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WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors in the now-disbanded Capitol Siege Section of the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office spent much of the last four years prosecuting cases against Jan. 6 rioters. Suddenly, a single signature erased the end results — though not the public record — of that work.
Three prosecutors who worked in the section described the week to NBC News, with one calling it the worst of their professional lives. It started with President Donald Trump’s signing of the pardons. Soon, prosecutors were dismissing the active cases that remained and putting aside evidence they hoped would have led to more charges.
And the week ended, on Friday, with acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin — an advocate for Capitol rioters who appeared with Trump at fundraisers for Jan. 6 defendants — filing a motion to remove remaining conditions imposed on members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, whose ability to visit Washington was still restricted by a judicial order after Trump commuted their sentences.
Ashley Akers, who worked on Jan. 6 cases and left the Justice Department on Friday, called the pardons “shocking” and said she had a “guttural” reaction to having to file motions to dismiss cases when she felt she had evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that showed assaults against law enforcement. Many in the office had developed close relationships with the police officers who were injured on Jan. 6, 2021, which had kept them dedicated to the work.
“It really undermines not only the sacrifices that all these officers made, but the experiences that they went through,” said Akers, who spoke to NBC News after she turned in her computers and left the department. “The public record — which is very clear and borne out in hundreds of trials — has shown that these officers are victims.”
The prosecutors acknowledged that while the Constitution gives the president extraordinary pardon power, they still found it extremely difficult to file the motions, under orders from new bosses, dismissing cases they had brought.
“It goes against every instinct that I have,” one federal prosecutor previously assigned to the Capitol Siege Section told NBC News. This person is still working for the Justice Department and spoke anonymously because their employment would be in jeopardy if they spoke on the record.
“When you are a prosecutor, state or federal, you pursue the case based on the evidence and based on the law, not based on any political consideration. And to be told that you have to dismiss this case with overwhelming evidence is torturous,” the prosecutor continued.
Akers decided to leave the Justice Department after Trump named former Rep. Matt Gaetz as his initial pick for attorney general. She said it was “incredibly sad” that her career as a federal prosecutor was coming to an end with the pardons of violent rioters she helped convict.
Some prosecutors decided to leave even before Trump was elected. Jason Manning, a former federal prosecutor who worked on Jan. 6 cases, left the Justice Department over the summer, joining Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign. He said he hadn’t previously been a really political person, but he heard Trump’s pledges to pardon Jan. 6 offenders on the campaign trail and he knew the Justice Department’s work against rioters would “grind to a halt” if Trump was elected.
“The idea that all of this could be wiped away with this over with the stroke of the pen made me think, personally, that it was more important to me to participate in the election in a way that would try to prevent that outcome, even if that meant giving up this job that I loved,” Manning said.
The prosecutors were always aware that Trump’s election might mean that he could try to erase their work, and they also knew there were ways his administration could target those who held pro-Trump rioters accountable under the law.
“We joined this mission because we believed in the defense of democracy. But we all stayed for the officers, who were brutally assaulted that day, repeatedly,” said the federal prosecutor still working at the Justice Department. “If they want to retaliate against me for doing that, fine.”
Former Jan. 6 defendant Steve Baker — a libertarian writer who entered the Capitol during the attack, licensed his footage to media outlets, and then became a reporter for Glenn Beck’s outlet, The Blaze — told NBC News that he believed that federal prosecutors’ cases against misdemeanor defendants, and what he sees as overreach against other nonviolent participants, gave the right leverage in the battle over the story of Jan. 6.
“I can guarantee you this, I would bet a year’s salary on this,” Baker said. “Had the DOJ focused on the violent offenders only, we would have never heard the word ‘pardon’ in a campaign promise from President Trump.”
Baker, who went to pick up his guns from a friend’s home once a judge dismissed his case Thursday, shares at least one strong belief with many Jan. 6 prosecutors: that Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter helped create a much different media environment around the events of the Capitol riot.
“I don’t discount Elon’s purchase of Twitter at all as being a key to it,” Baker said. “You win battles on the battlefield, and propaganda is part of it… I think that that certainly benefited the balancing out of the narrative.”
Multiple Jan. 6 prosecutors told NBC News that Twitter, now X, was a key component to the Capitol investigation, noting that it was where online sleuths who assisted the FBI first organized. They also noticed, with frustration, that the evidence they were presenting in court wasn’t having an impact on the public dialogue later on, with some commenting that members of the public who stopped by hearings would see hours of footage they’d never viewed before and be shocked by what they saw.
Some of the evidence did come out through media requests, including one revealing video NBC News obtained through the media coalition after it was introduced as evidence. It shows Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, telling rioters they “ought to be ashamed,” and that he, a former sheriff, had never seen anything like this during his decades in law enforcement.
“I’ve been in law enforcement in Texas for 30 years, and I’ve never had people act this way,” Nehls said in the video. “I’m ashamed!”
Nehls has since downplayed the attack, writing a book called “The Big Fraud: What Democrats Don’t Want You to Know about January 6, the 2020 Election, and a Whole Lot Else.”
Manning said that the contemporaneous evidence showing what Nehls actually thought at the time is a powerful piece of the historical record that lives on despite the cases and the convictions disappearing.
“He made quite clear exactly what he thought of the rioters and what they were doing that day,” Manning told me. “His position has changed over time, but that video captures what he actually thought in the moment, how he actually experienced Jan. 6, and that’s part of the record. That’s why I emphasize the record stands. And building this record was tremendously important.”
Prosecutors and some of the judges involved in the cases seem to agree on that point.
“When others in the public eye are not willing to risk their own power or popularity by calling out lies when they hear them,” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote in a case order this week, “the record of the proceedings in this courthouse will be available to those who seek the truth.”
Ryan J. Reilly is a justice reporter for NBC News.
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