We at Crooks and Liars are all too familiar with right-wing attack dog Joseph diGenova (and his wife, Victoria Toensing). As Digby reports in her aptly-titled article, “A Bad Penny,” the conservative commentator and pundit as far back as the Bill Clinton presidency – but who has not been a prosecutor since the Reagan administration – has been tapped to lead the federal “Grand Conspiracy” investigation “targeting the president’s perceived enemies that is underway in the Southern District of Florida under the leadership of U.S. attorney — and Trump loyalist — Jason A. Reding Quiñones.” Presumably, diGenova was chosen by acting Attorney General and Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, Todd Blanche.
A real prosecutor recently withdrew from the “Grand Conspiracy” investigation, Digby noted, reportedly after expressing doubts that the evidence didn’t support prosecuting former CIA director John Brennan.
But we all know that facts and the law are not what this is really about. Media Matters sums it up as an investigation that “unifies a hodgepodge of ‘deep state’ conspiracy theories touted by right-wing media into a single framework seemingly intended to defeat statutes of limitations and target a vast swathe of Democratic politicians and former federal law enforcement officials.” In other words, targeting Democrats and officials Donald Trump holds a grudge against.
The Grand Conspiracy “has unfolded over recent months in near-cinematic fashion, complete with an all-star cast of heroes and villains who bring Trump’s fantasy to life,” Lawfare explains. The crux is that its proponents “allege a plot against Trump that somehow manages to connect Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and James Comey to Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith. The supposed scheme with which these people are all allegedly involved manages to span three separate presidential elections and tie together matters as obviously distinct as Russian interference in the 2016 election and the classified documents search at Mar-a-Lago.”
The investigation is being carried out by Trumper Quiñones. The grand jury is being overseen by Judge Aileen Cannon, the same federal judge who got rid of the Mar-a-Lago documents case and blocked the release of prosecutor Jack Smith’s report on it for her (presumably) favorite p***y grabber.
“With diGenova, the man who created the case’s very origin story, they have their dream team in place,” Digby wrote.
Their dream team is a nightmare for those of us who actually respect the rule of law and believe it should apply fairly to everyone. That’s especially true with diGenova in charge. He has called Democrats’ inquiry into Trump’s efforts to get Ukraine to provide dirt against Joe Biden, “regicide,” as if a (Republican) president is king. DiGenova called for former Trump cybersecurity official Chris Krebs to be executed for daring to say the 2020 election results were legitimate.
In fact, diGenova is so awful, he seems to have been banned from Fox News since late 2019, according to Media Matters. In 2018 and earlier in 2019, he made more than a hundred appearances on the network, e.g. He and Toensing’s “appearances on Fox Business, however, continued for a few more weeks "— until diGenova uttered a "widely condemned antisemitic screed, at which point the couple stopped appearing there as well,” Media Matters found.
Recent reporting from Media Matters revealed that while Newsmax hosts have celebrated diGenova’s new gig, Fox News has only mentioned it once. We’ll see if Fox reinstates him with this new opportunity to target Trump foes.
And, under the “Every Accusation Is A Confession” category, Media Matters also noted that in February, 2020, “The Daily Beast reported on a 162-page internal Fox News research briefing book that found diGenova and Toensing were part of Rudy Giuliani’s secret team to get oppo research on Biden.
