Trump loyalist who challenged 2020 election results tapped to head DOJ ‘grand conspiracy’ probe

A former Trump campaign lawyer who backed President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss has been appointed to a Florida-based U.S. attorney’s office leading a sprawling probe into a slate of former federal officials who investigated Trump.

Joseph diGenova’s appointment to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida comes shortly after journalists reported that he is taking over the “grand conspiracy” investigation into intelligence and law enforcement officials, against whom Trump has long vowed to seek retribution.

In announcing the appointment Monday, Jason Reding Quiñones, U.S. attorney for southern Florida, said on social media that diGenova would be “stepping into a senior advisory role on key legal, policy, and enforcement matters.”

“With decades of experience—including serving as U.S. Attorney for D.C. under Ronald Reagan—diGenova brings deep expertise in federal prosecution and high-stakes investigations,” Quiñones said.

DiGenova’s appointment to oversee the conspiracy probe marks another significant blow to the DOJ’s longstanding independence from the White House. It comes just over a week after acting Attorney General Todd Blanche publicly claimed that Trump has a “right” to order investigations into his enemies.

Though Quiñones said that diGenova would help “advance the Department’s mission to protect Americans, enforce the rule of law, and ensure impartial justice,” the grand conspiracy investigation into Trump enemies features many hallmarks of past politically motivated probes initiated by Trump.

DiGenova joined the U.S. attorney’s office after Maria Medetis Long, the previous senior federal prosecutor overseeing the probe, was removed from the case. She had questioned the legal viability of future charges, the New York Times reported. 

Specifically, Medetis Long objected to moving forward with a portion of the inquiry focused on John Brennan, the former CIA director.

Her removal echoed personnel changes that placed Trump’s former personal attorney at the helm of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia before it pursued criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Both of those criminal cases were dismissed by a federal judge last year.

Comey, whom Trump has branded a “dirty cop” and “leaker” for initiating the FBI’s probe into alleged links between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, has received a subpoena in the grand conspiracy investigation.

The exact parameters of the investigation are unclear, but prominent allies of the president and Quiñones have said it centers on the far-fetched claim that the former officials allegedly conspired to prevent Trump from exercising his constitutional and federal rights starting from his election in 2016 through his federal indictments in 2023.

While the statute of limitations on most federal crimes is five years, Quiñones’ office has been able to scrutinize actions beyond those limits by alleging a conspiracy against Trump.

In total, prosecutors overseeing the sprawling investigation have issued over 130 subpoenas so far.

Part of the investigation appears to be using a grand jury seated in Fort Pierce, Florida, overseen by Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who showed the president unusual deference while presiding over special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents investigation against the president after his first term in office. 

In 2020, DiGenova and his wife, lawyer Victoria Toensing, were part of a legal team that included Rudy Giuliani, then Trump’s personal attorney, challenging the results of the 2020 election. He also pushed conspiracy theories alleging election fraud during that vote.

Before that, diGenova and Toensing reportedly collaborated with Giuliani in efforts to extract compromising information on Joe Biden from Ukrainian officials during the last years of Trump’s first term. At the time, Toensing categorically denied their involvement.

That attempt to undermine Biden’s candidacy in the 2020 vote would eventually lead the House of Representatives to impeach Trump.