Two More Senior Officials Leave the DOJ

Two top Justice Department officials resigned Friday, creating new vacancies as the White House stares down incoming Democratic control of the Senate confirmation process.

Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney in South Florida overseeing the Justice Department’s “grand conspiracy” investigation of President Donald Trump’s political enemies, announced his resignation on social media, saying it was effective immediately.

Soon after, Attorney General Todd Blanche said he had accepted the resignation of John Eisenberg, the assistant attorney general in charge of the DOJ’s National Security Division.

Their departures came a day after Harmeet Dhillon, the Civil Rights Division chief, became the first senior official to resign from the Trump administration after Republicans’ sweeping losses in the midterms.

The Justice Department has been at the forefront of Trump’s retribution campaign since he returned to the White House last year, and congressional Democrats have made clear they plan to use their new oversight powers to scrutinize a range of actions by Trump’s appointees.

All three new DOJ vacancies are for Senate-confirmed roles. No senior officials from other agencies have yet publicly announced plans to step down in the wake of Democratic victories Tuesday.

Reding Quiñones’ resignation is the latest in a series of departures in the DOJ’s sputtering “Russiagate” probe into claims that Obama-era national security officials conspired to undermine Trump’s rights in the runup to the 2016 election.

Reding Quiñones was the first U.S. attorney confirmed after Trump returned to the White House, and he was tasked with pursuing possible charges against former CIA Director John Brennan and others involved in the investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to the Russian government in 2016.

He also led a “grand conspiracy” inquiry into former special prosecutor Jack Smith’s decision to charge Trump with mishandling classified documents after his first presidency. Reding Quiñones argued in court papers this year that the indictment was “unlawful” and that a report on Smith’s findings should remain sealed.

To date, nobody has been charged in that investigation. But multiple prominent DOJ officials who worked on it have left recently, including Joseph diGenova, who served as counselor to the attorney general, and Kurt Olsen, who had previously helped Trump’s 2020 election denial efforts.

“Jason Reding Quñiones will forever be known as this president’s Don Quixote for tilting at the windmill of the so-called grand conspiracy,” said Stacey Young, head of the DOJ alumni group Justice Connection and a former attorney with the department. “His departure follows the well-tread path of others who signed up for this impossible dream.”

Reding Quiñones also oversaw several high-profile criminal cases brought under Trump, including the indictment of Raul Castro, the former Cuban president, in connection with the 1996 shooting down of two U.S. civilian rescue planes.

Eisenberg was in charge of the DOJ’s sprawling counterterrorism, intelligence and cybersecurity portfolio. Scores of experienced prosecutors were forced out or left the National Security Division in the period surrounding Eisenberg’s confirmation in June of last year. Division officials told Congress in budget submissions this year that they were facing “unprecedented personnel constraints.”

Eisenberg was a lawyer for the White House in the first Trump administration, a role in which he drew intense scrutiny over his handling of the phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that ultimately played a key role in Trump’s first impeachment.

“We are grateful for his many years of commitment to protecting our nation and wish him continued success,” Blanche said of Eisenberg.

Dhillon announced her resignation as Civil Rights Division chief on Thursday after spending 18 months reshaping a unit founded to combat discrimination into a vehicle for Trump’s culture-war policies. She said she had intended to leave weeks ago but was asked by White House chief of staff Susie Wiles to wait until after the midterms.