Jan. 6 Rioters Walked. Prosecutors Were Shown the Door.

Jan. 6 Rioters Walked. Prosecutors Were Shown the Door.

September 10, 2025 at 06:30PM

After the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the Justice Department launched the largest criminal investigation in its history. In a remarkable feat of research, organization, and fortitude, it charged some 1,600 people for their participation in the attempted coup. Then Donald Trump was reelected. He pardoned everyone involved in the events of January 6. And he fired the people who tried to bring them to justice:

To date, the Justice Department has fired or demoted more than two dozen prosecutors who were assigned to hold the rioters accountable — roughly a quarter of the complement. Some were junior prosecutors, like Sara Levine, who had secured a guilty plea from a rioter who had grabbed a police officer. Others were veterans, including Greg Rosen, who had led the department’s Jan. 6 task force. Scores more prosecutors, involved in these and other cases, have left, either in fear of where the ax might next fall or out of sheer disgust.

The Justice Department declined to comment for this article, but a White House spokesman, Harrison Fields, described the agency during the Biden administration as “a cabal of anti-Trump sycophants” engaged in a “relentless pursuit to throw the book at President Trump and his allies.” By “uprooting the foot soldiers,” Mr. Fields added, Mr. Trump’s attorney general, Ms. Bondi, “is restoring the integrity of the department.”

And so Mr. Gordon. As the elevator climbed, he braced himself. In an interview the day before, he had talked about what had happened to him and many of his colleagues from the Justice Department’s once-vital and now-defunct Capitol Siege Section. Disbelief colored his every word.

“When you stand up in court and say, ‘Mike Gordon for the United States,’ you don’t say, ‘Mike Gordon for Donald Trump,’” he had said, adding: “I’m standing up there, and I’m speaking for the government. For all the people of the country.”

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from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/09/10/jan-6-rioters-walked-prosecutors-were-shown-the-door/
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