Two career prosecutors resign as Florida U.S. Attorney investigates alleged grand "conspiracy" involving Russiagate

WASHINGTON — Two federal prosecutors have resigned after being asked to participate in a vast "conspiracy" investigation into former federal intelligence and law enforcement officials. Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones called a division-wide meeting of the major crimes unit on Monday, according to reporting by MSNBC.

The reporting alleged that one of the prosecutors resigned because they “felt like there was something they could not take part in because it would violate their ethical responsibilities.”

Major Crimes is the largest section in the criminal division, with two to three dozen career prosecutors at any given time. On Friday, the Justice Department approved at least 30 subpoenas, including one for former CIA Director John Brennan, who headed the agency during the so-called "Russiagate" investigation.

The subpoenas reportedly request any documentation related to the intelligence community's assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election from July 1, 2016, to February 28, 2017. The subpoenas target agents and officials who were the subject of two previous investigations by then-special counsel John Durham and former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, which found no evidence to support charges against Brennan and other targets.

President Trump has pushed for the investigation, claiming it should result not only in the arrests of Brennan and many others from the intelligence community, but even former President Barack Obama. Obama was not among those for whom a subpoena was issued. Former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were.

Strzok was a senior FBI counterintelligence agent who helped oversee the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia. He also worked on the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server. Page was an FBI attorney involved in the same investigations and who briefly served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team.

Two things about the events stood out to legal experts.

First, many of the subpoenas are said to have been signed by Executive Assistant United States Attorney Manolo Reboso. Multiple legal experts told MSNBC that standard protocol would be for a line prosecutor assigned to investigate the case to sign off on such subpoenas, while the executive assistant typically oversees office operations and HR matters and coordinates with the Department of Justice in Washington.

Second, the grand jury will be empaneled in Fort Pierce, FL, where there is only one federal judge, Trump-appointed Aileen Cannon, who was herself a prosecutor in the Southern District's Major Crimes division before being appointed to the bench. Cannon famously ruled in Trump's favor in his case against the Justice Department over the classified documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.

Cannon granted Trump's request for a special master to review the seized materials for attorney-client privilege and executive privilege, and ordered the Justice Department to stop using the seized materials in its investigation until the review was completed. She cited exceptional "stigma associated with the subject seizure", since Trump was a former president, as well as the potential for significant "reputational harm" from any future indictment based on "property that ought to be returned," which many legal experts found problematic.

The Eleventh Circuit stayed portions of the ruling, allowing around 100 classified documents to be used in the Justice Department's investigation. The court also rescinded the requirement that the special master review the classified documents, finding that under Cannon, the lower court had "abused its discretion in exercising equitable jurisdiction."