President Donald Trump has announced Jason A. Reding Quiñones as his pick for U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida, a district that oversees cases in Miami, and on paper, noted the Miami Herald, Quiñones has good credentials.
"He formerly served as a federal prosecutor in the Miami office, was appointed as a Miami-Dade County judge a year ago by Gov. Ron DeSantis, and he’s a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve."
But scratch beneath the surface and not everything adds up, said the report.
For starters, wrote Jay Weaver, "After a lifetime of only going by the last name 'Reding,' he added 'Quiñones' to his surname in December 2023 when he applied for judicial openings on the county bench — a not so uncommon strategy in the so-called name game of judicial politics in Miami-Dade, where the majority of voters are Hispanic. It’s not clear whether Quiñones is a family name, however, because the 44-year-old Reding has never publicly explained why he appended it to his application to the Florida Judicial Nominating Commission in his bid for county judge."
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Weaver then flagged an even bigger concern — Reding's actual track record.
"During his four years in the major crimes section, which focuses on lower-level felony cases, Reding received poor evaluations from supervisors who cited his incompetence, the Miami Herald has learned. In turn, Reding filed a complaint against the office, claiming it was discriminating against him as a white man whose temporary work as an Air Force reservist prevented him from performing at the same full-time level as other federal prosecutors in the major crimes section," the Herald reported.
He eventually dropped that discrimination complaint and was reassigned to the civil division, where his reviews were not as low.
This comes amid controversy over some of Trump's other picks for U.S. attorneys, most chiefly Ed Martin to oversee the District of Columbia.
Martin never worked as a prosecutor, pushed Stop the Steal conspiracy theories, used the power of his office to threaten lawmakers for political speech, and racked up ethics violations and staff revolts in the few weeks he has served as the acting head of the office.