Joe DiGenova has resigned from the US Justice Department team overseeing a politically sensitive investigation into whether Obama- and Biden-era officials conspired to prevent Donald Trump from returning to office.
DiGenova submitted his resignation to Attorney General Todd Blanche at 3pm on Thursday. In a brief statement, he said: “It was an honour and a privilege to serve the president and the department.”
He declined to explain the reason for his sudden departure. His wife, attorney Victoria Toensing, who had also been working with federal prosecutors in Fort Pierce, Florida, is due to leave the department on Friday.
The resignation came as the investigation appeared to be gathering pace. Lawyers for several witnesses had recently been told that their clients would receive subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury, while investigators also sought voluntary interviews with former FBI agents involved in the inquiry into Trump’s retention of classified documents.
DiGenova was brought into the Justice Department in April to oversee the sprawling investigation, which is being run from Fort Pierce. It is examining allegations that officials from the Obama and Biden administrations were involved in a long-running effort to keep Trump out of political office.
He was also supervising a criminal inquiry into whether former CIA director John Brennan lied to Congress in 2023 about the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
DiGenova was appointed after Maria Medetis Long, the prosecutor previously handling both cases in the US attorney’s office in Miami, was removed from them. Sources said she had raised concerns about the strength of the evidence. No charges have been brought in either investigation.
The inquiries have faced criticism from former law-enforcement officials, who have questioned whether politically aligned personnel were being used to pursue them. Brennan has sued over the investigations, alleging that the Trump administration has “adopted a policy of using criminal process and prosecution to punish the President’s perceived adversaries”.
DiGenova, who served as US attorney in Washington from 1983 to 1988, returned to the department more than 30 years later. He subsequently represented Trump’s campaign in its unsuccessful effort to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election and has repeatedly attacked Brennan’s role in assessing Russian interference.
