President Donald Trump’s hand-picked U.S. attorney for the District of Southern Florida has expanded his probe into former officials who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Jason Reding Quiñones had previously issued dozens of subpoenas to intelligence officials who concluded in January 2017 that Russia was trying to tip the election in Trump’s favor, including former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
The investigation appears designed to bolster one of Trump’s favorite conspiracy theories: that he’s the victim of a “grand conspiracy” of Democrats and “deep-state” operatives who have been working to destroy him since his first term in office, despite a lack of evidence.
Two previous investigations into high-level officials who led the Russia inquiry failed to turn up evidence of any crimes.
The new subpoenas targeted lower-level officials who were involved in the Russia probe, along with at least one retired FBI agent who was involved in the Justice Department’s 2022 deliberations about whether to investigate Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, The New York Times reported.
Both investigations took place in Washington, D.C., which is outside of Reding Quiñones’ jurisdiction. The Russia investigation also predates the usual five-year statute of limitations to bring federal charges.
Reding Quiñones nevertheless appears to be trying to connect the two Washington-based investigations—even though there’s no evidence they’re related—to the FBI’s 2022 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, as part of a single deep-state conspiracy.
The president’s allies argue that a unified conspiracy theory would bring the cases into Quiñones’ district and remedy the statute of limitation issues.
They’re also hoping to bring the case before Judge Aileen Cannon, who stunned legal analysts in July 2024 when she dismissed dozens of criminal counts alleging Trump had mishandled classified documents after leaving office—including information about U.S. nuclear programs, potential military vulnerabilities, and plans for responding to a foreign attack.
This week, Cannon permanently blocked the release of former special counsel Jack Smith’s final report on the investigation.
Reding Quiñones—who was previously fired from the U.S. attorney’s office over poor performance evaluations before being installed by Trump to run it—has asked the chief judge in the Southern District of Florida to convene a special grand jury at the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, according to the Times.
That would put Cannon in charge of the grand jury investigation.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment.
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