2 Top Doj Officials Resign, Including Assistant Attorney General For National Security

Two top Justice Department officials resigned Friday, including the assistant attorney general for national security, just a day after the department’s civil rights division chief departed her post.

John Eisenberg, the assistant attorney general in charge of DOJ’s national security division, resigned Friday, according to two people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. He oversaw prosecutions of terrorism, leak investigations and espionage cases, and his division was part of the prosecution of former national security adviser John Bolton for illegally retaining classified information from his tenure in the first Trump White House.

Eisenberg caught Washington’s attention in the first Trump administration as one of the central figures in the White House’s handling of President Donald Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he was the National Security Council’s top lawyer. He’s known as a quiet and unassuming presence in a Trump administration dominated by more colorful personalities.

A spokesperson for DOJ and Eisenberg didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Jason Reding Quiñones, a key federal prosecutor behind many high-profile cases during the first two years of the second Trump administration, including the case against former Cuban President Raúl Castro, is also leaving the department.

Reding Quiñones, who was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, also oversaw an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan and other federal officials who scrutinized Trump during his first campaign and presidential administration, including probes into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in 2016 and the president’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.

A Miami native and the son of a Cuban political refugee, Reding Quiñones was the first U.S. attorney confirmed during Trump’s second term, in an office that handles many of the administration’s Latin American affairs and immigration cases.

“We are grateful for Jason’s leadership in combating violent crime, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and transnational crime,” said Attorney General Todd Blanche in a statement announcing Quiñones’ resignation. “Jason has served the Department multiple times over his distinguished career, and we thank him for his service to this country.”

Quiñones and Eisenberg’s resignations added to te high-level departures from the Trump administration just days after Democrats swept this week’s midterm elections, winning control of Congress.

On Thursday, Harmeet Dhillon, who led a dramatic overhaul of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, also departed from the department. Dhillon had been the face of DOJ’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion under the second Trump administration, including lawsuits against leading universities for failing to address antisemitism on their campuses.