Multiple federal prosecutors working out of the Department of Justice’s office in the Southern District of Florida (SDFL) are actively worried about violating the ethics of their profession if asked to indict one of President Donald Trump’s political enemies. That’s according to a Monday article by MSNBC’s Vaughn Hillyard and Laura Barrón-López, who reported that an unnamed source within SDFL is confiding that prosecutors are quitting their jobs rather than be asked to work on contentious cases. Two prosecutors recently quit after being asked to participate in a “conspiracy” investigation involving former intelligence and law enforcement officials, per MSNBC’s confidential source. U. S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones who Trump appointed to the post in March reportedly called a rare meeting of the major crimes unit, which includes several dozen attorneys, after the departures of the two prosecutors. The source told Hillyard and Barrón-López that “everyone is on pins and needles” about the prospect of being assigned to work on cases that Trump said should lead to the arrests of former President Barack Obama and former CIA Director John Brennan. One of the resignations was due to the prosecutor communicating that working on such an investigation was “something they could not take part in because it would violate their ethical responsibilities,” per the source. And neither of the two career prosecutors who resigned had worked on high-profile cases of that magnitude. The SDFL is reportedly also bypassing traditional protocol in how it issues subpoenas. When the DOJ issued approximately 30 subpoenas last week relating to the Trump-Russia investigation, many were signed by Executive Assistant U. S. Attorney Manolo Reboso. Reboso’s job as the third-most senior official in SDFL is usually limited to operations and human resources, rather than criminal investigations. MSNBC reported that typically, a career prosecutor will sign those subpoenas, meaning Reboso’s signature could be a sign of the SDFL having difficulty getting a rank-and-file prosecutor to sign their name. The outlet’s source referred to the subpoenas as “performative.”The latest resignations out of SDFL are part of a larger pattern of the DOJ bleeding out talent at all levels. The Washington Post reported Monday that the DOJ has lost more than 5, 500 staff since the start of Trump’s second term to a combination of resignations, firings and employees accepting buyout offers from the Trump administration. The DOJ is also having difficulty recruiting, as many top graduates of law schools no longer reportedly view the DOJ as an aspirational career destination. Click here to read MSNBC’s report in its entirety.
