The U.S. Justice Department is naming Joseph DiGenova to lead its ongoing criminal investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, Justice Department officials said Saturday.
DiGenova will oversee the investigation in the Southern District of Florida, joining the team just days after Maria Medeis Long was removed from the case, CBS News previously reported. The official added that he will serve as an adviser to Acting Attorney General Todd Branch.
A source familiar with the matter told CBS News that Long was removed from the case after raising concerns about the strength of the evidence. A Justice Department spokesman said on Friday the change of case staff was “healthy and normal” but did not elaborate on the reasons for the change.
The decision to add DiGenenova to the investigation and remove a career federal prosecutor from the investigation is likely to raise concerns about whether the case is politically motivated. The change echoes another case last year, when Trump ousted the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia and replaced him with a loyalist after raising concerns about the strength of evidence in the case against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Although Trump administration officials last month filed new criminal referrals with federal prosecutors in Miami and Chicago in connection with two cases of possible homeowners insurance fraud, the charges against James were later dismissed.
DiGenova is a staunch ally of Trump and has repeatedly promoted conspiracy theories claiming that the 2020 election was stolen. In 2021, he was forced to apologize to Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, who was fired during Trump’s first term, after Krebs said he believed there was no significant fraud or interference in the 2020 election.
Krebs later sued DiGenova after he called in a television appearance for Krebs to be “dragged away and quartered” and “shot to death.” Krebs later claimed the comments prompted death threats against him.
DiGenova, 81, served as the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., under Republican President Ronald Reagan.
The investigation into Brennan was prompted last October by the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee over allegations that Brennan lied to Congress about the CIA’s role in developing an intelligence assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
In the referral, Chairman Jim Jordan claimed that Brennan “erroneously” denied that the CIA relied on a dossier prepared by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele during drafting the intelligence assessment and falsely told the committee that the CIA objected to the inclusion of Steele’s dossier in the assessment.
The so-called Steele dossier contains salacious accusations against then-candidate Trump that have not been proven.
The case has heated up in recent weeks as team members continue to interview key witnesses. Chris DeLorenz, who served as a law clerk to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon during special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s retention of classified records, and who recently resigned from the deputy attorney general’s office to become U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, is also involved in the case.
