Page A2From§Eachthe early evening edition — 28 September 2026
As it ran on the front
Joseph diGenova took the Justice Department's "grand conspiracy" investigation knowing what it was for.
Eighteen days later, on September 28th, CBS News reported that Kurt Olsen had also resigned. Olsen held the same file — assigned to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, working the same "grand conspiracy" probe into the same Obama- and Biden-era officials diGenova had just left behind. CBS's sourcing describes Olsen as an election denier, a label that sits strangely next to the job: he spent his tenure building a case alleging the last two administrations conspired against this one, while publicly doubting the count that decided the one before it.…
…(cont) Neither resignation comes with a filing. "Differences of opinion" is the entire public record for why diGenova left; a thank-you note to the president is the entire record for how he described leaving. Olsen's file offers less than that — a wire report and a title. No court document explains what either man disagreed with. No charge has followed either departure. The public gets a press release doing the work a docket would otherwise do.
What the record does carry is the shape of the staffing. An investigation that keeps losing the lawyers assigned to run it is not usually failing because the lawyers are weak. It's failing because the file underneath them will not hold the weight the announcement keeps putting on it. Somebody keeps staffing the "grand conspiracy." Somebody keeps watching the staff leave. The rest of us get the wire item.
“Two guys quit the same "grand conspiracy" file in under three weeks and the department calls it "differences of opinion" — that's the phrase you reach for when the real reason would sound worse. An investigation that can't hold its own prosecutors isn't a staffing problem, it's a case that doesn't hold together, and you're the one paying to re-staff the same chair.”
“Personnel changes happen, prosecutors move on to other opportunities, that's normal Department turnover — did I just call two resignations in three weeks normal? Look, the investigation continues no matter who sits in that chair, and "differences of opinion" means integrity, not that anything's wrong with the case. I don't know why I'm explaining this twice.”
Earlier in this story
The receipts
The DOJ disbanded its crypto enforcement team in April 2025 and ordered inconsistent investigations closed - while the president's family runs a crypto business CNBC, 8 April 2025 (Blanche memo)
Election denier Kurt Olsen has resigned from DOJ, sources sayOlsen had been assigned to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, where he was working on the "grand conspiracy" investigation targeting Obama- and Biden-era officials
· Reagan-era prosecutor hired for Trump’s grand conspiracy’ resigns: ‘Differences of opinion’ from the morgue, 11 Sep 2026
· Prosecutor Joseph diGenova resigns from DOJ role investigating Trump-Russia probes from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.