Former acting attorney general resigns from Justice Department

WASHINGTON — Matthew Whitaker, the former acting attorney general whose brief appointment generated intense controversy, resigned from the Justice Department over the weekend.

Justice Department officials said Whitaker’s last day at the agency was Saturday. He had spent recent weeks working as a senior counselor in the office of the associate attorney general. He has not settled on what to do next in his legal career.

Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney in Iowa, was chief of staff to Jeff Sessions, President Trump’s first attorney general. Trump and Sessions had a notoriously frosty relationship after the attorney general recused himself from overseeing the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.