President Donald Trump's revenge investigation into the array of previous probes targeting him has descended into a new level of chaos, adding another setback to a growing pile of recent legal battles.

Trump demanded that the Justice Department and the FBI conduct an investigation tying together the inquiries into him over the past six years to prove they were part of a "grand conspiracy" orchestrated by the so-called "deep state," according to the Associated Press.

The plan was to link the investigation into Russian election interference and Trump's retention of classified documents into a single narrative of government conspiracy. The complication was that the underlying matters involved legitimate criminal misconduct supported by a long trail of evidence.

"The idea of connecting all those different investigations into one single conspiracy, there's no basis for that," said Randall Eliason, a retired federal prosecutor. "Then, maybe more importantly, there's no basis for an allegation that any one of them was actually a criminal act against Trump. They've all been verified and upheld in one way or another."

That gap between the president's demand for a sweeping conspiracy case and prosecutors' conclusions that the earlier probes were verified and upheld has now cost the investigation two of its leaders.

The effort took a significant turn last week when the leader of the probe abruptly resigned.

Joe DiGenova, 81, has served in and out of government for decades, including in President Ronald Reagan's administration. He became widely known for attacking Trump's cybersecurity official, who had maintained that the 2020 election was legitimate; DiGenova said the man should be "drawn and quartered."

Trump viewed DiGenova's investigation as a kind of reckoning with previous officials and administrations, but he grew frustrated with its slow pace. By Sept. 10, DiGenova was out, leaving behind comments indicating that he did not see any indictments coming out of the investigation. A lack of evidence has not stopped Trump in other cases, such as that of former FBI Director James Comey.

"If you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem," DiGenova told the New York Post.

DiGenova has insisted his remarks were taken out of context, arguing that there is "plenty of evidence in all of these cases to prove the theories of prosecution. It just takes time to get there, and some people want to get there a little faster than others — and you can't do that."

DiGenova took over the probe after Maria Medetis Long, a career national security prosecutor, was removed after conveying concerns about the legal strength of a criminal case against former CIA Director John Brennan.

In a statement after DiGenova's ouster, Brennan's attorney, Ken Wainstein, said: "I've spent decades in and around the Justice Department. I've never even conceived of a situation like this." He alleged that the DOJ is "blatantly trying to frame somebody for a crime that is complete fiction."

"President Trump wants action in certain cases, and this seems to be one of them," said John Fishwick Jr., a former U.S. attorney in Virginia. He added that he does not expect the DOJ to back down any time soon. Who takes over the probe next — and whether it advances toward charges in the Brennan matter despite the concerns Long raised about its legal strength — are the questions that will now shape a case Trump has framed as a reckoning.