DOJ Prosecutor Leading Trump 'Grand Conspiracy' Probe Resigns as Ex-CIA Chief Brennan Gets Subpoenaed

The Justice Department's year-long hunt for a conspiracy against Donald Trump just lost its lead prosecutor, on the same day it subpoenaed one of its biggest targets.

Joe diGenova, the 81-year-old former Reagan-era U.S. attorney brought back to DOJ in April to run the Florida-based "grand conspiracy" investigation, resigned this week. He told The Guardian the decision came amid impatience from other Trump loyalists over how fast the probe was moving. "It takes a long time to make good cases, and you simply have to work at it," diGenova said. He declined to detail why he left.

The Justice Department's statement was polite and vague: "We are grateful to Joe diGenova for his many years of service to the Department. The Attorney General thanks him for his work these past five months alongside the great team of experienced prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida, led by US Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones."

A person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press, via PBS, that diGenova's departure came amid "displeasure" from the Justice Department and White House over the pace and management of the investigation. DiGenova pushed back hard against that framing in comments to the New York Post: "If you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem."

Brennan Subpoenaed the Same Day

Hours after diGenova's exit became public, prosecutors handed former CIA Director John Brennan a subpoena to appear Oct. 15 before a federal grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, according to his attorney Ken Wainstein, who disclosed it in a court filing reported by the Associated Press.

Wainstein said prosecutors described the case to him as a "far-reaching" probe built on a theory that officials who investigated Trump over Russian interference in 2016 and his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago conspired to deprive him of his civil rights. The Brennan subpoena is one of a flurry issued in recent weeks, per AP.

Brennan remains a separate target in a Washington-based investigation into whether he lied to Congress in 2023, a claim he and his lawyers have consistently denied. Subpoenas in that case were issued last spring, then withdrawn in favor of voluntary interviews, before Thursday's Florida subpoena arrived.

The team member who informed Wainstein about the subpoena was Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who in 2020 unsuccessfully pushed the Justice Department to back Trump's claims that the 2020 election was stolen. No replacement for diGenova has been publicly named.

Brennan is separately suing to force preservation of records from the investigations targeting him, arguing he'll need them to challenge any indictment on vindictive-prosecution grounds. That lawsuit was headed to a Washington court hearing the same day his subpoena surfaced.

The Case for Scrutiny, and the Case Against Rushing It

There is a legitimate, non-conspiratorial argument for scrutinizing how the 2016 Russia investigation was conducted. The FBI's own inspector general found significant problems with the Crossfire Hurricane surveillance applications, and former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith pleaded guilty to altering a document used in that process. Those are real, documented failures that predate Trump's second term.

But diGenova's own parting words point to the gap between that legitimate grievance and what this specific investigation has produced after roughly a year: no announced indictments, and a lead prosecutor publicly flagging concerns about indicting without evidence. No charges have been filed against Brennan or anyone else in the "grand conspiracy" probe as of this week.

Russia and the Midterms

Separately, Mother Jones Washington bureau chief David Corn's new book, "How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America," argues Russia has run a continuous influence campaign against the U.S. since 2016 and could use AI tools to interfere again in the November midterms. Corn told Reveal News host Al Letson that Trump's administration has "decimated" the government offices that track and counter Russian disinformation, an assertion attributed to Corn's own reporting rather than independently confirmed here.

Multiple U.S. investigations concluded Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump, according to Reveal News; Trump has repeatedly dismissed those findings as a "hoax." Corn also makes the more nuanced claim, per Reveal, that the Steele dossier controversy ultimately benefited Trump politically rather than damaging him.

That backdrop is why ProPublica's report on a Kremlin-linked wedding gift landed with extra weight. ProPublica reported that Russian businessman Umar Kremliev paid for a three-day party following Donald Trump Jr.'s May wedding to Bettina Anderson, a gift the newlyweds confirmed and valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, describing Kremliev as a close friend. The White House called it "not a big deal" and said the president has never heard of Kremliev. No investigation into the gift has been announced.

What happens next is straightforward to track: whether Brennan appears before the Fort Pierce grand jury on Oct. 15, whether DOJ names a successor to diGenova, and whether the "grand conspiracy" probe produces an actual indictment or continues in what The Guardian describes as its yearlong pattern of "fits and starts."