位知情消息人士证实她确实参与其中。
如今，多名消息人士担忧，一些被指派到该案的一线检察官和联邦调查局探员可能存在潜在的政治动机，这会让人质疑他们能否开展公正的调查。
例如，其中一名联邦调查局探员曾试图调查2020年大选期间意大利军用卫星入侵美国投票机的说法。另一名探员则参与了近期败诉的对前联邦调查局局长詹姆斯·科米的刑事起诉，消息人士告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，他还曾游说参议员确认卡什·帕特尔出任联邦调查局局长。
据知情人士透露，这两名探员——罗斯·马凯托斯和杰克·埃肯罗德——都曾在联邦调查局局长顾问团队任职，该团队由帕特尔创立，成员来自全国各地，均支持他的政策目标。
该团队中的多名探员还被指派参与涉及特朗普认定的政治对手的高调案件。
马凯托斯和埃肯罗德未回应置评请求。
“联邦调查局不会就媒体报道的调查内容或调查本身置评，尤其是涉及机密信息的调查，”联邦调查局发言人表示。“此外，任何关于政治偏见的指控都是虚假的，这与前几届政府官员的实际行为如出一辙，这些官员多年来一直在利用政府工具实现政治目的。”
与此同时，最近加入该案的一线检察官克里斯·德洛伦佐曾在美国地区法官艾琳·坎农手下担任书记员，当时坎农正在审理并最终驳回了针对特朗普的保留机密文件相关刑事指控。
尽管德洛伦佐的检察经验有限，但在副检察长办公室任职不久后，他就被调派到这项调查中。
哥伦比亚广播公司已联系德洛伦佐请求置评。
位于佛罗里达州皮尔斯堡的联邦大陪审团——坎农法官的任职地——目前正在调查“重大阴谋”指控。由于她是皮尔斯堡唯一的联邦地区法官，她很可能会审理在此提起的任何潜在刑事案件。
“职业律师和探员都非常严肃地对待指控他人犯罪的权力。在本届政府之前，他们会在调查显示不存在犯罪行为时终止案件，”前司法部律师斯泰西·杨说道。杨创立并领导着非营利组织“正义联结”，该组织为前现任司法部文职人员提供支持。
“如今，如果他们敢于表示无法证明对这位总统眼中的敌人提起指控的合理性，就会被排挤，取而代之的是会扭曲事实和法律以制造案件的忠实支持者，”她说道。
该调查的批评者表示，自启动以来就被政治污染。特朗普多年来一直抨击布伦南，称他“极其腐败”，并暗示他应该“付出代价”。特朗普的法律副手、好斗的辩护者迈克·戴维斯曾极力推动针对奥巴马和拜登政府前官员的全面阴谋调查，布伦南是该调查的核心人物。
从一开始，司法部的职业律师就对该案表示怀疑。据两位知情人士透露，最初负责审查该案的费城联邦检察官认定证据不足，因此该案被转交给佛罗里达南区。
现任和前任资深探员与检察官表示，随着更多看似支持特朗普的人员被加入调查团队，他们对布伦南相关本已棘手的刑事案件的担忧与日俱增。
“意大利门”
目前参与布伦南案和重大阴谋调查的探员之一是马凯托斯，她曾在华盛顿分局的公共腐败专案组工作，该专案组曾调查特朗普，并于去年解散。
消息人士告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，在近期对前情报官员的证人询问中，马凯托斯询问了“克林顿计划情报”——这显然是指2016年大选的阴谋论，该理论声称希拉里·克林顿利用有关俄罗斯的指控转移人们对自身丑闻的注意力。（该理论后来被共和党任命的特别检察官驳斥。）
曾与马凯托斯有过接触的刑事辩护律师告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，她在证人询问中处于次要角色，整体表现专业。
多位消息人士称，在华盛顿分局公共腐败专案组任职期间，她曾告诉同事她相信特朗普赢得了2020年大选。
据知情人士透露和该主管的国会证词，在未告知直属上司的情况下，她申请前往罗马与一名机密线人面谈，该线人称意大利军用卫星入侵了多米尼恩投票机，翻转了反对特朗普的选票。
在证词 transcript 中，这位前主管表示，司法部官员看到她的申请后都笑了。他还表示，提供卫星情报的几名消息人士都有“党派政治关联”。
“调查缺乏严谨性，”这位前联邦调查局主管对议员们说道。
根据采访 transcript，这位上司在发现前代理副检察长曾将该指控称为“纯粹的疯狂”后，拒绝了她的申请。他补充说，他在2021年7月左右终止了该调查。
司法部内部通讯录显示马凯托斯被分配到国会事务办公室，但消息人士称，她在该办公室的时间很少，甚至可以说几乎没有。
哥伦比亚广播公司无法确定马凯托斯是如何被分配到布伦南案的。通常情况下，探员会被分配到其所在地区办公室负责调查案件。针对布伦南的两项调查均在佛罗里达州开展，而马凯托斯的工作地点位于华盛顿特区地区。
马凯托斯参与布伦南案一事也引发了关注，因为她最近被临时调至国家情报总监办公室——该机构的核心任务是整合外国、国内和军事美国情报，以维护美国国内外的利益。
自去年以来，国家情报总监图尔西·加巴德授权该办公室识别情报界所谓的政治“武器化”或政治偏见。该办公室去年将“重大阴谋”案移交调查。
消息人士告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，自去年以来，马凯托斯主要在加巴德的办公室做临时工作，甚至曾从该办公室向布伦南案的辩护律师伸出援手。
“一个连边缘阴谋论和联邦犯罪都无法区分的人，如今却负责调查前中情局局长，这对当前的机构标准来说是惊人的控诉，”前联邦调查局探员詹姆斯·戴维森告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻。
戴维森现在是联邦调查局诚信项目的主席，该组织由前探员创立，旨在保护联邦调查局免受党派影响和其他滥用职权行为的侵害。
国家情报总监办公室的一名官员拒绝回答有关马凯托斯职责的问题，称她并非该办公室雇员，并让哥伦比亚广播公司联系联邦调查局。
“正如加巴德局长公开所言，我们已提交多份刑事转介，并表示国家情报总监办公室会在适当时机与司法部和联邦调查局共享信息以支持他们的调查，”加巴德的发言人说道。
从退休到科米案
与此同时，埃肯罗德是一名退休多年的探员，在帕特尔出任局长后重返联邦调查局。消息人士称，他曾在前特别检察官约翰·达勒姆的调查团队任职。
他参与2016年大选俄罗斯相关调查的情况此前已被《纽约时报》报道。
据《华盛顿考察家报》报道，埃肯罗德曾在致议员的信中公开支持帕特尔提名出任联邦调查局局长。在信中，他批评联邦调查局对2016年总统大选俄罗斯干预的调查，写道：“遗憾的是，联邦调查局在‘跨火飓风’行动中的行为导致该局声誉暴跌，且由于多种原因，声誉一直未能回升。”
埃肯罗德是去年被指派调查前联邦调查局局长詹姆斯·科米是否向国会撒谎的两名探员之一，消息人士告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻。
在该案因其他问题被驳回前，一名治安法官严厉斥责了这两名探员和前临时联邦检察官，称他们未过滤可能受科米律师-客户特权保护的证据，且使用了2017年开始的先前联邦调查局调查中过时的搜查令，可能存在不当行为。司法部否认存在任何不当行为。
多位消息人士称，埃肯罗德曾参与部分证人询问和讨论布伦南案的会议，尽管哥伦比亚广播公司尚未确定他在调查中的具体角色。
他在司法部内部通讯录中被列入帕特尔的办公室，该部门通常也不会被分配到刑事调查任务中。
牵头布伦南调查的2020年特朗普竞选律师乔·迪杰诺瓦
迪杰诺瓦上一次在司法部任职是在20多年前，1983年至1988年期间担任华盛顿特区联邦检察官。
最近，迪杰诺瓦曾代表特朗普的竞选团队试图推翻2020年大选结果，但未成功。他长期抨击布伦南评估俄罗斯试图干预2016年大选的行为，曾在一次采访中称布伦南是“整个反情报调查的始作俑者”。
代理司法部长托德·布兰奇上个月被哥伦比亚广播公司问及迪杰诺瓦参与该案是否会引发偏见质疑时回应道：“他必须确保自己的所作所为符合道德规范。我相信他会做到的。”
周二，佛罗里达南区联邦检察官杰森·雷丁·基尼奥内斯发布了一张迪杰诺瓦、图宁等人在皮尔斯堡联邦法院外合影的照片。
基尼奥内斯写道，迪杰诺瓦“在联邦法院亲自与一半团队举行了富有成效的会议，另一半团队通过视频连线参会”。“佛罗里达南区正在取得良好进展。”
DOJ veterans fear criminal probe into ex-CIA director is being stacked with Trump loyalists
2026-05-20T17:49:00-0400 / CBS News
Law enforcement veterans are expressing deep concerns that the Trump Justice Department’s criminal investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan is being systematically stacked with politically motivated personnel who are intent on a partisan indictment.
Brennan is the subject of two criminal probes being led by the Miami-area U.S. Attorney’s Office. One is weighing allegations that he lied to Congress in 2023 about the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The second is a sprawling “grand conspiracy” probe examining whether Obama- and Biden-era officials were part of a long-running conspiracy to keep President Trump out of political office.
Last month, the Justice Department abruptly removed the senior career prosecutor who was overseeing the Brennan case after she expressed concerns about the strength of the evidence and replaced her with Joseph DiGenova, a staunch Trump ally, to run both investigations.
On Tuesday, DiGenova’s wife, Victoria Toensing, a former federal prosecutor, conservative commentator and staunch Trump ally, was sworn in as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida. DiGenova declined to say whether she is working on the Brennan and grand conspiracy cases, but a source with direct knowledge confirmed she is.
Now, multiple sources are raising concerns that some of the line prosecutors and FBI agents assigned to the case may harbor underlying political motivations that could cast doubt on their ability to conduct an impartial investigation.
One of the FBI agents, for example, once sought to investigate whether Italian military satellites hacked American voting machines in the 2020 election. A second agent was involved in the recently botched criminal prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, sources told CBS News, and also lobbied senators to confirm Kash Patel to be FBI director.
Those two agents — Rose Marketos and Jack Eckenrode — both served on the Director’s Advisory Team at the FBI, which was set up by Patel and staffed by agents from around the country who support his policy goals, according to sources familiar with the matter.
A number of the agents who have participated in that group have also been assigned to work on high-profile cases involving targets identified by Mr. Trump as political adversaries.
Marketos and Eckenrode did not respond to requests for comment.
“The FBI does not comment on the contents or existence of investigations in the media, particularly those pertaining to classified information,” an FBI spokesperson said. “Moreover, any accusation of political bias is false and eerily similar to the actual conduct of former officials under the previous administration who actively participated in weaponized government for years.”
Meanwhile, one of the line prosecutors who recently joined the case, Chris DeLorenz, previously clerked for U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon as she was presiding over — and ultimately dismissed — the criminal charges against Mr. Trump related to his retention of classified records.
DeLorenz was detailed as a prosecutor to the probe despite his limited prosecutorial experience, after recently working in the deputy attorney general’s office.
CBS has reached out to DeLorenz for comment.
A federal grand jury in Ft. Pierce, Florida, where Judge Cannon is based, is now investigating the “grand conspiracy” allegations. Because she is the only U.S. District judge in Ft. Pierce, she would most likely handle any potential criminal case brought there.
“Career attorneys and agents take very seriously the power they have to charge someone with a crime. Until this administration, they were expected to drop a case when an investigation revealed no crime occurred,” said Stacey Young, a former Justice Department lawyer. Young founded and leads the nonprofit Justice Connection, which provides support for former and current career Justice Department civil servants.
“Now, if they dare to say they can’t justify bringing charges against a perceived enemy of this president, they’re pushed aside and replaced with loyalists who will contort the facts and the law to manufacture a case,” she said.
Critics of the investigation have said that it has been tainted by politics since its inception. Mr. Trump has railed against Brennan for years, calling him “crooked as hell” and suggesting he should “pay a price.” Mike Davis, a legal surrogate for Mr. Trump and one of his most pugnacious defenders, pushed relentlessly for a sweeping conspiracy case against former Obama and Biden administration officials with Brennan at its center.
The case was met with skepticism from career Justice Department lawyers from the outset. It was transferred to the Southern District of Florida after federal prosecutors in Philadelphia who were initially assigned to review the case determined there was not enough evidence to proceed, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Seasoned current and former agents and prosecutors say their concerns over the already-fraught criminal cases involving Brennan have only grown as more personnel with seemingly pro-Trump perspectives have been added to the investigative teams.
“Italygate”
One agent who is 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 had investigated Mr. Trump and was disbanded last year.
During recent witness interviews with former intelligence officials, Marketos asked questions about the “Clinton plan intelligence” — an apparent reference to a 2016 election conspiracy theory,claiming Hillary Clinton used allegations about Russia to distract from her own scandals, sources told CBS News. (The theory was later discredited by a Republican-appointed special counsel).
Criminal defense lawyers who have interacted with Marketos told CBS News she’s taken a secondary role in witness interviews and has largely conducted herself professionally.
During her time on the public corruption squad for the Washington field office, she told colleagues she believed Trump won the 2020 election, several sources said.
Without the knowledge of her immediate supervisor, she sought permission to travel to Rome to speak with a confidential human source who claimed that Italian military satellites had hacked into Dominion’s voting machines to flip votes against Mr. Trump, according to sources familiar with the matter and congressional testimony from that supervisor.
In the transcript of the testimony, the former supervisor said he later discovered that Justice Department officials laughed when they saw her request. He also said several of the sources providing the tip about the satellites had “partisan political ties.”
“There was a lack of investigative rigor,” the former FBI supervisor told lawmakers.
Her supervisor denied her request after discovering the former acting deputy attorney general had previously referred to the allegation as “pure insanity,” according to a transcript of the interview. He added that he shut down the investigation in around July 2021.
An internal Justice Department directory lists Marketos as being assigned to the Office of Congressional Affairs, though she hasn’t spent much — if any — time there, sources said.
CBS News could not determine how Marketos came to be assigned to the Brennan case. Typically agents are assigned cases to investigate in the regional offices where they are based. The two investigations targeting Brennan are being conducted in Florida. Marketos is based in the Washington, D.C. area.
Marketos’ involvement in the Brennan case has also attracted attention because of her recent temporary assignment with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — the agency whose core mission is integrating foreign, domestic and military U.S. intelligence in defense of American interests at home and abroad.
Since last year, the ODNI has been tasked by its director, Tulsi Gabbard, with identifying what has been called political “weaponization” or political bias in the intelligence community. The office last year referred the “grand conspiracy” case for investigation.
Marketos has primarily spent her time since last year on temporary assignment to Gabbard’s office, and she has even reached out to defense lawyers on the Brennan case from her post there, sources told CBS News.
“It is a staggering indictment of the current institutional standards that an individual who lacks the basic discernment to distinguish between a fringe conspiracy theory and a federal crime is now tasked with investigating a former CIA director,” former FBI agent James Davidson told CBS News.
Davidson is now the president of the FBI Integrity Project, a group founded by former agents who say they aim to protect the bureau’s integrity from partisan influences and other abuses.
An official from ODNI declined to answer questions about Marketos’ role, stating that she is not an employee of the office and referring CBS News to the FBI.
“As Director Gabbard has said publicly, we’ve sent multiple criminal referrals and stated that ODNI shares information as appropriate with the DOJ and FBI to support their investigations,” a Gabbard spokesperson said.
From retirement to the Comey case
Eckenrode, meanwhile, was a retired longtime agent who returned to the bureau after Patel became director. He previously served on the investigative team for former special counsel John Durham, sources said.
His involvement in the latest probes related to Russia and the 2016 election was previously reported by the New York Times.
Eckenrode publicly endorsed Patel’s nomination to lead the FBI in a letter to lawmakers, according to the Washington Examiner. In that letter, he criticized the bureau’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, writing, “Regrettably, the FBI’s conduct during Crossfire Hurricane has caused the Bureau’s reputation to plummet, and for a variety of reasons, it has not rebounded.”
Eckenrode was one of two FBI agents assigned last year to investigate whether former FBI Director James Comey lied to Congress, sources told CBS News.
Before the case was dismissed on a different issue, a magistrate judge blasted the two agents and the former interim U.S. attorney, saying they had potentially committed misconduct by failing to filter evidence that was likely covered by Comey’s attorney-client privilege rights and by using stale search warrants from a prior FBI investigation that started in 2017.The Justice Department has denied any wrongdoing.
Eckenrode has been present for some witness interviews and meetings to discuss the Brennan case, several sources said, though CBS News has not determined his precise role in the probes.
He is listed in the Justice Department’s internal directory under Patel’s office, which is also a part of the bureau not typically assigned to criminal probes.
Joe DiGenova, the 2020 Trump campaign attorney who’s leading the Brennan investigations
DiGenova returns to the Justice Department more than two decades after he served as U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., from 1983 to 1988.
More recently, DiGenova represented Mr. Trump’s campaign in its failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, and he has long railed against Brennan’s role in assessing that Russia tried to meddle in the 2016 election, referring to him in one interview as the “primogenitor of the entire counterintelligence investigation.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, when asked by CBS News last month whether DiGenova’s involvement in the case could raise questions about bias, replied, “He has to make sure that he is doing everything ethically. I’m sure that he would.”
On Tuesday, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason Reding Quiñones, posted a photograph of DiGenova, Toensing and others standing outside the federal courthouse in Ft. Pierce.
DiGenova “led a productive meeting with half the team in person at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce and the other half joining by video,” Quiñones wrote. “Good things are building in SDFL.”
