Joe diGenova, a former Trump campaign lawyer who backed President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, will head up a Florida-based federal investigation into former federal officials who investigated Trump, a Justice Department official confirmed to NBC News on Saturday.
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DiGenova, 81, who was U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia during the Reagan era, will lead a sprawling investigation targeting Trump’s enemies, reaching all the way back to a previous Justice Department inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump and his allies have long alleged that the “deep state” colluded against him during his first term and that the Russia investigation was meant to undermine him.
A 2019 report found that Russia did try to boost Trump’s candidacy and tank Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Trump was never charged with a crime, and former special counsel Robert Mueller chose not to determine whether there was a chargeable offense because long-standing precedent held that a sitting president could not face federal criminal charges.
DiGenova is taking up the post after the departure of Maria Medetis Long, a career prosecutor who had been in charge of an investigation that had, among other things, been looking into former CIA Director John Brennan. Medetis Long had objected to moving forward with an investigation into Brennan after Trump allies on Capitol Hill claimed that he should be charged over previous testimony they claimed was false, according to a person familiar with the matter.
DiGenova will head up the so-called grand conspiracy investigation, which is being overseen by the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason A. Reding Quiñones, and is using a grand jury based out of a Fort Pierce court run by another Trump appointee, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. DiGenova was named counsel to the attorney general, the Justice Department official said.
While the statute of limitations on most federal crimes is five years, some Trump supporters have been suggesting the “grand conspiracy” investigation as a potential work-around: In alleging that all the investigations into Trump were somehow part of a grand plot, they could tie them into one massive criminal conspiracy and charge people for past conduct if they can find that some sort of overt act took place within the past five years.
Former FBI Director James Comey was subpoenaed in connection with the probe last month, and NBC News reported that more than 130 subpoenas went out in connection with it.
DiGenova has a history of spreading false claims about the 2020 presidential election, which Trump falsely claims he won. Joe Biden won.
DiGenova — along with figures like his wife, Victoria Toensing, as well as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell — was part of what Trump attorney Jenna Ellis dubbed an “elite strike force team” at a highly ridiculed news conference at the Republican National Committee following Trump’s 2020 election loss. The Trump campaign sued dozens of times to try to overturn the results of the election but failed.
In 2023, Ellis pleaded guilty in Georgia to aiding and abetting false statements and writings related to her work there after the 2020 election.
DiGenova also has a history of heated rhetoric against federal officials who disagree with Trump. He called for former Department of Homeland Security official Christopher Krebs to be “drawn and quartered” and “taken out at dawn and shot” after Krebs corrected disinformation the Trump administration was spreading after the 2020 election. DiGenova later apologized. He also called Brennan a “real traitor” in a 2018 appearance on Fox News.
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