DOJ ousted the Brennan-probe prosecutor and installed Trump ally Joe diGenova as AG counselor

The Brennan investigation is rooted in a long-running Trump grievance: the 2017 intelligence community assessment that found Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump. Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida had been working the matter for months, with the office's National Security Section Chief, Maria Medetis Long, in charge. Career prosecutors and investigators on her team had repeatedly told Justice Department officials they did not believe the evidence supported a quick indictment, and CNN reported on April 17, 2026, that Long had been removed after resisting pressure from senior DOJ leadership to file charges on a timeline top officials deemed unacceptable. U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones had earlier told DOJ leadership that charges could still be months away.

The personnel swap moved quickly. On April 18, 2026, CNN reported that the Justice Department had appointed Joe diGenova — an 81-year-old Washington lawyer, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, longtime Trump legal ally, and public booster of efforts to overturn the 2020 election — as Counselor to the Attorney General, assigned to work on the Brennan investigation in Fort Pierce, Florida. Fort Pierce is the courthouse where Judge Aileen Cannon sits; according to CNN, the Quiñones-led plan is to use a Fort Pierce grand jury to pursue a broad "grand conspiracy" theory targeting former law enforcement and intelligence officials who participated in the Russia investigation. The appointment was driven by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who, after the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier in April over dissatisfaction at the pace of cases against Trump's political adversaries, has been pressing to satisfy the president's prosecution demands.

The discrete abuse documented here is the use of Justice Department personnel power — removing a career national-security prosecutor and installing a politically aligned outside loyalist — to redirect a politically-targeted federal investigation past career-attorney objections about evidentiary strength. The Department's official statement framed the removal as routine allocation of legal resources, but the chronology and the choice of replacement — a longtime Trump legal ally with a history of publicly demanding prosecution of Trump's critics — fit a pattern of pressuring career prosecutors to bring cases career staff judge unsupported, then replacing them when they decline.