Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, abruptly resigned Friday. He had been overseeing the Justice Department’s so-called “grand conspiracy” investigation into Obama- and Biden-era intelligence officials, CBS News reports.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the resignation and praised Quiñones for his work tackling violent crime, trafficking and transnational criminal organizations. CBS News did not report a reason for the departure.
The investigation, based in Fort Pierce, is examining whether former intelligence officials under two Democratic administrations conspired to keep President Trump out of office through a series of criminal and intelligence investigations.
It is separately looking at whether former CIA Director John Brennan lied to Congress about the agency’s role in an intelligence assessment that found Russia had tried to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
According to CBS News, the probe has generated extensive grand jury activity but has yet to produce charges establishing the alleged overarching conspiracy.
Quiñones is the latest in a string of departures. Joe diGenova, a former U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., quit his role in September amid disagreements with the Deputy Attorney General’s Office over management of the investigation.
Sources told CBS News that senior Justice Department leaders had sent two attorneys from the office of Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter to Florida to help manage the case, a move both diGenova and Quiñones resisted.
Kurt Olsen, a former White House attorney, has since resigned from the case as well, and several attorneys temporarily assigned to the probe have returned to their home offices.
Earlier this year, the lead career prosecutor in Quiñones’ office was sidelined after she expressed concerns about the strength of the evidence, CBS News previously reported.
In late October, Blanche told reporters that Quiñones “always has been in charge” of the investigation and said “there’s no frustration” with its pace. He played down earlier exits, saying “people leave and stay all the time.”
The resignation came one day after the Justice Department announced the departure of Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division.
Quiñones’ office has also been working on a separate criminal investigation targeting former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who is jailed in New York awaiting trial on drug and torture charges.
The CBS News report includes no comment from President Trump or the White House on the resignation.
