Reshuffles Hit US Justice Department After Elections, Senior Officials Step Down

Two senior officials at the U.S. Department of Justice resigned on Friday, accelerating a wave of high-level departures following Tuesday’s midterm elections, in which Republican allies of President Donald Trump lost control of Congress.

The resignations of John Eisenberg, who headed the Justice Department’s National Security Division, and Jason Redding Kinison, who oversaw investigations into prior criminal cases involving Trump, come after the resignation of Harriet Dilon, head of the Civil Rights Unit, on Thursday.

The reasons for Kinison’s and Eisenberg’s resignations were not clear. However, it is not unusual for senior U.S. officials to leave the government after midterm elections, especially those that deal significant defeats to the ruling party. Democrats plan to conduct a series of investigations into the Trump administration and its business dealings.

As the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Kinison was at the center of Trump’s efforts to exploit the Justice Department to retaliate against political rivals. His office was tasked with reviewing criminal investigations related to Trump’s handling of classified documents after he left office in 2021, as well as his campaign’s contacts with Russia during the 2016 election, among other matters.

The investigation, dubbed by officials as the “grand conspiracy,” aimed to establish that the president had been the victim of a long-running criminal plot. However, the probe has faced difficulties in bringing any criminal charges to date, and the prosecutor who oversaw the investigation, Joseph DiGenova, resigned in September.

Kinison’s Miami office also brought criminal charges against former Cuban President Raúl Castro, marking a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Havana.