Top prosecutor in office that housed Trump’s ‘grand conspiracy’ probe resigns from DOJ

The prosecutor whose South Florida office oversaw President Trump’s so-called grand conspiracy probe has resigned from the Department of Justice (DOJ), Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Friday.

“United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones submitted his resignation from the Department of Justice,” Blanche wrote on the social platform X. “We are grateful for Jason’s leadership in combatting violent crime, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and transnational crime, including the indictment of Raúl Castro.”

Jason Reding Quiñones’s office was host to a wide-ranging investigation into the criminal investigations into Trump as well as a 2016 review of the president’s campaign.

Reding Quiñones’s resignation is the second major Justice Department exit following the midterms. Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, resigned Thursday , something she said she decided to do prior to Election Day.

But the grand conspiracy probe has been plagued by numerous departures.

Trump ally Joe diGenova, who had stepped in to lead the probe, resigned in September over apparent concerns about the speed of the investigation.

In an interview that month with the New York Post, diGenova suggested there were larger issues with the investigation.

“If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem,” he told the outlet.

Maria Medetis Long, a career Justice Department official who also played a leading role in the case, resigned in April, reportedly over concerns about the strength of the case .

Kurt Olsen, a Trump ally who worked on the case and had been involved in the president’s 2020 legal efforts, resigned shortly after diGenova , apparently over issues related to his security clearance.

While prosecutors working on the investigation had issued numerous subpoenas, it had not yet resulted in any charges. Former CIA Director John Brennan had been informed he was a subject of the probe and had sued to require prosecutors to retain all records in the probe, but a federal judge tossed the case , determining it was not yet ripe.

In a post on X, Reding Quiñones did not offer a rationale for his departure.

“From serving our Nation in uniform to serving at the Department of Justice and on the bench, public service has been the honor of my lifetime. But leading the U.S. Attorney’s Office in my home district has been especially meaningful,” he wrote.

“I leave with immense pride in what we accomplished together and profound gratitude for the opportunity to serve our great Nation.”

The most significant cases brought under Reding Quiñones tenure included criminal charges against former Cuban President Raúl Castro.

The indictment charged Castro with murder related to shooting down the planes of four men in 1996 who were part of Brothers to the Rescue, a group that scanned the waters for Cubans trying to reach Florida’s shores.