What the Heck is Happening in Florida?

Despite the abrupt departure of Joe diGenova as lead prosecutor in the “grand conspiracy” case against Trump lawfare perps, the Justice Department appears to be moving full steam ahead.

Well, that didn’t last long.

After less than five months on the job, Joe diGenova resigned from the Department of Justice last week; diGenova, a longtime ally of President Trump, took on a senior advisory role at the DOJ in April and was quickly dispatched to southern Florida to take the reins of an ongoing “grand conspiracy” investigation into perpetrators of the decade-long lawfare operation against the president.

Todd Blanche, then acting attorney general, posted a photo of himself and diGenova—also joined by U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones and others—on X following the announcement:

Reports indicated smooth sailing with diGenova’s team recently issuing several subpoenas seeking testimony and documents from some of the worst lawfare offenders including former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and Jim Comey whisperer Dan Richman presumably related to their roles in the Russiagate hoax. (Brennan will appear before a grand jury in southern Florida next month.) Feds who were involved in the August 2022 raid of Mar-a-Lago also are getting heat. “It was not immediately clear why investigators want to question FBI officials in connection with the Mar-a-Lago search, but the act has long infuriated Trump, who decried it as an invasion of privacy,” the Associated Press reported last month.

But diGenova’s abrupt resignation on September 10 jolted the appearance of behind-the-scenes comity in the sprawling matter. His cryptic comment to the New York Post that day—”If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem”—bolstered the unfounded accusation that Trump’s DOJ is rushing politically-charged cases to please the president. (DiGenova’s wife, Victoria Toensing, had also joined the team in Florida. She resigned as well.)

Trouble at the Top?

In a phone call with NBC News legal reporter Ryan Reilly the following day, diGenova disclosed more reasons for his departure. “We were moving smartly, and I underscore we were moving smartly, and then things, you know, got where they got,” diGenova said. He further hinted that “lanes got crossed” and that he had “no doubt that I was going to be able to take every one of these cases across the finish line because we had put them in the perfect posture to proceed.” DiGenova commended both the prosecutorial and investigative teams in southern Florida as well as FBI Director Kash Patel.

That praise, however, did not extend to Blanche. And a CNN report published Monday indicates that rising friction between the pair, capped by a “tense” phone call on September 9, prompted diGenova’s exit. “The final clash centered on diGenova’s effort to block lawyers dispatched by Justice Department headquarters from assisting the probe, following broader disagreements with top Justice officials over its pace,” CNN revealed.

While the specific nature of the disagreement remains unclear, it appears their dispute centers on how to pursue Brennan, who has been the subject of the investigation for more than a year, with Blanche seemingly preferring a narrow set of charges and diGenova preferring a broader indictment.

The kerfuffle is obfuscating what otherwise is encouraging news in the probe with diGenova’s departure coming on “a busy day for the inquiry, as investigators were presenting a witness for testimony to a grand jury in the probe,” CNN noted. While the shake-up might temporarily pause some forward motion in Florida, “officials at Justice Department headquarters had anticipated possibly seeing the first charges to come as soon as this month.”

Who gets nabbed first is anyone’s guess but charges against Brennan for making false statements to Congress in 2023 might be a good bet. (My reporting last year on the perjury inquiry is here.) If so, that may not be the end of it for Brennan.

In a court filing last week, Brennan’s lawyer acknowledged receipt of a grand jury subpoena, signed by diGenova, and suggested Brennan’s testimony is unrelated to the false statements inquiry. (In July, Brennan filed a motion before D.C. Judge Jia Cobb seeking a preliminary injunction forcing the government to retain all documents and correspondence related to the investigation so Brennan can use the materials for a future vindictive and selective prosecution lawsuit.)

John Brennan: A Target and a Witness

During a conference call the day after diGenova’s resignation between Kurt Olsen, a prosecutor on the grand conspiracy case, and Brennan’s lawyers, Olsen tipped the hand of the DOJ.

“Mr. Olsen fielded our inquiries and indicated there are multiple ‘viable’ grand jury investigations, including a ‘far-reaching’ investigation in Fort Pierce that includes ‘issues at Mar-a-Lago and beyond’ into whether President Trump had his civil rights violated,” Brennan’s attorney disclosed. “Mr. Olsen also confirmed there continued to be an additional investigation relating only to Director Brennan’s statements before Congress in the District of Columbia. Mr. Olsen explained that Director Brennan was a ‘target’ of the narrower investigation, and the investigation for which he was now being subpoenaed was the ‘more wide-ranging conspiracy,’ as to which our client was a ‘subject.’ However, he explained that the narrower investigation was ‘still viable,’ and that the issues in the narrower investigation might also be part of the larger investigation, such as being overt acts.”

So, what does all this mean? That Brennan’s central role in concocting the phony Trump-Russia election collusion narrative—beginning with Situation Room meetings in the Obama White House during the summer of 2016 and capped by his corrupt January 2017 “intelligence community assessment” report accusing the Russians of meddling in the presidential election to help Trump win—is part of a “conspiracy against rights” investigation stretching over more than eight years. A sustained conspiracy involving Russiagate, January 6, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and both criminal indictments handed down by Special Counsel Jack Smith in 2023 and based on a pattern of government misconduct by the same players would require proof of “overt acts” within the five year statute of limitations.

The Mar-a-Lago raid, which was the subject of internal disagreements at the Biden DOJ, fits comfortably (so far) in that range.

So while the resignation of diGenova is disappointing news, his exit does not appear to jeopardize the entire endeavor. And it could be just a matter of time before the first shoe drops near the shore of Ft. Pierce, Florida.