MIAMI — For decades, federal prosecutors in South Florida earned a chorus of praise for convicting Colombian drug lords, New York mafia bosses, health care fraudsters, and a spectrum of corrupt cops, judges and politicians.

But now, the Miami-based U.S. Attorney’s Office is undergoing a dramatic transformation as it focuses on two pillars of President Donald Trump’s agenda: a crackdown on illegal immigrants and an investigation into his political “enemies” — with the latter signaling an unprecedented, coordinated mission with the Department of Justice in Washington.

U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones, who was appointed by Trump, has directed the Southern District of Florida office to open the investigation and issue subpoenas in connection with John O. Brennan, the former CIA director during the Obama administration, according to reports by Bloomberg News, other media and multiple sources interviewed by the Miami Herald.

The current grand jury probe in Miami stems from the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation, dubbed Operation Crossfire Hurricane, that was started in July 2016 and looked into links between Trump’s presidential campaign that year and the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the U.S. election.

The FBI’s investigation coalesced by the following month when Brennan shared intelligence showing that the Russian government was behind the attack on the 2016 presidential election, which led to a major federal investigation during Trump’s first term that he has tried to discredit as a “hoax.” Trump, the Republican nominee, defeated Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, for the presidency.

The latest investigation, led by Reding Quiñones and prosecutors on his executive team, has generated a wave of controversy throughout the office in Miami. It peaked last week after two young federal prosecutors resigned when they were asked — but refused — to participate in a national security investigation aimed at Brennan and possibly others in the Obama administration, according to more than a half-dozen sources familiar with the resignations.

Both prosecutors, who had joined the office last year and worked in the major crimes division, were described by colleagues as up-and-coming assistant U.S. attorneys who decided to leave the office because of their ethical concerns about joining the national security probe. One graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, experienced combat duty in the Afghanistan war and attended law school at the University of Florida; the other graduated from the University of Florida and attended the University of Miami law school, before entering the honors program at the Justice Department.

Reding Quiñones declined to comment for this story, as an office spokeswoman told the Miami Herald that “he is not participating in interviews at this time.” A spokesman for the Justice Department also declined to comment.

Defending the Constitution

Former top federal prosecutors in Miami, as well as others who have worked in the office, described the state of affairs as “horrifying,” saying the longstanding tradition of prosecutorial independence since the Watergate era and downfall of President Richard Nixon has been abandoned by the Justice Department led by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Marcos Jimenez, who was appointed as the U.S. Attorney in Miami by President George W. Bush and served from 2002-05, said the Justice Department under Bondi has been politicized by Trump to go after his enemies. He praised the two prosecutors for standing up to Reding Quiñones in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and choosing to resign rather than participate in the planned prosecution of a Trump adversary, Brennan.

“It’s the antithesis of what I was taught to do as a young prosecutor or what any prosecutor was taught to do,” Jimenez told the Herald. “My message to prosecutors and former prosecutors: you take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States; you don’t take an oath to support and defend Donald Trump.”

One of his successors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, who served during the Obama administration, said the Trump administration has turned the federal justice system into a weapon as part of a broader strategy to punish former influential government officials during the Obama presidency.

“Every administration has different priorities for the Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney’s Offices around the country, but no administration has made vanquishing your political enemies a priority like this one,” said Jeffrey Sloman, who worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for 20 years and led the office in 2009-10.

“It’s also hollowing out the prosecutors who are devoted to public service and have no allegiance to one political party or the other and replacing them with loyalists to Trump,” he said. “That’s what is so horrifying about what’s happening in Washington and what’s going on in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami. It’s so politically motivated.”

Other former prosecutors said they found it “appalling” that Reding Quiñones and his team would pressure a couple of young prosecutors to carry the weight of a sensitive national security case targeting Brennan instead of approaching more experienced prosecutors in the office. They said it’s likely the U.S. attorney pursued that strategy to avoid a confrontation with senior prosecutors who would refuse to participate in the investigation and cause a scandal.

As things turned out, Reding Quiñones’ plan backfired.

Loss of prosecutors

Normally, the U.S. Attorney’s Office — historically one of the busiest in the country with a district extending from Key West to Fort Pierce — has employed about 240 prosecutors. But the roster is now down to 170, sources say, with economic crimes, public corruption and narcotics sections taking the hardest hit. There has also been a brain drain of more than a dozen veteran prosecutors who chose to retire or move to private practice as Trump took office for his second term in January.

Morale could not be lower, as prosecutors in the South Florida district fear they could be asked to do an unethical task or risk losing their jobs, according to multiple sources.

Last week’s resignations of the two prosecutors followed a series of firings of three other assistant U.S. attorneys in the Miami office by the Justice Department and Bondi earlier this year — not for cause, but because they were either involved in prior criminal investigations of Trump or were critical of the president.

In September, Bondi fired prosecutor Will Rosenzweig, 39, because of the negative things he said about Trump on a social media blog before he became a federal prosecutor in Miami in 2020. When he was working for the prominent law firm Kobre & Kim in Washington during Trump’s first term, Rosenzweig posted criticisms of the president starting in 2017 — posts that were brought to the attention of the Justice Department.

In July, Bondi terminated another federal prosecutor in Miami, Brooke C. Watson, a seasoned lawyer who in 2023 was honored by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland with a prestigious award recognizing her “exceptional dedication” to prosecuting a ring that used fake identities to commit about $50 million in COVID-19 loan fraud.

Watson, 46, who as deputy criminal chief was serving in one of the office’s senior positions, became another casualty in Trump’s mission to purge anyone found to have worked in some way for special counsel Jack Smith.

After Trump lost the presidential election in 2020 to Democrat Joe Biden, Smith filed two indictments: one for Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault by his supporters on the Capitol building and another for his alleged withholding of classified documents at his Palm Beach estate.

Watson worked briefly with Smith’s team on the Jan. 6 case, which was the reason for her firing, according to sources with knowledge of her termination.

In late January, Miami federal prosecutor Michael Thakur, 46, a Harvard Law School graduate who worked on the classified documents case, was fired along with dozens of others in the Justice Department who were members of the special counsel’s team. In addition to Thakur, Anne McNamara, a former federal prosecutor in the Miami office before joining Smith’s team in Washington, was also terminated.

“There are a huge number of vacancies in this (U.S. Attorney’s Office) office and others around the country,” said Jimenez, who was formerly registered as a Republican. “I’m not surprised: Who would want to work for a Department of Justice where obedience and loyalty to Trump matters above all else.”

Oscar S. Rodriguez, a longtime Miami defense attorney who has battled federal prosecutors over international drug-trafficking and Venezuelan corruption cases, said he was deeply concerned about what he described as the Trump administration’s “politicalization” of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Florida.

“The more I think about this, the more upset I get with these people running the Department of Justice,” Rodriguez said. “They love to destroy careers just to implement their philosophy. It’s regrettable what’s going on.”

Push to prosecute

The latest push to prosecute Trump’s enemies dates back to his first term as president and subsequently being indicted on charges of withholding classified documents from the federal government after he left office and for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol after he lost the 2020 election to Biden.

Far-right influencers in the MAGA movement, including influential lawyers such as Mike Davis, have pushed for investigations into what they see as “deep-state” operatives in the Democratic Party who have tried to destroy Trump, including high-ranking officials in the Obama and Biden administrations.

Davis, who formerly worked as a Republican Senate staff aide, recently posted a photo of himself with Reding Quiñones and his first assistant Yara Klukas on the social media platform X. In the photo, Davis is wearing a signature red MAGA baseball cap that says: “MAKE THE COURT GREAT AGAIN” His caption above the photo reads: “Justice is coming.”

Other high-profile former officials who had a falling out with Trump include James Comey, the former FBI director. In September, Trump picked a White House aide, Lindsey Halligan, with no prosecutorial experience as the U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, in order to indict Comey on charges of lying to and obstructing Congress after her Trump-appointed predecessor refused to do so.

Comey is accused of lying to Congress in 2020 about whether he authorized an FBI associate to act as an anonymous source in news reports about the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Subpoenas issued in Miami

According to The New York Times, the federal grand jury subpoenas issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami seek documents or communications from witnesses related to the CIA’s intelligence assessment from July 1, 2016, through Feb. 28, 2017, of Russian interference in the presidential election. The subpoenas direct the recipients to turn over records to federal prosecutors in Miami by Nov. 20.

Among those who have received subpoenas: James R. Clapper, the former director of national intelligence; Peter Strzok, a former FBI counterintelligence agent who helped run the Russian investigation; and Lisa Page, a former lawyer at the bureau, the Times reported.

The investigation was launched by the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania earlier this year, but was transferred to the Southern District of Florida, where Reding Quiñones is known as a gung-ho Trump ally. Posted on the doorway leading into his office in Miami, the U.S. attorney hung a photo of himself with Trump that was taken in the White House.

In the Times’ story published Sunday, Justice Department spokesman Chad Gilmartin issued a statement: “While we do not confirm or comment on the existence of specific investigations, the American people should know that this department will continue to follow the facts and pursue justice in every case.”

Grand jury in Fort Pierce

It remains to be seen whether prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami will ever file charges against Brennan or anyone else, as they face significant legal barriers, such as sufficient evidence of wrongdoing, statute of limitations, jurisdiction and standing issues, largely because the federal government’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election occurred in Washington, not South Florida. Reding Quiñones’ plan would be to file a possible indictment with a grand jury in Fort Pierce federal court after the panel convenes there in January.

The Fort Pierce area, which is part of the Southern District of Florida, supported Trump in the last election and has only one federal judge working in that courthouse: Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by the president during his first term. She’s perceived by Trump and right-wing supporters as being favorable to the president, having dismissed the classified documents case against him based on her ruling that Smith, the special counsel, did not have the authority to indict him. After Trump was elected to a second term last November, Smith dismissed the Jan. 6 indictment against him.

A federal investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was extensively done by special counsel Robert Mueller, a former FBI director, who issued a critical report in 2019 that Trump strongly condemned.

Mueller’s investigation led to charges against 34 individuals, mostly Russian nationals, but found no evidence that Trump or any of his campaign aides “coordinated” with the Russian government’s meddling in the U.S. election in 2016, and insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy. However, two key members of Trump’s political campaign were indicted: national security adviser Michael Flynn and the chair of the Trump presidential campaign, Paul Manafort.

Jon Sale, a prominent criminal defense attorney and former first assistant in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami, said he’s proud of its long tradition of excellence and believes ultimately the office will decide whether to file an indictment based on evidence and the law.

“I understand the concerns of some of my former colleagues that the office may become politicized,” Sale said. “I think that Jason Reding Quiñones has a lot of integrity, and whatever investigations are undertaken will ultimately be determined not by politics but by the facts and the law, wherever they may lead.”

Only time will tell whether an indictment will be filed or the office’s investigation is merely political theater.

Oath of office in D.C.

In August, Reding Quiñones was administered the oath of office by Bondi at the Justice Department in Washington instead of the chief federal judge in Miami — indicating that the nation’s first top federal prosecutor confirmed by the Senate this year would be an ardent Trump loyalist.

Reding Quiñones had formerly worked as a federal prosecutor in the Miami office and was appointed as a Miami-Dade County judge last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis. He’s also a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve and a member of the conservative Federalist Society, a highly influential legal group.

One of his first orders of business as the new U.S. Attorney was to break up and rename the major crimes section, where Reding Quiñones had once worked as a line prosecutor. He received poor evaluations from his supervisors, but he countered that they discriminated against him.

The section is now called “general crimes.” In hewing to Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, he also created a new section: “border and immigration crimes enforcement.”

To several former prosecutors in the Miami office, Reding Quiñones has turned into a tool of the Trump administration, as he willingly allows the office to be used for political purposes.

“What I always feared was that the Trump administration would use him when they needed him to go after the president’s enemies,” said Sloman, who posted the Times’ story on his LinkedIn page, calling it a “very sad day” for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Florida.

“The office had always been apolitical, but that is no longer the case,” he told the Herald. “It’s appalling.”

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