Photo by APK, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Two top officials at the US Department of Justice resigned on Friday, accelerating an exodus of senior figures from the department in the days after Democrats won control of Congress in Tuesday's midterm elections.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Friday that he had accepted the resignations of John Eisenberg, the assistant attorney general who headed the department's National Security Division, and Jason Reding Quiñones, the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
The departures follow the resignation on Thursday of Harmeet Dhillon, who led a sweeping overhaul of the department's Civil Rights Division — making three senior exits from the Justice Department in the space of three days.
Two Senior Departures in One Day
Eisenberg led the National Security Division, which handles terrorism, espionage and foreign intelligence cases. Quiñones was the top federal prosecutor in Miami, one of the most high-profile US attorney's offices in the country.
It is not clear why either man resigned, Reuters reported. Blanche's public statement announcing the departures did not give reasons for either resignation.
With the two departures, the department is now without leaders for two of its signature initiatives — relitigating past investigations of President Donald Trump and targeting higher education, according to Reuters.
The 'Grand Conspiracy' Probe Loses Its Lead Prosecutor
Quiñones was at the centre of the Trump administration's efforts to use the Justice Department to investigate the president's political adversaries. His Miami office was assigned to lead the so-called "grand conspiracy" investigation into whether former intelligence and law enforcement officials conspired against Trump, covering the criminal investigations into his handling of classified documents after leaving office in 2021 and his campaign's contacts with Russia in the 2016 election.
The investigation has proceeded in fits and starts for more than a year, and no criminal charges have been filed as a direct result of the probe. The prosecutor who had been overseeing it day to day, Joseph diGenova, resigned in September.
According to the Associated Press, Quiñones' resignation followed frustrations among Washington officials with his management of the office assigned to lead the investigation, citing people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. ABC News reported that department leaders had privately criticised him over the probe's slow progress and that his exit had been seen as a foregone conclusion. CNN reported that he resigned under pressure from department leadership. Blanche said in his announcement that the department is "grateful for Jason's leadership."
Quiñones was confirmed by the Senate last year as US attorney for the Southern District of Florida. During his tenure, dozens of prosecutors left the Miami office, and some who had prosecuted people accused of storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, were fired.
His office also brought criminal charges against former Cuban President Raúl Castro in May, over the 1996 downing of civilian planes flown by Miami-based exiles, and is prosecuting Alex Saab, a Colombian-born businessman close to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
An Exodus After the Midterm Losses
The resignations came days after voters handed Democrats control of both houses of Congress, a result that will give the incoming majority new powers to investigate the administration once it is sworn in next January.
The same day the resignations were announced, Trump named Stephen Miller, the architect of his hard-line immigration agenda, as his next White House chief of staff — a signal that the president intends to press ahead with his agenda rather than soften his approach toward the incoming Democratic Congress.
Democrats have said they plan to use congressional oversight to investigate the Justice Department and immigration enforcement. For now, the department faces a leadership vacuum at the top of two of its most sensitive divisions, with no successors named for any of the three posts.
Sources: Reuters; CNN; The Associated Press.