South Florida’s top federal prosecutor, who oversaw the so-called “grand conspiracy” investigation into Obama and Biden-era intelligence officials, abruptly resigned Friday, marking a high-profile new departure from a Justice Department investigation plagued by internal conflicts and doubts about its viability.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the resignation of Jason Reding Quiñones, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, and praised him for his work combating violent crime, trafficking and transnational criminal organizations.
The press release offers no explanation for his departure.
In an article on X, Quiñones thanked President Trump for the opportunity and said it had been “the privilege of his life to serve” alongside his colleagues in the Southern District. “I leave with immense pride in what we have accomplished together and deep gratitude for the opportunity to serve our great nation,” he wrote.
His departure is the latest blow to the Fort Pierce-based investigation, which is looking into whether former intelligence officials under two different Democratic administrations conspired to keep Mr. Trump out of office through a series of criminal and intelligence probes. The investigation also separately focuses on whether former CIA Director John Brennan lied to Congress about the agency’s role in creating an intelligence assessment that determined Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Quiñones’ departure comes after Joe diGenova, a former U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., in the 1980s, also abruptly left office in September due to disagreements with the assistant attorney general’s office over the handling of the investigation.
Things came to a head with diGenova after top Justice Department leaders sent two lawyers from Acting Assistant Attorney General Trent McCotter’s office to Florida to try to help handle the case, which diGenova and Quiñones resisted, sources told CBS News.
Since then, Kurt Olsen, a former White House lawyer known for his efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election results, has also resigned from the case, while several others temporarily assigned to the investigation returned to their original U.S. attorney’s offices after their details were completed.
Earlier this year, the top career prosecutor in Quiñones’ office, who oversaw the investigation, was also sidelined after expressing concerns about the strength of the evidence, CBS News previously reported.
Blanche told reporters in late October that Quiñones “has always been in charge” of the investigation and downplayed previous departures from the investigation, saying “people leave and stay all the time.”
“We are going to let this investigation continue as it should,” Blanche said, adding that “there is no frustration” with the pace of the investigation.
The investigation has generated considerable grand jury activity, but has yet to produce indictments establishing the alleged overall conspiracy.
Quiñones’ resignation comes just a day after the Justice Department announced the Harmeet Dhillon’s departureAssistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. The son of Cuban refugees, Quiñones tried to make a name for himself in South Florida by pursuing investigations into Cuban communist government officials who committed crimes affecting the United States.
Earlier this year he established a Cuba-focused task force that brought together law enforcement officers from multiple agencies to work on investigations. He also supervised the criminal prosecution of former Cuban leader Raúl Castro and five others in connection with the fatal shooting down of two planes by the Cuban army 30 years ago.
In addition, his office is also working on a new criminal investigation targeting the former Venezuelan leader. Nicolas Madurowho is in a New York jail awaiting trial on criminal charges related to drugs and torture, CBS News previously reported.
The Miami-based investigation is focusing on corruption, a source told CBS News, and began shortly before Alex Saab, a close Maduro associate who served as Venezuela’s minister of industry and national production, was deported to the United States and indicted for his alleged role in a money laundering plot.
Saab has since pleaded guilty in the case, raising questions among observers about whether he might agree to cooperate and provide prosecutors with evidence against Maduro.
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