Trump DOJ appointee who led ‘grand conspiracy’ probe of Trump foes resigns

WASHINGTON — The Donald Trump appointee who headed the office running a so-called “grand conspiracy” investigation looking into federal law enforcement officials who were involved in prior investigations of Trump has resigned.Attorney General Todd Blanche made the announcement on X Friday that U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason A. Reding Quiñones had submitted his resignation, the second high-profile resignation at the Justice Department this week following massive midterm losses by Republicans. Blanche said they were “grateful for Jason’s leadership in combatting violent crime, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and transnational crime, including the indictment of Raúl Castro” and that he had “served the Department multiple times over his distinguished career, and we thank him for his service to this country.”In his own post on social media, Reding Quiñones wrote that he was leaving “with immense pride in what we accomplished together and profound gratitude for the opportunity to serve our great Nation.”The “grand conspiracy” probe was seeking to charge officials over conduct that happened more than 10 years ago, based on the theory that separate investigations into Trump were part of a broader conspiracy against Trump’s rights. It sought to tie actions dating back to the 2016 campaign to the more recent Jack Smith investigation, which led to now-dismissed charges against Trump over seeking to overturn his 2020 election loss as well as his handling of classified documents found during a 2022 search of Mar-A-Lago. Trump denied the charges. No charges had yet been brought directly in connection with the “grand conspiracy” effort. Stacey Young, a former Justice Department lawyer who heads the group Justice Connection, said that “Jason Reding Quñiones will forever be known as this president’s Don Quixote for tilting at the windmill of the so-called grand conspiracy,” and that his “departure follows the well-tread path of others who signed up for this impossible dream.”Whoever replaces Reding Quñiones “should heed the great Attorney General Robert Jackson’s wise counsel that prosecutors should select those cases in which ‘the offense is the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain,’” she added.Joe diGenova, who worked under Reding Quiñones in the Southern District of Florida, resigned in September, and blamed officials from Justice Department headquarters with stepping in and trying to take over the investigation. “Everybody was in their lane, and then some lanes got crossed, and then I decided to leave,” diGenova told NBC News.The Justice Department has recently brought charges against other Trump political foes, but hasn’t had much success in the effort so far. A judge dismissed a case against two former FBI officials who House Republicans accused of lying to Congress.The administration also recently failed to indict former White House official Cassidy Hutchinson, a star witness for the Jan. 6 committee. Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Civil Rights Division which attempted to bring the Cassidy case, resigned on Thursday.Federal prosecutors are also seeking to bring a case against former FBI Director James Comey over conduct that allegedly happened in October 2016, when the government claims he authorized subordinates to speak to a New York Times reporter about national defense information. A separate case against Comey — related to an Instagram photo of seashells that the Trump administration contends was a threat against Trump’s life — is still pending in the Eastern District of North Carolina.