U.S. prosecutor Joseph diGenova, who had been running a wide-ranging inquiry into earlier investigations of President Donald Trump, said Thursday that he has resigned.
The inquiry had been probing several of Trump’s political adversaries and had sought to demonstrate that the president was the victim of a long-running criminal conspiracy.
“It was an honor and privilege to serve the president and the department,” diGenova told Reuters after ABC first reported on his resignation. He declined to give further details.
DiGenova did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times by publication time.
His inquiry investigated the 2017 U.S. intelligence finding that Russia sought to boost Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016. It also probed later inquiries by former special counsel Jack Smith, including Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and his challenge of the 2020 election results.
No criminal charges have emerged from the Florida investigation.
Investigators interviewed current and former intelligence employees. In recent weeks, they sought to question FBI officials who took part in the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago.
Some Trump allies had said they hoped the probe could reach Smith, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former FBI Director James Comey. The Trump administration already charged Comey in two other cases.
DiGenova stepped in in April after the department removed a career federal prosecutor who had been leading the probe. That earlier phase focused largely on Brennan’s congressional testimony about the 2017 intelligence assessment.
Brennan has denied any wrongdoing. His lawyers sued the Justice Department in July, asking a court to force officials to preserve documents tied to the investigations.
The lawsuit said the department had undertaken grand jury work in recent months but had not formally indicted Brennan. His legal team wrote that “this Administration has adopted a policy of using criminal process and prosecution to punish the President’s perceived adversaries.”
“It is against this backdrop that former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John O. Brennan … is being vindictively singled out for investigation and prosecution,” they said.
The filing described two separate focuses. One involves an alleged conspiracy to deprive Trump of his rights by probing claims of Russian interference. The other involves Brennan’s statements to Congress about the intelligence community assessment of Russian influence in 2016.
Former CIA Director John Brennan speaks during a forum on election security titled, “2020 Vision: Intelligence and the U.S. Presidential Election” at the National Press Club in Washington on Oct. 30, 2019. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
Smith, appointed in 2022 by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, brought the documents case and an election-related case against Trump. Both were dropped after Trump won the 2024 election.
Smith submitted a final confidential report on Jan. 7, 2025, and left the department three days later. Trump has denied wrongdoing and called those prosecutions politically motivated. Smith has said his investigation was proper.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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