A loyalist prosecutor handpicked by the Justice Department to lead a contentious conspiracy investigation into several of President Trump’s political opponents abruptly quit his job on Thursday after facing pressure from his superiors in Washington, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The prosecutor, Joseph diGenova, had been in charge of what Mr. Trump’s allies have often referred to as the “grand conspiracy,” a sprawling inquiry based in the U.S. attorney’s office in South Florida that has sought to implicate federal officials who have investigated Mr. Trump in a single plot to deprive him of his rights.
Mr. diGenova’s resignation was the latest setback in the case that began last year and has dragged on for months. Even though members of his team have issued numerous grand jury subpoenas to federal law enforcement and intelligence officials who have sought over the past decade to hold Mr. Trump accountable in a series of criminal inquiries, Mr. diGenova had yet to obtain an indictment.
“It was an honor and privilege to serve the president and the department,” Mr. DiGenova told CNN and CBS during phone interviews on Thursday.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly put pressure on prosecutors to bring criminal charges against his opponents, calling them out in private meetings and in social media posts. He has also expressed displeasure about the slow pace of the retributive investigations he has helped to set in motion.
But time and again, Mr. Trump’s desire for vengeance and his willingness to break through the walls of independence that have traditionally separated the White House and the Justice Department have resulted in failure. Judges and grand juries have repeatedly stymied his attempts to strong arm prosecutors into bringing charges.
Sometimes, as in the case of Mr. diGenova, the prosecutors themselves have effectively reminded him that it is no simple matter to file indictments against people without real evidence or viable legal reasoning.
Justice Department leaders had been slowly losing confidence for months in Mr. diGenova’s ability to run the case, believing that he was taking too much time in bringing charges, according to a person familiar with the case. The department had given Mr. diGenova all of the resources he had asked for, the person said, even sending prosecutors from Washington to help him.
But Mr. diGenova felt threatened by the prosecutors and sought to sideline them, further delaying progress on the case, the person said.
His resignation on Thursday was likely to cause consternation among far-right influencers who have long heralded the grand conspiracy case as the Trump administration’s most aggressive effort to go after the president’s critics.
From the beginning, the influencers pushed for charges to be brought against the widest array of Democrats possible, asserting that a cabal of “deep state” operatives — led by former President Barack Obama — had worked for years to destroy Mr. Trump and deserved to be punished.
With his move, Mr. diGenova became the second prosecutor who has either resigned or been removed from the case. The prosecutor in charge of an early phase of the investigation was forced to leave in the spring after telling her superiors that there was not sufficient evidence to bring charges against one of its first targets, John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. director who provoked Mr. Trump’s ire by helping to assemble an intelligence assessment that determined that Russia had sought to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign.
The grand conspiracy inquiry has long been the most fevered of the many revenge investigations that Mr. Trump has demanded the Justice Department undertake. It has involved prosecutors seeking to link disparate criminal inquiries into the president — including the Russia investigation and a separate investigation into Mr. Trump’s mishandling of classified documents — as an overarching, multiyear scheme to damage his political prospects.
From the outset, Mr. diGenova faced an uphill battle in seeking to prove the basic theory of his case: that the various inquiries into Mr. Trump — conducted by different prosecutors and spanning nearly a decade — could be reasonably tied together in a single conspiracy. Those hurdles have led several current and former prosecutors in the office in southern Florida to wonder whether the investigation was largely a show put on to placate Mr. Trump.
Mr. diGenova, a former U.S. attorney from the Reagan era who had not worked as a prosecutor in nearly 40 years, took control of the case in April after his predecessor, Maria Medetis Long, was kicked off the investigation. At 81, he was an unusual choice to oversee an inquiry involving multiple targets that quickly grew to include at least a dozen prosecutors, including his wife, Victoria Toensing.
Moreover, Mr. diGenova was a longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s who had publicly claimed that the Russia investigation was a plot by law enforcement to frame him and keep him out of the White House. Mr. diGenova had also worked as a lawyer for Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign, supporting his false assertions that the election that year had been rigged against him.
While Mr. Brennan was the initial focus of the inquiry, it has also involved an effort to implicate James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, who has already been charged in a separate case in North Carolina. Late last month, Mr. diGenova’s office issued a subpoena demanding testimony from one of Mr. Comey’s close confidants.
More recently, subpoenas had been issued to federal agents who took part in the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.
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