The dispute ended in a heated exchange.
Joe diGenova, a longtime ally of Donald Trump who was chosen to oversee a sweeping “grand conspiracy” investigation in Florida’s Southern District, accused Attorney General Todd Blanche of interfering with the Justice Department’s own case.
Blanche appointed diGenova in April to examine whether US intelligence and law enforcement officials—including former President Barack Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan—had participated in a yearslong effort against Trump.
A source told Our News Outlet that Blanche sent several people from Washington to Florida weeks ago in an effort to “rein in” diGenova. DiGenova, in turn, accused Blanche of obstructing the investigation.
When Blanche called diGenova earlier this month, the conversation became contentious. A frustrated diGenova resigned soon afterward, according to the source.
A CNN report, citing two people familiar with the matter, described the call as “tense.” It reportedly focused on diGenova’s refusal to allow attorneys from the Justice Department’s headquarters to assist with the investigation, a dispute that preceded the prosecutor’s abrupt departure.
The Daily Mail also confirmed that tensions had grown over diGenova’s unsuccessful request for a SCIF in Florida—a secure facility used to review classified information.
Asked about diGenova’s sudden resignation during a recent White House press briefing, Blanche avoided giving a direct answer.
“I don’t want to talk about communications I have with prosecutors. It’s not fair to them. It’s not fair to the process,” he said before quickly moving to another question.
Sources Describe Turmoil Inside DOJ Investigation
Inside Justice Department headquarters, however, the latest headlines appeared to confirm what career officials had been saying for months: The “grand conspiracy” investigation that Trump has pursued publicly and privately for much of the past six years is effectively on life support.
“This case was initiated to make the president and the public think something is happening down there, when in reality, it’s not,” one DOJ official said.
Another DOJ official rejected the suggestion that the Florida investigation has stalled or lacks support from the department’s headquarters. The official declined to comment on the reported explosive conversation between Blanche and diGenova.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter and another attorney traveled to Florida after diGenova’s departure to assess the investigation’s progress, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the matter.
This report is based on conversations with five current and former Justice Department officials, former prosecutors and others familiar with the investigation.
Sources told Our News Outlet that the inquiry in Miami had been running into dead ends for months.
CNN reported that Maria Medetis Long, a senior career prosecutor, was removed from the investigation earlier this year after raising concerns about the strength of the evidence. Since then, several Trump-aligned figures have joined the probe, including Kurt Olsen, a former White House official and 2020 election denier.
Olsen did not respond to Our News Outlet’s request for comment.
“There have been several prosecutors moved aside because they had the temerity to express that they did not want to move forward with this case,” Kenneth Wainstein, Brennan’s defense attorney, told a federal judge in Washington, DC, last week.
Wainstein also alleged in court that the Justice Department had made “intentional efforts” to conceal possible misconduct in a “far-reaching” investigation. He cited Long’s removal and the appointment of prosecutors viewed as loyal to Trump.
“There’s a lot of really underhanded stuff going on” in these investigations, Wainstein said.
Our News Outlet previously reported that the investigation’s failure to gain traction in Florida’s Southern District was among the factors contributing to Pam Bondi’s removal as attorney general earlier this year.
People familiar with Blanche’s thinking said that was why he installed a Trump loyalist to lead the inquiry.
The arrangement created distance between Blanche’s office and a politically explosive case, allowing him to direct questions about its progress to diGenova.
Until this past week, one person said, the Justice Department’s only intervention had been “to keep Kurt Olsen from seeing sensitive [classified] information.”
Blanche, the person added, “does not want to touch this case at all.”
The Investigation’s Future Remains Uncertain
Blanche has maintained publicly that the investigation remains unchanged.
Any inquiries diGenova had been overseeing, he said this week, are “not going to slow down just because somebody leaves.”
His office said Jason Quinones, the US attorney for Florida’s Southern District and a strong Trump ally, would assume control of the investigation with “support” from the Justice Department.
The extent of that support remains unclear. A grand jury has not yet been convened.
“They are going to churn, and I don’t even think they’ll have something to present to a grand jury,” said Harry Litman, who served as deputy assistant attorney general from 1993 to 1998.
“The ‘grand conspiracy’ is a fiction. You can’t think of another case like this ‘grand conspiracy’ to deny Trump his civil rights because there’s never been any case like it,” Wainstein said.
Many of the actions under examination occurred roughly a decade ago and involved multiple agencies that investigated Trump, his campaign or people in his orbit.
It remains unclear how prosecutors could establish the alleged criminal conduct, much less a “grand” or “great” conspiracy—neither of which is a standalone crime under the US code.
“There’s no such thing as ‘great conspiracy,’” Litman said. “It’s a wet dream for MAGA folks.”
He called it a way to connect an alleged conspiracy to various actors through links as tenuous as those advanced by Pizzagate.
He was referring to the debunked conspiracy theory alleging that a child-trafficking ring involving senior Democratic officials operated from the basement of a Washington, DC, pizza restaurant.
“It either goes totally nowhere, due to the impossibility of moving beyond the subpoena phase, or it goes to a place where it’s going to, you know, crash and burn right after [an] indictment,” he added.
Brennan, who has described the campaign against him as an effort at “harassment,” has filed a countersuit in Washington seeking to preserve records connected to the cases against him.
The Daily Mail contacted Brennan’s attorney for comment.
For now, the investigation remains a politically charged case that has produced little apparent progress.
“No one wants to talk about this case right now,” diGenova told Our News Outlet by phone. He did not discuss the circumstances of his abrupt departure.
Sources familiar with the investigation have expressed a similar view in recent months.
One senior DOJ official offered a blunt summary: “No one wants to touch this with a 10-foot pole.”
