Three Justice Department officials resign following midterms - USA Today
Three Justice Department officials have now resigned in the wake of a tidal wave of Democratic midterm election wins.
Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, the prosecutorial office that has been running a probe dubbed the "grand conspiracy" investigation into people who investigated President Donald Trump, said in a social media post that he submitted his resignation Friday, Nov. 6.
Reding Quiñones wasn't alone in exiting Friday. John Eisenberg, the assistant attorney general leading the DOJ's National Security Division, is also leaving the department, Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed on social media.
The pair follow in the footsteps of another departing official, DOJ Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon. Her resignation was announced Nov. 5. Dhillon said in a text message to USA TODAY that "these jobs are tough" and had informed Blanche in her resignation letter that she'd "accomplished what I came to do."
It's unclear what the shakeup could mean for the department's work.
A department spokesperson told USA TODAY the DOJ's mission hasn't changed since the midterms, and it is focused on enforcing the law, combatting crime and protecting Americans. The spokesperson said officials who have recently announced they are leaving helped make the country safer and the DOJ was lucky to have them.
The spokesperson didn't respond to USA TODAY's request for comment on whether officials beyond Dhillon, Eisenberg and Reding Quiñones have also departed this week.
Following Democrats' electoral wins this week, the department may face heightened scrutiny next year from Democrat-controlled congressional committees.
Already, Democrats have decried what they say are politically motivated investigations, including the "grand conspiracy" probe and three separate criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey, a prominent critic of the president. One of those cases was dismissed in November 2025, and the two others remain pending.
The current DOJ has also faced numerous failures to secure indictments from grand juries, even though federal prosecutors' requests for grand jury indictments are typically almost always successful. Late last month, a grand jury refused to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump White House aide who implicated Trump in potential wrongdoing during testimony about the Jan. 6, 2021 riot by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol.
"LAWYER UP," Rep. Robert Garcia, D–California, who is currently the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, posted on social media Nov. 3, after midterm election results began coming in.
Reding Quiñones isn't the only official tied to the "grand conspiracy" investigation to have left. Joseph diGenova, a former Reagan DOJ official who assisted Trump's efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election, resigned ahead of the midterms in September, just months after he joined the DOJ to work on the probe. DiGenova later suggested to The New York Post that he was improperly pressured to bring charges.
"If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem," he said.
The division led by Eisenberg secured a guilty plea from John Bolton, a former Trump national security adviser who became a prominent Trump critic, in a criminal case over Bolton's handling of classified information. Bolton's sentencing is upcoming.
Dhillon dramatically reshaped the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, dropping lawsuits accusing police departments of civil rights violations and directing investigations into potential racial preferences in employment and university admissions, religious liberty issues and local limits on gun ownership. She said on a Breitbart News podcast that, as of August 2025, about 300 of the division's 400 lawyers had left since Trump retook office.
The three DOJ leaders aren't the only Trump officials to exit top roles this week. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles announced in a social media post Friday that she is leaving her position as well.
