2025-74 by reportoftheday

But a top Trump ally has publicly said the grand jury will be used to look at evidence related to an alleged weaponization conspiracy. The new panel will convene as multiple arms of the administration appear to be coordinating fresh efforts to revisit the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation and alleged intelligence abuses during the Obama years.

The DOJ’s new “strike force” looms in the background

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced over the summer that the DOJ had assembled a “strike force” to look into claims that senior national security officials “manufactured and politicized” intelligence during the 2016 transition to tie Trump to Russian election interference. She also authorized the convening of a federal grand jury, triggered by a criminal referral from CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who has suggested the evidence released by him and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard show that officials under former President Barack Obama made a coordinated attempt to invent allegations that Trump’s campaign had colluded with Russia during the 2016 election.

“We will leave no stone unturned to deliver justice,” Bondi said at the time.

Earlier this week, Gabbard revealed that since April, a so-called Interagency Weaponization Working Group, coordinating officials at ODNI, DOJ, FBI, and CIA, among others, had been meeting biweekly to “share information, coordinate, and execute,” though the group has no clear connection to the planned grand jury proceedings in Florida.

Obama spokesman Patrick Rodenbush dismissed the allegations as “outrageous” and “a weak attempt at distraction,” while former intelligence officials rejected Gabbard’s conspiratorial claims.

A favorable venue lies in Florida

The Washington Examiner previously reported in August that the DOJ could benefit from convening a grand jury in South Florida—a venue more politically favorable to Trump than Washington, D.C., where most predicate conduct from the 2016 Russia investigation occurred.

“There’s no doubt South Florida is a more logical venue for this kind of case,” former federal prosecutor James Burnham posted to X at the time, noting that U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones, confirmed by the Senate in July, would likely oversee such a proceeding.

Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani previously warned that choosing a venue so far from the locus of the original events “could invite scrutiny,” though he acknowledged it could also help prosecutors avoid the perception of anti-Trump bias among jurors in alternative venue options like Washington, D.C.

Proponents of using the Florida venue for a hypothetical conspiracy case argue the 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid provides a jurisdictional “hook,” connecting the alleged conspiracy’s origins in 2016 to later actions by federal agencies.

“The conspiracy didn’t end in 2016,” said former prosecutor David Gelman, a previous Trump 2024 campaign legal surrogate. “It’s a continuation—Obama-era officials embedded in the FBI and DOJ were still trying to block Trump’s reelection years later.”

Trump allies hint at movement behind the scenes

The push to hold Obama-era leaders accountable may explain recent remarks by one of Trump’s most prominent legal allies.

Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project and a former Senate Judiciary counsel, said on The Charlie Kirk Show last week that U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones, a Trump appointee, had received court approval to seat the Fort Pierce grand jury. “It should be fully up and running by January,” he said, calling the order “a public document.” Davis made similar remarks earlier this month on Fox News, telling Maria Bartiromo that the grand jury would be an ideal venue to “investigate what they did to President Trump,” adding that the August 2022 “Mar-a-Lago raid is the hook.”

Mike Davis @mrddmia nails it: “I think it goes all the way up to the top, to President Obama, to Vice President Biden, to Hillary Clinton, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, so many players within the Obama and Biden administration. And I think it also includes the Lawfare Democrats, these… pic.twitter.com/4M03E5CbpW

— Svetlana Lokhova (@RealSLokhova) October 12, 2025

“I think it goes all the way up to the top,” Davis said. “President Obama, Vice President Biden, Hillary Clinton, Comey, Brennan, Clapper—so many players within the Obama and Biden administration. And I think it also includes the Lawfare Democrats who coordinated with the Biden White House to bring these indictments against President Trump.”

Gelman said Davis’s comments about the Fort Pierce grand jury should be taken seriously. “I know Mike personally … and he has his pulse on everything really well,” Gelman told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday. “If Mike thinks there’s going to be a grand jury impaneled, I would take that as word. And if it is in Fort Pierce, that’s a much better venue — obviously a lot less liberal, a lot less left-leaning — and it would have jurisdiction because Mar-a-Lago is right there. So I think it’s a very relevant and appropriate place for this kind of investigation.”

He added that the breadth of any potential case could surprise even close observers. “In a grand jury, you can be king or queen for a day, a lot of things can come out that weren’t known at the beginning,” Gelman said. “It’s not a fishing expedition … but there are a lot of moving parts. You could see new individuals implicated, maybe even some heavy hitters, depending on what the evidence shows.”

Evidence fueling the new inquiry

Ratcliffe and Gabbard’s revelations this summer came with a trove of declassified materials, including a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report that exposed falsehoods at the core of the Russia collusion narrative. The report concluded that “no credible evidence” supported the assertion that Russian President Vladimir Putin explicitly sought to help Trump win, and that former CIA Director John Brennan pushed to keep the allegation in the intelligence community’s public assessment despite internal objections.

A separate review by CIA Director John Ratcliffe supported that finding, alleging that Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey fought to include unverified opposition research from the Steele dossier, funded by the Clinton campaign, in official intelligence assessments.

Former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins, a Trump ally, told the Washington Examiner in July that the disclosures expose a pattern of “abuse of prosecutorial powers to eliminate political opponents.”

“Richard Nixon’s sins pale in comparison to what is suspected in this saga,” Cummins said. “As Americans, we cannot tolerate this, and it must be investigated.”

Indictments and political fallout

The expansion of the DOJ’s investigation comes amid a string of high-profile indictments targeting figures who have become known as some of Trump’s biggest political enemies. Since July, prosecutors have charged former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and former national security adviser John Bolton in separate cases.

Meanwhile, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) referred Brennan to the Justice Department for criminal investigation this week, a move largely symbolic absent evidence of contempt or obstruction, underscoring rising GOP pressure for accountability. The committee has also demanded hearings and testimony from former special counsel Jack Smith, whose classified documents case against Trump was brought in the same venue, and is now at the heart of speculation about a sweeping conspiracy case against former Democratic administration officials.

Trump, while meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in late July, accused Obama and his senior aides of “treason” and said his administration had uncovered “irrefutable proof that Obama was seditious.”

Legal limits and immunity hurdles

Legal experts caution that while the declassified evidence may be politically explosive, criminally charging a former president or his aides presents formidable obstacles, particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s decision last year that found former presidents enjoy some immunity for official acts taken while in office.

Gelman, however, said the immunity issue may not be as absolute as some assume. “The immunity decision only talks about things that happen while you are president,” he explained. “If Obama participated in certain things after leaving office, policy decisions, political meddling, anything illegal, he does not enjoy that protection. So yeah, Obama could potentially be a subject of an indictment if the evidence points that way. It’s early, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

HOUSE JUDICIARY REFERS OBAMA CIA DIRECTOR JOHN BRENNAN TO THE DOJ FOR PROSECUTION

Additionally, a potential conspiracy case, rather than discrete charges, could allow prosecutors to argue that the alleged conduct forms part of a criminal scheme, effectively eliminating statute-of-limitations barriers that might otherwise protect Obama-era figures.

Whether the Fort Pierce grand jury ultimately results in criminal charges against former high-ranking officials remains to be seen. But with the court order now public and Trump allies openly discussing its implications, expectations are mounting that 2026 could bring the first-ever criminal case alleging a coordinated Democratic conspiracy against a sitting or former president.