Three senior Justice Department officials stepped down in two days, including the prosecutor whose office investigated earlier Trump probes.
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Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Friday that Jason Reding Quiñones had resigned as United States attorney for South Florida.
About 90 minutes later, Blanche announced that Assistant Attorney General John Eisenberg, who led the National Security Division, was leaving.
The Hill reported both Friday announcements, which came in the same week that voters went to the polls.
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Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, stepped down Thursday, making her the first of the three departures.
Fox News reported the White House had asked Dhillon to delay her departure until after the midterms.
National Review reported that Dhillon had decided weeks earlier to leave the department and planned to return to private practice.
Her division had led two unsuccessful election law cases involving California ballots, according to National Review’s reporting on her departure.
The South Florida office examined earlier criminal investigations involving President Donald Trump and a 2016 review of his campaign.
Prosecutors issued numerous subpoenas in the inquiry, often called the grand conspiracy probe, and filed no charges before Quiñones resigned.
Blanche credited Quiñones with taking on violent crime, drug trafficking, sex trafficking and transnational crime in his announcement on X.
The Southern District of Florida includes Miami, where the office handled both the Castro case and the Trump investigation.
The attorney general singled out the indictment of former Cuban President Raúl Castro among the office’s accomplishments under Quiñones.
The indictment accused Castro of murder over the 1996 shootdown of planes carrying four men from Brothers to the Rescue.
The group searched waters for Cubans attempting to reach Florida, and the case brought renewed attention to the fatal shootdown.
Quiñones highlighted his military service, Justice Department work and time on the bench in his own statement announcing his departure.
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He called public service “the honor of my lifetime” on X.
He said leading the office in his home district had been especially meaningful and thanked those who served alongside him.
Quiñones gave no public reason for stepping down from the office that oversaw the investigation into the earlier Trump probes.
Blanche praised Eisenberg for “strengthening our nation’s ability to address threats, both foreign and domestic” during his tenure.
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The announcements identified no successor for either the South Florida prosecutor’s office or the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
The New York Post reported Blanche had been frustrated for months over the lack of results from the Florida inquiry.
The Post reported Eisenberg had fallen out of favor in part over his handling of matters involving John Bolton.
Quiñones’s resignation followed the departures of three officials who had worked on the investigation at different points.
Career Justice Department official Maria Medetis Long resigned in April after playing a leading role in the investigation.
Long reportedly had concerns about the strength of the case, which examined how investigators handled earlier probes involving Trump.
Joe diGenova, a Trump ally who took over the inquiry, resigned in September amid apparent concerns about its pace.
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Kurt Olsen, another Trump ally who worked on the inquiry, left shortly afterward amid apparent issues involving his security clearance.
Olsen had also worked on Trump’s legal efforts concerning the 2020 election before becoming involved in the South Florida inquiry.
“If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem,” diGenova told the New York Post.
DiGenova separately defended Quiñones in comments reported Friday, describing him as “an honorable, professional, dedicated prosecutor, by-the-book, no-nonsense guy.”
Former CIA Director John Brennan was informed that he was a subject of the investigation into earlier Trump probes.
Brennan sued to require prosecutors to preserve records connected to the investigation, taking the dispute to federal court, ABC News reported.
A federal judge dismissed Brennan’s suit after finding that the dispute over preserving the records was premature.
This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
