The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida called a division-wide meeting on Monday afternoon, following the resignations of two prosecutors who were asked to take part in a vast “conspiracy” investigation into former intelligence and law enforcement officials, according to a source familiar with internal concerns among career prosecutors.
Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones called the impromptu meeting of the largest section in the criminal division — major crimes — a unit that includes two to three dozen career prosecutors. The source said it is unusual for an office’s top prosecutor to convene such a gathering.
“Everyone is on pins and needles,” the source told MSNBC, referring to prosecutors who fear being asked by the U.S. Attorney Reding Quiñones, or his leadership team, to work on a case that President Donald Trump has said should lead to the arrests of an expansive list of individuals, including former President Barack Obama and former CIA Director John Brennan.
The Justice Department approved at least 30 subpoenas on Friday, including for Brennan and former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
The official who signed at least some of the subpoenas is Executive Assistant United States Attorney Manolo Reboso, a source familiar with a number of the subpoenas issued so far told MSNBC.
In doing so, the SDFL appears to have bypassed what multiple legal experts told MSNBC is standard protocol for its issuance of subpoenas, turning to a member of leadership to sign off on some of them, instead of a line prosecutor assigned to investigate the case.
As Executive Assistant US Attorney, Reboso is the third-highest ranked official in SDFL, but typically, that role oversees office operations and human relations matters, coordinating with the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.
The source familiar with the internal schisms inside the SDFL office said 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.”
That source said neither of the line prosecutors who resigned from their posts last week — first reported by Bloomberg Law — had extensive experience or exposure to investigations of such magnitude.
The subpoenas request any kind of documents, including emails and texts, related to the intelligence community assessment about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Those subpoenaed were asked for any materials dated between July 1, 2016 and February 28, 2017, according to the source familiar with some of the issued subpoenas.
Those kinds of documents, the source familiar said, were so highly classified that they “would be in the possession of the government.” The intelligence and law enforcement officials now facing subpoenas were already subjects of two prior investigations led by then-special counsel John Durham and former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Those investigations found no evidence to support charges against major targeted players like Brennan.
For those reasons, the source familiar with the subpoenas issued last Friday, called them “performative.”
The Department of Justice had no comment when reached by MSNBC.
Vaughn Hillyard is a senior White House reporter for MS NOW.
Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.