Prosecutor leading probe into Trump foes resigns, vows investigation will continue

The top prosecutor leading a wide-ranging conspiracy investigation into President Donald Trump’s political foes resigned Thursday afternoon.

Joseph diGenova — a Trump loyalist who has pushed a baseless theory that the FBI was out to get Trump during his 2016 campaign — told the Washington Post that he has submitted his resignation papers to Attorney General Todd Blanche amid disagreements over the pace of the investigation.

He did not elaborate on what specific disagreements led to his sudden departure at what appears to still be an early stage of the high-profile investigation.

DiGenova’s wife, Victoria Toensing, an attorney who was brought in as part of the prosecution team alongside him, was expected to resign Friday, diGenova added.

“It was a privilege and an honor to serve the [Justice] Department and president,” diGenova said in a brief interview, noting that the probe would continue after his departure.

DiGenova’s departure comes as the Trump administration has put pressure on the Justice Department to prosecute the president’s political foes. Trump repeatedly expressed frustration with former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s pace — and limited success — in overseeing efforts to target his rivals.

The president fired Bondi in April.

DiGenova added Thursday evening in a text that he believed there was evidence to build cases in the conspiracy probe, but said “time was needed to build those cases” and “people differ on how long that should take.”

ABC News first reported on his resignation. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Toensing confirmed that she would be resigning, but declined to comment further.

DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has suggested without evidence that an FBI investigation into potential ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign was a hoax perpetrated to keep Trump from becoming president. He was tapped in April to lead the conspiracy investigation, among the biggest and most legally complicated that the Justice Department is pursuing as part of Trump’s vow to prosecute his political enemies.

The investigation, which is based in Florida, hinges on an unusual and untested legal theory: that previous administrations conspired for years to violate Trump’s rights through a series of investigations, beginning with the Obama administration’s scrutiny of ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.

The probe is looking in part at the decade-old actions of former Obama administration officials, including former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and former CIA director John Brennan, who played significant roles in investigating the possible Russia ties.

So far, prosecutors have issued a flurry of subpoenas but have not issued any indictments, according to people familiar with the probe, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

DiGenova, 81, was U.S. attorney during the Reagan administration and later served as a lawyer for the Trump campaign. He was brought into the Justice Department this year specifically to work on the sprawling conspiracy investigation in Florida, landing the job after publicly lobbying for it.

In an interview this summer on the podcast of former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, diGenova claimed that Trump’s decision to fire Bondi was at least in part tied to a lack of progress on the investigation into Brennan as part of the conspiracy probe.

“The president was ripping mad about the fact that there was no progress on the lawfare investigation in Miami,” diGenova said. He was hired weeks after Bondi’s firing.

DiGenova took over the investigation from a career national security prosecutor in South Florida, Maria Medetis Long, who left the case after expressing discomfort with its direction, the Post previously reported.

While diGenova headed the operations of the probe itself, it falls under the broad jurisdiction of Jason Reding Quiñones, the Senate-confirmed prosecutor who runs the U.S. attorney’s office in South Florida. DiGenova said he expects Quiñones to continue pushing forward with the inquiry.

“I am sure he will continue the investigation vigorously,” he said.