Can the federal DOJ have my family’s attorney not proceed in filing their lawsuit?

Location: Indiana.

I am extremely hesitant to ask this… But long story short, around 7 years ago some massive fraud occurred with out of state individuals, the federal government got involved and got into some deep investigations, there is some serious money on the line, but the DOJ is advising my family’s attorney to not file anything, and it’s been going on like this for years now with little to no answers from my family’s attorney. Like initially they were prepared to file and we were going to settle on an agreed amount, but Covid happened and suddenly we couldn’t settle because of these restrictions. Then we had to wait to file due to some other court related things (somehow that wasn’t an issue when we were going to file or settle just before Covid), then once that was done, we simply are told we cannot file due to the Federal government and it’s the waiting game with no point of contact for the Federal DOJ for us and no real answers from our own attorney.

My question is: does this sound like something that happens? Or does this sound like our attorney is not wanting to proceed and is kicking the can down the road? We have been dealing with this very stressful process from 7 years now and we would like things to come to a close.