Trump choice for top prosecutor 'flunked' entry-level job: report

President Donald Trump's choice to lead federal prosecutions in the Southern District of Florida actually flunked out of an entry-level job in that same office several years ago.

Jason Reding Quiñones was hired as a prosecutor in 2018 and placed on drug and gun cases to gain trial experience, and while most of the office's new hires eventually get promoted to more prestigious divisions, Reding Quiñones was flushed out, sources told the Washington Post.

"Most of those prosecutors win promotion," the Post wrote. "Reding Quiñones flunked, failing to impress his supervisors with his work ethic and legal acumen and earning poor marks on his performance evaluation, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

"He left the office in 2024," the Post reported. "A year later, President Donald Trump tapped Reding Quiñones, a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve, to return to the Miami-based U.S. attorney’s office as its boss."

Reding Quiñones’s sudden rise was boosted by conservative lawyer and online activist Mike Davis, who recommended him to the Trump administration to lead investigations into the president's political enemies after the two appeared together on a panel titled “Modern Lawfare and the American Democracy” at a conservative legal conference.

“What’s good about Jason is he is not worried about his next job,” Davis told the Post. “He’s going to be there and be a good patriot. He doesn’t care what people think about him. He’s going to follow the law and the constitution.”

The "Lawfare" panelists had talked about special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations of Trump during Joe Biden's presidency, and Reding Quiñones asked what steps should be taken to now that Trump was back in the White House, and Davis proposed a response that's remarkably similar to what his recommended hire is taking as U.S. attorney.

“There must be severe consequences,” Davis told the panel. “We should not take the high ground. … There has to be severe legal, political and financial consequences for this unprecedented republic-ending lawfare.”

Davis proposed charging Trump foes with conspiracy to deprive a person of his civil rights, and Reding Quiñones has become the go-to prosecutor against former Obama administration Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and CIA Director John Brennan, as well as former FBI officials Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, and the Trump administration is recruiting outside prosecutors to replace those who have fled the office.

“I have never seen anything like this before,” said one recently departed assistant U.S. attorney with decades of experience in the office. “People are now asking, ‘If I touch this or that case, will I be fired?’”

The investigation appears to focus on a longtime Trump grievance about a 2017 intelligence assessment that found Russians had taken steps to promote his first campaign for president, and Davis has proposed a work-around for the statute of limitations that would otherwise place the alleged offenses against Trump out of reach for prosecution.

"Davis has floated the idea, however, that prosecutors could try to prove that the assessment was just one part of a long-running conspiracy by government officials to deprive Trump of his rights," the Post reported. "He asserts the conspiracy included the 2022 raid of the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort, which was authorized by a court to retrieve sensitive government materials that Trump took when he left the White House, which would be within the time limit."

The chosen venue for potentially charging those crimes also seems to have been chosen with the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case in mind.

"Davis has also posted court documents on social media showing that a grand jury has been impaneled at Redding Quiñones’s request at the Fort Pierce courthouse — which is part of the Southern District of Florida — and suggested it would be hearing evidence in the conspiracy case," the Post reported.

"By impaneling the grand jury in Fort Pierce, the proceedings, set to begin in January, would likely be overseen by U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon — a conservative favorite who made the controversial ruling to dismiss the federal mishandling of documents indictment against Trump," the report added.