Joe diGenova, the president’s former personal attorney who’s frequently advanced false conspiracy theories on conservative media, will take over the Justice Department’s investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan and other Trump adversaries, said two people familiar with the appointment.
At age 81, the former Reagan-era US attorney in DC who once called for a fired Trump cybersecurity official to be “taken out at dawn and shot” for calling the 2020 election safe and secure, has been named counsel to the attorney general, added the individuals.
DiGenova will replace a veteran career prosecutor who was removed this week as head of a sprawling South Florida-based criminal probe into those involved in prior cases against Trump.
DiGenova declined to comment when reached by phone Saturday.
A DOJ official confirmed that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has tapped diGenova for this post.
The New York Times reported earlier on diGenova’s new position.
His return to government comes a day after reports that Maria Medetis Long, the South Florida US attorney’s office national security chief, left her position. She was lead prosecutor on a narrower false statements investigation into Brennan and the expansive cases into Democrats and former officials over a purported years-long conspiracy against Trump.
Her replacement, diGenova, represented Trump during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and during the president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. DiGenova has long accused Brennan of crimes connected to the origins of the Russia probe, claiming on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program in 2018 that the the spy chief colluded to frame Trump with the FBI and DOJ.
In 2021, several months after calling for the execution of former security official Christopher Krebs, diGenova issued a public apology.
DiGenova will be joined on these matters by another political appointee—Christopher-James DeLorenz, previously a deputy attorney general’s office aide throughout Trump’s second term.. DeLorenz clerked for US District Court Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida when she presided over Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump for retaining classified documents.
Manolo Reboso, an executive assistant US attorney to Miami’s top prosecutor Jason Reding Quiñones, is also working on the grand conspiracy cases, said the two people, who spoke anonymously about an ongoing investigation.
The staffing of the South Florida investigations into people who had a role in prior DOJ cases targeting Trump, has been a challenge for the department. It remains unclear what criminal evidence exists against Brennan and others, and how the South Florida office could establish jurisdiction.
Two junior line prosecutors resigned in November shortly after being asked to work on Medetis’s team. Reding Quiñones and his leadership team effectively forced the duo to quit by ordering them to sign statements under criminal penalty of perjury naming the people with whom they’d discussed their new assignment.
The government has subpoenaed Brennan and others asking for information related to the intelligence community’s assessments around whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
