Prosecutor Leading Trump's 'Grand Conspiracy' Probe Into Obama, Biden Officials Resigns

Joseph diGenova, the Trump-appointed prosecutor who spent five months overseeing a Justice Department investigation into whether Obama- and Biden-era officials conspired against President Trump, resigned from the department on Thursday. diGenova, 81, told The Associated Press he submitted his resignation letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche at 3 p.m., ending a tenure that produced dozens of grand jury subpoenas but no criminal charges.

diGenova had served since he was sworn in as counselor to the attorney general on April 20, a title that put him atop the department's so-called "grand conspiracy" investigation, run out of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida. He would say only that his departure was an "honor and a privilege," declining to detail the circumstances of his exit. The resignation is the latest upheaval atop a Justice Department that has churned through leadership on its most politically charged assignments this year, following President Trump's dismissal of Attorney General Pam Bondi in April and Blanche's subsequent Senate confirmation to replace her in August.

A five-month tenure, no indictments

The numbers frame the resignation as much as the man does. diGenova took over an investigation that, by multiple accounts, has issued dozens of grand jury subpoenas without producing a single indictment. He held the post for roughly five months, replacing a career prosecutor removed earlier in the process. The inquiry centers substantially on conduct from 2016 and 2017 — the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Russia interfered in that year's presidential election on Trump's behalf — putting much of the underlying conduct close to or beyond the standard five-year federal statute of limitations, a legal complication several outlets have reported hampered the case. Days before his resignation, according to NBC News, investigators had begun emailing lawyers for former FBI agents about voluntary interviews and warning that grand jury subpoenas were imminent, suggesting the office was still in an early evidentiary stage even as frustration with its pace mounted above diGenova.

How the investigation began

The "grand conspiracy" probe predates diGenova's arrival. It is examining whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials, including onetime CIA Director John Brennan, worked to undermine Trump's political standing through the Russia-interference assessment and, separately, whether officials mishandled the FBI's 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents. diGenova was installed in April after Maria Medetis Long, the career prosecutor previously running the matter, was removed from the role after raising doubts about whether there was sufficient evidence to bring a case against Brennan. Trump allies had cast diGenova, a Reagan-era U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, longtime Fox News legal commentator and Trump legal adviser who helped contest the 2020 election results, as someone with the prosecutorial credibility to move the investigation toward charges after Long's removal. He had not worked as a line prosecutor in decades before taking the post. The office is led by U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones, who was sworn in to lead the Southern District of Florida in August 2025 and has continued to oversee the office's broader docket throughout the probe.

Brennan has remained the investigation's most prominent focus, along with scrutiny of former FBI Director James Comey and, more broadly, officials from the Obama administration accused by Trump allies of promoting the Russia-interference assessment to delegitimize his 2016 win. Neither Brennan nor Comey has been charged. In July, Brennan filed a civil suit against Blanche and the Justice Department in federal court in Washington, asking a judge to order the preservation of internal records before any indictment, on the theory that he may need them to argue a future prosecution was vindictive. The complaint accuses the department of forum-shopping among U.S. attorney's offices, sidelining career prosecutors who balked at building a case, and disclosing matters related to grand jury proceedings in violation of federal criminal procedure rules. Former FBI agents contacted for voluntary interviews in the investigation's final weeks under diGenova are also directly affected, as is diGenova's own household: his wife, attorney Victoria Toensing, who worked alongside him on the case, was expected to leave the department as well, according to CBS News.

Reaction, and a parting shot

The Justice Department kept its public response brief. A spokesperson said the department was "grateful to Joe diGenova for his many years of service." Behind that formal note, officials told several news organizations that both the department and the White House had lost confidence in diGenova's management of the investigation, with some describing him as "slow-rolling" cases and pursuing tangents rather than building prosecutable evidence, according to NBC News. diGenova offered a sharper account of the underlying tension in comments reported by the New York Post and echoed across outlets covering his departure.

"If you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem."

diGenova gave a similar, more clipped account to the Washington Examiner, saying simply, "I resigned today at 3 p.m. I said it had been a privilege and an honor to serve the president," and declining to elaborate further. Asked by the AP why he was leaving, he was similarly terse, confirming only, "I did in fact resign." Coverage sympathetic to the administration, including Fox News's report, noted that diGenova had effectively been sidelined within the investigation for months before his formal resignation, with his internal influence diminishing well before Thursday's letter.

What happens next

No successor to diGenova's specific role had been announced as of Thursday evening. The Justice Department indicated the investigation would continue under Reding Quiñones's office with the team of career and detailed prosecutors already assigned to it, rather than pausing while a replacement is found. Reding Quiñones, a former Florida state trial judge and Air Force JAG officer confirmed by the Senate in August 2025, has run the Southern District of Florida's broader docket throughout the probe and is now positioned to have a larger direct say in its pace. Brennan's civil suit, assigned to U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, proceeds separately and could determine what internal department records must be preserved if the inquiry into him continues. The statute-of-limitations questions surrounding the decade-old conduct at the center of the probe remain unresolved and will likely bear on whether prosecutors can bring charges at all, even if the pace of the investigation picks up under new leadership. diGenova's resignation adds to a pattern of turnover atop politically sensitive Justice Department assignments since Blanche became attorney general, and it leaves unanswered, for now, whether the five months of subpoenas issued under diGenova will ultimately produce any criminal case.