Trump ally Joseph diGenova resigns from DOJ, citing pressure to indict without evidence

Joseph diGenova's resignation from the Justice Department last Thursday lays bare the degradation of the department under Todd Blanche. It is not simply the collapse of one crackpot investigation. It is a window into the fundamental corruption that now runs through the DOJ—the replacement of law and evidence with the raw political will of Donald Trump.

A Loyalist's Background

It is important to the story that diGenova is a consummate Trump loyalist. He aligned himself with the Rudy Giuliani–Sidney Powell–Jenna Ellis effort challenging the election results, and more generally adopted the meritless article of faith that the 2020 campaign was stolen. He was a prominent voice on Fox News insisting that the Russia inquiry was a law enforcement plot to frame Trump.

He is one of the president's own. Descriptions of him typically append the kenning "Trump loyalist" or "longtime Trump ally." But diGenova is also a former federal prosecutor—a real one, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia under Ronald Reagan.

That was some 40 years ago, and he has not tried a case in the decades since. No matter. Any criminal prosecutor who came up in the department in that era was steeped in the axioms set out in the Principles of Federal Prosecution that govern every legitimate federal charge: You do not indict unless you believe the target is guilty and you believe you can prove it to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. To translate it into diGenova's terms: evidence and witnesses. They are the sine qua non of federal prosecution, and they are precisely the same principles Todd Blanche himself was schooled in as an assistant United States attorney in New York.

Abandoned Principles

Those most basic of commands have been abandoned in this DOJ. They have become disposable the moment they collide with Trump's political preferences. And when diGenova, a partisan of the first order, hit the point where he was being told to indict without the basic goods, he balked. Reading between the lines of a resignation, his exit is a quiet, devastating verdict on Todd Blanche's tenure and the department he now runs.

The "Grand Conspiracy" Investigation

The investigation that diGenova stepped away from is what Trump's allies reverently call the "grand conspiracy." It is amorphous and protean, but in essence it is the theory that everyone who ever scrutinized Trump since 2016 was secretly part of one coordinated plot to destroy him: Barack Obama, John Brennan, James Comey, James Clapper, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page. The Russia investigation, the classified-documents case—all of it, braided into a single decade-long scheme.

But there is no such thing, on the facts and the law. "Grand conspiracy" is not a concept in federal law. There is no statute, no charge, nothing in the United States Code by that name. It is not a legal theory at all. It is a MAGA wet dream, a holy grail cherished by the most fevered corner of Trumpworld, with no possible purchase in an actual courtroom.

A Pattern of Pressure

The first prosecutor on the case saw exactly that. Maria Medetis Long, a seasoned career national security prosecutor in South Florida, balked at bringing charges faster than the evidence would support. She was pushed off the investigation in the spring for her trouble.

Enter diGenova, eagerly. Days after Medetis Long was shown the door, he was sworn in as counselor to the attorney general in April with marching orders to bring home the Grand Conspiracy. DiGenova vowed to do so.

After several months passed, diGenova began to get crosswise with Main Justice. The department had grown impatient with his pace, believed he was slow-rolling the whole thing, and sent prosecutors down to Florida from Washington to speed him along. He sidelined them, and the standoff only deepened, until someone told him last week that he had lost the confidence of his superiors.

If it was a move designed to get him to accelerate the work, it backfired: Last Thursday, diGenova resigned.

The Bombshell Statement

His resignation statement itself was courtly and anodyne: "It was an honor and privilege to serve the president and the department," he told CNN. But his subsequent statements leave no doubt about the corrupt nature of the pressure he was experiencing from Main Justice.

DiGenova is an old Washington hand, used to working the press, and he has given several post-resignation statements. I expect that he is not done talking.

He spoke to the New York Post and delivered the bombshell line:

"If you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem."

That is radioactive. It charges the administration with pressing prosecutors to bring charges unsupported by evidence—a direct violation of the most fundamental principles of federal prosecution.