Attorney General Todd Blanche got on the phone with Joe diGenova on Wednesday. The call turned tense. On Thursday, diGenova quit as lead prosecutor on the Justice Department's investigation of President Trump's political enemies, CNN reported Monday, citing two people familiar with the call.
He left behind five months of work, a grand jury sitting in Fort Pierce, Florida, and not one charge.
Narativ reported Thursday night that diGenova had walked with zero charges and that there was never a case. CNN now shows how the end came. The prosecutor Blanche hired to charge Trump's foes spent his last weeks fighting his own headquarters, then walked out.
DiGenova picked his last fight over lawyers. Justice Department headquarters sent attorneys to help the Fort Pierce team, and diGenova tried to block them, CNN reported. He had been arguing with his bosses in Washington for months over how slowly the case moved.
DiGenova had a public answer for the pace. "As an old prosecutor of more than 50 years, I make cases the old fashioned way: witnesses, evidence, etc.," he told CNN last week. "That takes time." He declined to say more after he quit.
The department had already pushed out one prosecutor who said the evidence wasn't there. Career prosecutors wrote a legal analysis warning the case could not survive in court, CNN reported; Justice leaders disagreed and in April pushed aside Maria Medetis Long, the career prosecutor running it. DiGenova took over and widened the target list.
What diGenova asked Blanche's department for before he quit, and what it told him, explains the call.
