One of the country’s most important federal prosecutor’s offices has been hollowed out by President Donald Trump’s push to prosecute his perceived enemies, and the “grand conspiracy” case at the center of that push is coming apart.
The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida once employed more than 200 lawyers, but after a wave of firings and resignations, it is now slightly more than half that size, according to current and former prosecutors who spoke to the New York Times.
Prosecutors there have watched the case unfold “with embarrassment and horror,” the Times reported. So many refused to join the investigation that U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones, an Army reservist, brought in military lawyers to fill the ranks.
The chief of the criminal division has been sidelined, the health care fraud unit has been decimated and many prosecutors say the office feels leaderless, and they expressed concerns that an office once known for major drug and white-collar cases has turned to politics.
Even the office furniture has been repurposed for the inquiry’s two work spaces in Miami and Fort Pierce.
The case rests on the core MAGA belief that every investigation into Trump – from the Russia probe to special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutions – was part of one overarching conspiracy to take him down, but proving that in court has been a different matter.
Joseph diGenova is the 81-year-old lawyer and personal ally who Trump called out of retirement in April to lead the effort, but he quit in September after Attorney General Todd Blanche, in a profanity-laced phone call, ordered him to Washington. DiGenova had threatened to have U.S. marshals remove two prosecutors Blanche sent from Washington if they showed up in the grand jury room.
His top deputy, Kurt Olsen, left soon after, and two people familiar with the matter told the newspaper that Olsen had failed a polygraph about his contacts with foreigners, putting his security clearance at risk. Olsen, however, insisted he followed all requirements and didn’t resign over his clearance.
The team diGenova put together raised eyebrows. It included:
- his wife, Victoria Toensing
- an FBI agent who had investigated a theory that Italian satellites hacked the 2020 election
- a Stanford law professor known for memos justifying torture
- a former clerk to Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who is the only sitting judge in the Fort Pierce courthouse
The evidence against Trump’s enemies has also been thin. Maria Medetis Long, a respected national security prosecutor, concluded that it didn’t support indicting former CIA Director John Brennan. She put that in writing in April and was abruptly removed from the case. Later, an FBI veteran warned diGenova that Cannon had already ruled the Mar-a-Lago search lawful, and FBI Director Kash Patel pulled the agent off the case.
On top of that, any crimes tied to the Russia investigation fall outside the five-year statute of limitations.
Officials in Washington have also grown frustrated with Reding Quiñones, whom Blanche’s aides see as feckless and inexperienced. Blanche deputy Aakash Singh now oversees the inquiry directly, and the dozen prosecutors still on the case are fast-tracking narrower cases against some of the top targets.
Brennan’s grand jury appearance has been delayed from Oct. 15 to at least early December.
A Justice Department official said leaders had “full confidence” in the prosecutors now on the case.
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