Joe diGenova, the 81-year-old Trump ally leading a Justice Department investigation into alleged "deep state" conspiracies against the president, has resigned from the role. He told the Associated Press he had indeed quit, calling it an "honour and a privilege" to serve Trump and the department, but declined to explain his reasons. Sources cited by NBC News said the departure followed mounting frustration within the Justice Department and White House over the slow pace and management of the inquiry, despite diGenova being given a team of Washington-based lawyers to assist him.

The Southern District of Florida probe, launched around a year ago and handed to diGenova in April, aimed to tie together separate matters — alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, the Capitol riot charges and Trump's retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago — into a single narrative of an anti-Trump conspiracy by law enforcement and intelligence officials. Five months on, no charges have been filed, though subpoenas were recently issued to federal agents involved in the 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid. DiGenova, a former Reagan-era US attorney and longtime Trump loyalist who backed efforts to overturn the 2020 election result, defended the slow progress by insisting there was "plenty of evidence" but that building the cases properly takes time; no successor has yet been named, with Washington-based prosecutors expected to continue the investigation.