South Florida U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones Resigns From DOJ; 'Grand Conspiracy' Probe He Oversaw Has Produced No Charges

The Justice Department's "grand conspiracy" investigation has kept losing the people running it. On Friday, Nov. 6, it lost the man whose office housed it.

Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on X that Jason Reding Quiñones, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, had submitted his resignation. About an hour and a half later, Blanche announced that John Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for the National Security Division, was also leaving.

That makes three senior Justice Department departures in two days. Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Civil Rights Division, resigned Thursday. She said she had decided to leave before Election Day.

What Blanche and Quiñones said

Blanche thanked Quiñones for "leadership in combatting violent crime, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and transnational crime, including the indictment of Raúl Castro." The announcement gave no reason for the departure.

Quiñones posted that it had been "the privilege of a lifetime to serve" and thanked President Trump for the opportunity. He wrote that he leaves "with immense pride in what we accomplished together."

CNN, citing sources familiar with the matter, reported that Quiñones was pushed out by department leadership. According to those sources, top officials blamed him after a case he had promised within months did not materialize. They also objected to his frequent travel outside his district, often to Washington. Those claims rest on anonymous sources. Neither Blanche nor Quiñones has confirmed them.

Many in the Miami U.S. Attorney's Office were in the dark about his rapid fall, CNN's sources said.

A probe with subpoenas and no indictments

The investigation, based in Fort Pierce, examines whether former intelligence officials under two Democratic administrations conspired to keep Trump out of office through a series of criminal and intelligence investigations. A separate thread asks whether former CIA Director John Brennan lied to Congress about the agency's role in creating the intelligence assessment that determined Russia had tried to interfere in the 2016 election.

Prosecutors have issued numerous subpoenas. No charges have been brought directly in connection with the "grand conspiracy" effort.

Brennan was told he was a subject of the probe. He sued to force prosecutors to preserve all records, and a federal judge dismissed the suit as not yet ripe.

The theory seeks to tie actions dating back to the 2016 campaign to the later Jack Smith investigation. That investigation led to now-dismissed charges against Trump over seeking to overturn his 2020 election loss and over his handling of classified documents found during a 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago. Trump denied the charges.

The exits keep piling up

Maria Medetis Long, a career Justice Department official who played a leading role in the case, resigned in April, reportedly over concerns about the strength of the case. CBS News previously reported that the lead career prosecutor in Quiñones' office was sidelined after expressing concerns about the strength of the evidence.

Joe diGenova, a Trump ally who had stepped in to lead the effort, resigned in September. He told the New York Post that month: "If you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem." He told NBC News: "Everybody was in their lane, and then some lanes got crossed, and then I decided to leave." He blamed officials from Justice Department headquarters for stepping in and trying to take over the investigation.

CBS News has reported, citing its own sources, that things came to a head after senior Justice leaders sent two attorneys from Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter's office to Florida to help manage the case, which both diGenova and Quiñones resisted.

Kurt Olsen, a former White House attorney involved in Trump's 2020 legal efforts, also resigned from the case, apparently over issues related to his security clearance. Several attorneys temporarily assigned to the probe returned to their home U.S. attorney's offices when their details ended.

Blanche has said the investigation is not in trouble. In late October he told reporters that Quiñones "always has been in charge," that "people leave and stay all the time," and that "there's no frustration" with the pace. "We're going to let that investigation continue as it should," he said.

Stacey Young, a former Justice Department lawyer who heads the alumni group Justice Connection, was blunt. She said Quiñones "will forever be known as this president's Don Quixote for tilting at the windmill of the so-called grand conspiracy." She added that his successor should heed Attorney General Robert Jackson's counsel that prosecutors should select cases in which "the offense is the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain."

What the record shows about Quiñones

The record is not all one direction. During his year in office, Quiñones' office won the indictment of former Cuban president Raúl Castro, one of the most consequential criminal indictments brought by the Trump Justice Department. Blanche specifically cited it. The indictment charged Castro with murder related to the 1996 shootdown of planes flown by members of Brothers to the Rescue.

The resignations also land days after Republicans took heavy losses in the midterms. Nothing in the announcements ties the departures to the election, and Dhillon's own account is that her decision predated it.

What comes next

CNN reported that the departures could provide a challenge for the administration, which will have trouble confirming new officials with a Democratic Senate, though the president could install acting leaders for the rest of his term.

No one has said publicly who will now oversee the Fort Pierce grand jury or whether its work will continue at its previous pace. Whether the probe produces an indictment, or quietly ends under new leadership, is now the open question.