A Justice Department official said Saturday that Joseph DiGenova, a conservative attorney who represented former President Donald Trump in post-2020 election legal challenges, has been appointed to help lead the criminal investigation of former CIA Director John Brennan.
DiGenova will oversee portions of the inquiry out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida and will serve as counselor to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the official said. His appointment comes days after lead prosecutor Maria Medetis Long was removed from the matter; a source told CBS News that Long was taken off the case after expressing doubts about the strength of the evidence. A Justice Department spokesperson called personnel changes “healthy and normal” but declined to offer further details.
Replacing a career federal prosecutor with a politically aligned attorney who backed efforts to overturn the 2020 election has prompted concern among observers about potential political influence. Commentators pointed to a prior episode in which a top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia was removed after questioning the sufficiency of evidence in prosecutions related to former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Those charges were later dismissed. Separately, a Trump administration official recently forwarded new criminal referrals to federal prosecutors in Miami and Chicago involving homeowner insurance issues.
DiGenova, 81, is a longtime Trump ally who has promoted claims that the 2020 election was stolen. In 2021 he apologized to Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, after Krebs said the 2020 election was free of major fraud. Krebs later sued DiGenova, alleging that on-air remarks in which DiGenova urged that Krebs be “drawn and quartered” and “shot” led to death threats against him.
DiGenova previously served as U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., during the Reagan administration.
The Brennan probe began after a referral from the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee in October. Committee Chairman Jim Jordan alleged that Brennan lied to Congress about the CIA’s role in preparing the intelligence assessment on Russian interference in the 2016 election, asserting that Brennan mischaracterized whether the CIA relied on a dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and whether the agency opposed including that dossier. The Steele dossier contained unverified, salacious allegations about then-candidate Donald Trump.
Prosecutors have recently stepped up investigative activity, conducting interviews with key witnesses. Also working on the case is Chris DeLorenz, who previously clerked for U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon during the special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents investigation and who left a deputy attorney general’s office position to join the Southern District of Florida team.