Joe diGenova, an 81-year-old former Trump campaign attorney, has been appointed to lead a federal investigation based in Florida that targets officials who previously scrutinized the former president. The Justice Department confirmed the assignment on Saturday.
DiGenova, who served as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia during the Reagan administration, will oversee what officials call the "grand conspiracy" investigation. The probe spans investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump's first-term adversaries, and extends to figures like former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, who was subpoenaed last month. More than 130 subpoenas have been issued in the investigation.
The appointment marks a significant shift. DiGenova replaces Maria Medetis Long, a career prosecutor who had objected to pursuing charges against Brennan. The new investigation is overseen by Jason A. Reding Quiñones, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and operates through a grand jury in Fort Pierce under Judge Aileen Cannon, also a Trump appointee.
DiGenova has been a central figure in Trump's post-2020 legal efforts. He was part of what attorney Jenna Ellis called an "elite strike force team" following Trump's election loss. Trump and his allies have claimed for years that a "deep state" conspiracy undermined the former president during his first term and that the Russia investigation was designed to damage him.
The strategy behind the investigation appears to exploit a legal technicality. While most federal crimes carry a five-year statute of limitations, prosecutors could potentially circumvent this by tying past investigations into one alleged grand conspiracy. If they can identify an overt act within the past five years, they may pursue charges related to conduct occurring much earlier.
DiGenova's record includes promotion of debunked 2020 election claims and inflammatory rhetoric against federal officials. In 2018, he called Brennan a "real traitor" on Fox News. After the 2020 election, he demanded that former Department of Homeland Security official Christopher Krebs be "drawn and quartered" and "taken out at dawn and shot" for correcting election misinformation. DiGenova later apologized for those remarks.
A 2019 report confirmed that Russia attempted to boost Trump's candidacy while undermining Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump was never charged with a crime. Former special counsel Robert Mueller declined to determine whether Trump committed a chargeable offense, citing the legal precedent that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted federally.
DiGenova's new title is counsel to the attorney general.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "Handing a sprawling probe of your enemies to a loyalist with a track record of false claims and wild rhetoric isn't an investigation, it's a vendetta with a legal budget."
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