To Investigate His Investigators, Trump Recruited a Man Who Had Called for Their Imprisonment

A Prosecutor Who Had Already Called for Prison

Joseph diGenova said it before he had the job. In the summer of 2025, Lawfare reported, he went on air, named former CIA Director John Brennan and other former officials as people who would face a Florida grand jury, and said: "This conspiracy against President Trump deserves punishment, not just a lecture. People need to go to prison."¹

On September 20, 2025, Donald Trump addressed Attorney General Pam Bondi by name on Truth Social and demanded action against adversaries he named: "They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!"² NBC News reported that he fired Bondi in part because he was frustrated by her lack of success prosecuting his political foes.³

On April 20, 2026, diGenova was sworn in at the Justice Department (DOJ) and assigned to lead its inquiry into officials who had investigated the President.¹⁴ He said on the radio that day that Trump had "personally asked" him to take the job, Lawfare reported.¹

The New York Times reported that the inquiry imposed fear and steep financial costs on potential targets, particularly Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey.⁵ When diGenova resigned that September, it had brought no charges, the AP reported.⁶ The charge is abuse of the public power to prosecute: Trump demanded punishment for named adversaries, then entrusted the investigation of his investigators to a man who had already demanded it.²⁷¹

The President's Choice

The New York Times later reported that the choice was Trump's: he instructed his chief of staff and Todd Blanche, Bondi's successor as acting attorney general, to hire diGenova over objections from Bondi and other officials.⁵ The Associated Press described diGenova as a prominent Trump ally who had repeatedly promoted the claim of an intelligence-community conspiracy against the President.⁶

DOJ announced a strike force on July 23, 2025, to assess disclosures by the Director of National Intelligence and investigate possible legal steps.⁸ The broader theory seeks to connect the Russia inquiry and the later investigations of Trump as one conspiracy to deny him his civil rights, according to Brennan's complaint and the AP.⁴⁶ It also encompasses former special counsel Jack Smith's prosecutions of Trump, the Times reported, and Trump has called for prosecuting Smith.⁵⁷ Rep. Jim Jordan, the House Judiciary chairman, later referred Smith to DOJ, a congressional false-statements referral distinct from the Florida investigation, and Smith rejected the accusation.⁹¹⁰¹¹

Asked on April 14, 2026, about the post to Bondi, Blanche defended it. He told NBC: "That type of communication from President Trump should make every American happy."³ Directing DOJ was "what being the commander in chief is about," he said, calling Trump "my boss" and the adversary investigations a small part of the Department's work.³ NBC reported that Trump's personal involvement departed from other DOJ leaders' public efforts to keep the White House out of criminal investigations.³

The post to Bondi named Comey, Adam Schiff and 'Leticia', not Brennan.² Trump's account backed action concerning Brennan later, by sharing other people's words: another user's image in May 2026, which Brennan's complaint describes as urging Blanche to indict him, and a prosecution-related news headline that September.¹²¹³⁴

On March 18, 2024, while a candidate, Trump raised prosecuting January 6 witness Cassidy Hutchinson; as President, he shared a headline about her referral in March 2026, and Bloomberg reported on October 8, 2026, that DOJ's Civil Rights Division was seeking her indictment, while CBS separately reported grand-jury evidence presentations.^14151617 CBS also reported that Trump's driver contradicted Hutchinson's second-hand account of Trump reaching for the steering wheel, but could not determine which parts of her testimony prosecutors were scrutinizing; her Washington inquiry is distinct from the Florida investigation.¹⁷¹⁶

The Prosecutor He Replaced

The inquiry kept losing its prosecutors, beginning with the one diGenova replaced. In April 2026, national-security prosecutor Maria Medetis Long was removed from the Brennan investigation, the AP reported; she told defense lawyers she was no longer participating.¹⁸ The AP, citing an unnamed person, reported that her removal followed doubts about whether there was enough evidence for a criminal case; DOJ answered that moving attorneys between cases was routine and normal.¹⁸ The New York Times later reported that before her removal she had put in writing her conclusion that the evidence did not support indicting Brennan.⁵ DiGenova replaced her within days.¹

As he was settling in, the Times reported, FBI agent Jack Eckenrode told him that Judge Aileen Cannon had already ruled the search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago home lawful, making it difficult to use the search as evidence of the alleged conspiracy.⁵ According to that report, diGenova considered the point irrelevant and called FBI Director Kash Patel, and Patel pulled Eckenrode off the case.⁵

DiGenova Resigns

On September 10, 2026, diGenova himself resigned.⁶ The AP reported, citing an unnamed person, mounting frustration in DOJ and the White House over the probe's pace and management.⁶ DiGenova told the New York Post, as relayed by the AP: "If you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem."⁶ When the AP reached him again, he said the remark had been taken out of context: there was "plenty of evidence" but the cases needed time, and "some people want to get there a little faster than others".⁶

Another prosecutor on the inquiry, Kurt Olsen, left it on September 28, according to the Times; he remained at DOJ as senior counsel, CBS reported after Blanche said he had not resigned.¹⁹²⁰

Two Inquiries Into One Man

The inquiry runs on grand jury subpoenas to people who investigated Trump.²¹²² CNN reported more than 150 subpoenas in May 2026, and Brennan's complaint records Blanche saying in June that DOJ had issued 200 grand jury subpoenas while discussing an alleged pattern of conduct against Trump.²³⁴ Brennan's complaint also says Washington grand jury testimony subpoenas issued around April 18 were withdrawn within two days in favor of voluntary interviews.⁴

Brennan faces two inquiries, his July complaint says: one into his statements to Congress, the other into the alleged conspiracy.⁴ In a sworn declaration in September, his lawyer said Olsen had called Brennan a target of the congressional-statements inquiry in Washington and a subject of the broader inquiry in Fort Pierce, Florida, which reached Mar-a-Lago and beyond.²¹

On September 24 the AP reported that lawyers for FBI employees who had carried out the search of Trump's home disclosed subpoenas requiring testimony in Fort Pierce.²² The lawyers said their clients were willing to explain an investigation they believed had broken no laws.²² Their lawyers asked Cannon whether her restrictions on releasing nonpublic information permitted the testimony, and said DOJ had broached immunity without formally offering it.²²

The Subpoena and the Courthouse

Brennan's own subpoena reached his lawyer on September 10, 2026, the day diGenova resigned.²¹⁶ DiGenova had signed it the day before; it called for testimony on October 15 before a Fort Pierce grand jury.²¹

Fort Pierce has one judge: Cannon, a Trump appointee who dismissed his classified-documents prosecution in 2024.²⁴²⁵ In a December 2025 letter, Brennan's lawyers asked the district's chief judge to prevent prosecutors from steering the matter to Cannon's courtroom, while expressly declining to suggest she would favor the government; DOJ called the judge-shopping allegation speculative.²⁴²⁶ On September 26, 2025, Chief Judge Cecilia Altonaga granted the government's request for additional grand juries in Fort Pierce and Fort Lauderdale, to be empaneled January 12, 2026; the order named no investigation and supplied no reason.²⁷

On October 9, the New York Times reported that prosecutors had postponed Brennan's appearance to at least early December amid the turmoil.⁵ It reported a dozen prosecutors still pursuing the inquiry, most of them military lawyers or lawyers dispatched from other offices, and said it had diverted resources from other investigations.⁵ A DOJ official told the Times that Washington had full confidence in the current prosecutors and would act if evidence of misconduct emerged.⁵ Those prosecutors, the Times reported, were fast-tracking narrower cases while struggling with evidence and jurisdiction for the overarching conspiracy.⁵

The Strongest Defense, and Its Limits

The strongest defense is that former officials remain accountable to criminal law, the President controls DOJ, and an investigation need not begin with enough evidence to convict.²⁸²⁹ The Supreme Court permits investigation based on suspicion, presumes prosecutors act properly and makes selective prosecution difficult to prove; it also prohibits choosing targets out of malice or to harass them.²⁸³⁰ Its ruling on a president's criminal immunity recognizes exclusive executive authority over prosecution and discussions with the Attorney General.²⁹

The government also has documents to point to. John Durham's 2023 report found failures by DOJ and the FBI and charged three people with false statements; one pleaded guilty and juries acquitted the other two.³¹ It said other matters either were not federal crimes or lacked evidence sufficient to sustain convictions, and Brennan cooperated in an interview without being charged.³¹ The CIA's 2025 review criticized Brennan for favoring narrative consistency over analytical soundness while recording that the overall assessment was deemed defensible.³² House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan's October 2025 referral alleged Brennan lied in a 2023 congressional interview; Brennan and his lawyers deny the false-statements allegation.³³⁶ Those documents justify scrutiny; they do not themselves prove that a decade of investigations was one criminal plot.³¹³²³³

Asked about diGenova's past comments, Blanche said that prior statements about a matter do not necessarily create a conflict of interest, Lawfare reported; Brennan's complaint records him rejecting the suggestion of bias and saying diGenova would act ethically and follow the facts.¹⁴

No court has found the Brennan investigation unlawful, and none has ruled on these defenses.³⁴ Brennan sued on July 1 to preserve government records for a possible future selective- or vindictive-prosecution challenge; DOJ argues the suit is premature because an investigation might never produce an indictment, a grand jury would have to find probable cause, and a later judge would decide any defense challenge.⁴²⁶ Judge Jia Cobb heard argument September 14, and the docket updated October 10 shows no ruling on the preservation request.³⁴

In other cases, courts have ruled both ways. Chief Judge James Boasberg quashed subpoenas to the Federal Reserve Board in March, finding that they were used to pressure its chair to lower interest rates or resign and that the government's criminal-investigation justifications were pretextual.³⁵ In August the government won: Judge Emily Marks denied the Southern Poverty Law Center's requests for dismissal and discovery because the organization had not provided evidence that Trump's hostility motivated its prosecutors.³⁶

Trump's hostility alone does not prove the motives of individual prosecutors, and the public evidence does not establish a presidential order for a particular charge.³⁶¹⁵ The objection here reaches beyond hostility: Trump demanded prosecutions, Blanche defended the demand, and diGenova said the President personally recruited him after he had advocated imprisonment of the officials he would investigate.²³¹ Blanche's assurance that diGenova would follow the facts does not change that choice.¹⁴

The Charge Against Trump

Impeachment is a separate question from criminal liability: Trump v. United States describes it as Congress's political removal process.²⁹ The Constitution makes faithful execution of the laws a presidential duty and authorizes removal for high crimes and misdemeanors.³⁷ Hamilton described impeachment as addressing abuse of public trust, while warning that partisan strength could overwhelm proof.³⁸ In 1974 the House Judiciary Committee approved, 28-10, an article charging Nixon with misuse of investigative agencies for purposes unrelated to law enforcement or other lawful functions.³⁹

Trump publicly demanded prosecutions of named adversaries and, by diGenova's own account, personally recruited a man who had already called for the investigators to go to prison.²⁷¹ That is a use of the public trust Congress has reason to examine.³⁷³⁸