Things must be grim inside Donald Trump’s Justice Department when Joe diGenova decides the revenge train has traveled too far. The lawyer who helped sell some of the most outlandish claims about the 2020 election has abruptly quit a conspiracy investigation built around Trump’s grievances.

DiGenova became notorious as part of the 2020 “elite strike force team” that descended on jurisdictions with theories insisting Trump had really won. Years later, he was brought into an investigation targeting people who investigated Trump or otherwise managed to bruise his famously delicate ego.

His exit came suddenly on Thursday, with diGenova confirming to the Associated Press, “I did in fact resign.” He also called his time inside Trump’s revenge apparatus an “honor and a privilege,” because apparently even an escape hatch must come with sufficient presidential flattery.

The reason for his departure appears more revealing than the ceremonial praise. DiGenova told New York Post Bureau Chief Josh Christenson, “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.”

That is quite a statement from someone who spent years orbiting Trump’s election denial operation. Finding the ethical boundary now is better than never finding it, but nobody should start polishing a profile in courage award just yet.

DiGenova soon offered the Associated Press a more careful explanation, claiming, “There’s plenty of evidence in all of these cases to prove the theories of prosecution.” He added, “It just takes time to get there,” while suggesting unnamed people wanted results faster than the evidence allowed.

That cleanup attempt raises more questions than it answers. People do not normally leave a prominent investigation after roughly five months without warning merely because coworkers are impatient with the calendar.

The explanation looks even shakier because diGenova reportedly promoted himself to Trump as someone capable of strengthening the conspiracy investigation. When he arrived, the sprawling operation had produced exactly zero indictments.

Five months later, after receiving the benefit of diGenova’s supposedly formidable legal expertise, the investigation has still produced zero indictments. Heckuva job, Joe, and quite the legal juggernaut Trump has assembled.

The investigation is being led by Jason Reding Quiñones, the deeply Trump aligned United States attorney overseeing the Southern District of Florida. Its targets reportedly include law enforcement and intelligence officials who investigated Trump during his 2016 campaign and first presidential term.

With diGenova gone, Quiñones will have to continue without one of the election denial movement’s familiar legal personalities. Fortunately for Trump’s revenge project, the operation has another unusually convenient feature waiting in Fort Pierce, Florida.

The grand jury hearing the investigation was convened where Judge Aileen Cannon presides. Cannon is a Trump favorite whose handling of litigation involving the former president has already made her a celebrated figure in his political universe and a possible future Supreme Court prospect.

If prosecutors can persuade the grand jury to approve any charge, Cannon could become an important figure in whatever follows. Trump and his allies have repeatedly embraced expansive legal theories when those theories serve his interests, and this investigation hardly looks different.

DiGenova still deserves no applause for spending months inside an operation aimed at Trump’s perceived enemies. Yet his refusal to chase indictments without evidence places him above Lindsey Halligan, which is an astonishingly low bar that someone nevertheless had to clear.

Halligan served as interim United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia until federal judges removed her. In the effort against former FBI Director James Comey, a federal magistrate accused her of making “fundamental misstatements of the law that could compromise the integrity of the grand jury process.”

DiGenova has now abandoned a vessel that remains stuck at zero indictments despite months of effort and abundant right wing enthusiasm. Whether others follow him remains uncertain, but Trump’s Justice Department has received a humiliating warning from one of election denial’s own veterans.

When even Joe diGenova says the evidence is not ready, the problem is not liberal obstruction or some imaginary deep state plot. The problem is that vengeance is not evidence, grievance is not law, and Trump’s demands cannot magically manufacture a legitimate criminal case.