Prosecutorial Heat Spikes in Florida

A key departure and the addition of longtime Trump legal advisor Joe diGenova to the Russiagate and "grand conspiracy" investigation in Florida signals a new aggressive approach by the DOJ.

Is the Department of Justice getting closer to indicting the perpetrators of the Russia collusion hoax? A shake up in the team leading the criminal investigation into so-called Russiagate in Florida appears to indicate so.

On Monday, Joe diGenova, a former U.S. Attorney and current political commentator, will be sworn in as counsel to the attorney general to take the reins of the existing investigation based in Fort Pierce, Florida—the home of U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who presided over Special Counsel Jack Smith’s documents case against the president until she tossed the indictment in July 2024 after determining Smith’s appointment violated the Constitution. A grand jury has been empaneled in Fort Pierce since January; Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Southern Florida who has overseen the investigation out of Miami since late last year, will administer the oath to diGenova.

DiGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, are longtime legal advisors to President Trump; the Biden DOJ seized Toensing’s cell phone in April 2021 as part of a retaliatory investigation into Rudy Giuliani for allegedly working with the Ukrainians to dig up dirt on the Biden family.

The addition of DiGenova isn’t the only retooling. Earlier this week, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche removed the career prosecutor previously in charge of the investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, who played a key role in concocting the Trump-Russia collusion scheme in 2016. According to CNN, assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Medetis Long was ousted “after she resisted pressure to quickly bring charges against the former CIA director and prominent critic of President Donald Trump.” Meditis Long notified lawyers representing several individuals who have received subpoenas or interview requests related to the investigation that she was off the case, the New York Times reported on Friday.

And Blanche recently dispatched one of his top aides, Christopher-James DeLorenz, to southern Florida to bolster the investigative team. DeLorenz clerked for Cannon during the documents case.

This movement on the Treasure Coast is a positive sign following the exit of Pam Bondi earlier this month. President Trump fired Bondi as attorney general after his growing frustration at the lack of progress in the Russiagate investigation finally hit its peak. In a fiery press conference a few days later, Blanche, immediately appointed acting AG by the president, defended the DOJ’s plans to pursue the lawfare perpetrators including Brennan. “The president has said time and time again that he wants justice,” Blanche told a hostile group of reporters, many of whom helped perpetuate the Russiagate hoax, on April 7. “If you look at what happened to him, his family, his administration, the agents who protected him, people who just happened to walk by him on a given day, they got subjected to…massive investigations by this department.”

Blanche, of course, knows this firsthand having represented the president in both the documents case and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s so-called “hush money” case.

Brennan Already is Nervous—This Move Should Make Him Apoplectic

The DOJ has handed down indictments against a handful of lawfare perps including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James but those charges were tossed after a judge declared the appointment of Lindsey Halligan, the acting U.S. Attorney who brought the cases, unlawful. That ruling is currently on appeal in the Fourth Circuit.

But as I wrote here, the president and his supporters want blood—and while watching Comey and James lawyer up brought some temporary measure of gratification, the MAGA base demands more.

An indictment of Brennan, arguably enemy number one on the Trump lawfare most wanted list, seems imminent. Brennan received a subpoena related to his 2023 Congressional testimony denying that the Steele dossier played a role in the creation of his 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment claiming the Russians interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump win.

In fact, Brennan is so nervous about potential charges that his lawyers sent an extraordinary letter to the chief judge of the 11th Circuit, which encompasses Florida, begging her to prevent the investigation from proceeding in Fort Pierce, a more Trump-friendly area than Miami, and prohibiting the involvement of Judge Cannon. “The numerous past decisions by Judge Cannon that could reasonably cause the prosecutors to believe that hers would be an accommodating courtroom for an investigation and possible prosecution of President Trump’s perceived political adversaries,” Brennan’s attorneys wrote to Chief Judge Cecilia Altonaga last December. “The United States Attorney’s efforts to funnel this investigation to the judge who issued this string of rulings that consistently favored President Trump’s positions in previous litigation should be seen for what it is. Viewed in their totality, the above circumstances clearly indicate that the United States Attorney is attempting to steer this matter toward Judge Cannon in direct alignment with [Article III Founder] Mike Davis’s prosecution plan and the President’s mandate to use the courts to punish his perceived political adversaries.”

“Perceived,” LOL.

Plenty More Targets on the Prosecutorial Table

And if diGenova now assumes not just the Brennan inquiry but a broader “grand conspiracy” investigation stretching from the origins of Russiagate to January 6 to the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago and the actions of the illegal special counsel, he has more targets ripe for the picking. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Jordan (R-OH) referred Thomas Windom, one of Smith’s top henchmen in the Jan. 6 case against the president, to the DOJ for criminal prosecution related to his obstructive conduct during Congressional depositions last year. Windom worked on both criminal probes into the president prior to being assigned to the special counsel’s office in November 2022.

A criminal referral for Cassidy Hutchinson, the January 6 Select Committee’s “star witness” who manufactured a story about a confrontation in the president’s vehicle on the afternoon of January 6 and repeated the false story under oath numerous times, also is sitting at the DOJ. And this week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard referred two Trump saboteurs—former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson and former intelligence analyst Eric Ciaramella, the so-called “whistblower” in the matter—for unlawfully colluding to bring the Ukrainian “quid pro quo” allegations against the president in 2019, which resulted in Trump’s first impeachment.

Both men have corollary ties to Russiagate architects; Ciaramella worked for Brennan at the CIA and Atkinson served as a top DOJ official during the Russiagate era.

It also appears that Jack Smith is not out of the woods yet. CBS News just revealed prosecutors in Florida are “reviewing documents in connection with former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Trump.” And as I argued on social media and here, Smith additionally should face investigation for lying to Congress and for contempt of court as he defiantly represented himself as special counsel on court documents months after he was disqualified by Cannon in July 2024.

DiGenova, who does not appear anywhere close to 81 years old, could bring the juice and the jaws needed to finish the job in Florida.