The lead career federal prosecutor in Miami who was overseeing a criminal investigation into whether former CIA Director John Brennan lied to Congress is no longer assigned to the case, multiple sources confirmed to CBS News on Friday.
Maria Medetis Long, who is the head of the national security section for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida, informed lawyers who have clients involved in the matter late this week that she was off the case, several of them confirmed.
Medetis Long did not explain the reason for her removal, though a source familiar with the matter told CBS it came about after she informed U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones that she did not believe there was not enough to make a case.
CNN first reported that she has been removed from the case, after resisting pressure to quickly bring charges against Brennan.
A Justice Department spokesperson confirmed the personnel shift, and said that Medetis Long remains employed by the Justice Department.
“As a matter of routine practice, attorneys are moved around on cases so offices can most effectively allocate resources,” a department spokesperson said. “It is completely healthy and normal to change members of legal teams.”
Medetis Long referred all questions to a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office.
Among the attorneys now assigned to the case is Chris DeLorenz, a department official confirmed. His involvement in the case was reported earlier by Bloomberg Law.
DeLorenz was a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon during the investigation into President Trump’s retention of classified records who most recently worked as an adviser in the deputy attorney general’s office.
He recently left Washington to serve as an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami.
The abrupt personnel shift comes at a time when the Justice Department has been trying to more quickly progress its investigation into Brennan.
The probe was sparked by a referral from the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee last October over allegations Brennan lied to Congress about the CIA’s role in crafting the intelligence assessment into Russia’s efforts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.
In the referral, Chairman Jim Jordan claimed that Brennan “falsely” denied that the CIA relied on a dossier prepared by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele during the drafting of the intelligence assessment and falsely told the committee that the CIA had opposed including the Steele dossier in the assessment.
The so-called Steele dossier contained salacious allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump that have not been verified.
A former CIA official is set to be interviewed by federal prosecutors and FBI agents in early May as part of the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation, according to a different source familiar with the matter.
The person is a witness, not a target of the probe, and has been interviewed more than once.
He was asked about the decision to include the Steele dossier in the annex to the Intelligence Community Assessment released in 2017, and he was also asked about a disagreement that CIA officials had with Brennan over the Obama administration’s conclusions that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election was aimed at helping Hillary Clinton and hurting President Donald Trump, the source added.
Both of those events took place in 2016, well outside the statute of limitations, but prosecutors are probing whether Brennan committed perjury when testifying under oath about these events before Congress in 2023.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Miami is also investigating a separate referral from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in which she claimed, without evidence, that Brennan and other Obama-era officials “manufactured” the 2017 assessment.
The status of that probe, which is also being handled by federal prosecutors in Miami, remains unclear.
That office is also separately reviewing documents in connection with former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Trump, according to sources familiar with the matter. The status of that remains unclear.
