The prosecutor overseeing President Donald Trump’s “grand conspiracy” probe of his foes abruptly quit, the latest in a string of exits from an investigation that has struggled to bring charges.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on X Friday that Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, had submitted his resignation.
Reding Quiñones wrote on X 13 minutes later that the resignation took effect that day. Both posts celebrated his tenure and gave no reason for his sudden exit.
“I leave with immense pride in what we accomplished together and profound gratitude for the opportunity to serve our great Nation,” Reding Quiñones wrote.
“We are grateful for Jason’s leadership in combatting violent crime, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and transnational crime, including the indictment of Raúl Castro,” Blanche wrote.
Neither statement mentioned the “grand conspiracy” investigation. Reding Quiñones’s office oversaw that probe and has been at the center of Trump’s efforts to turn the Justice Department against his political adversaries, Reuters reported.
“This is the guy who Trump boosters installed into SDFL for the purposes of bringing a vast number of indictments against foes (Obama to Jack Smith) over tales of a wild ‘grand conspiracy’ plot,” journalist Vaughn Hillyard wrote on X.
The probe, run through a grand jury in Fort Pierce, Florida, examines a loosely defined theory that officials who investigated Trump, from the 2016 Russia inquiry to the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, conspired to deprive him of his civil rights, the Associated Press reported.
Reding Quiñones’s bosses lost confidence in him after months of promised charges, according to CNN. He had repeatedly promised since last year to bring charges in the investigation.
On the day Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi in April, Reding Quiñones told her his office could charge former CIA Director John Brennan with lying to Congress by the end of the year, CNN reported in May. Brennan has denied the allegation, the AP reported.
Justice Department leaders grew dissatisfied with his performance and doubted he could deliver, CNN reported in September. A spokesperson for Reding Quiñones did not respond to CNN.
Reding Quiñones is the third person in charge of the probe to leave it since April.
That month, the Justice Department removed Maria Medetis Long, the career prosecutor leading the probe, after she told Reding Quiñones there was not enough to make a case, CBS News reported, citing a source. A department spokesperson confirmed the move.
Blanche then assigned Joe DiGenova, a former U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., to the case. DiGenova quit in September after clashing with top Justice officials over its pace, CNN reported.
“If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem,” diGenova told The New York Post, according to the AP.
“There’s plenty of evidence in all of these cases to prove the theories of prosecution,” diGenova later told the AP, saying his remark had been taken out of context.
In late September, Kurt Olsen, whom Trump named as his director of election security and integrity, left a team that had lost as many as eight prosecutors, Raw Story reported. The probe had yet to produce a single charge, the outlet added.
Olsen was frustrated that Justice Department leaders were pressing the team to secure indictments before the Nov. 3 midterm elections, sources told the Daily Beast. A department spokesperson told the outlet the investigation continues with a growing team.
Reding Quiñones resigned three days after that election, the deadline his team had reportedly been pressed to beat. It was the second departure of a senior Justice Department official since Republicans’ heavy losses at the polls, Reuters reported.
“It was a Deep State conspiracy theory in search of a legal theory,” legal journalist Adam Klasfeld wrote on X.
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