"Inside a sunny conference room across the river from Washington, D.C., Monika Isia Jasiewicz described her unlikely path this year. It started when she received an invitation to the inauguration from her Yale Law School classmate JD Vance. Less than two weeks later, she and more than a dozen other government lawyers who prosecuted people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, received another message from the new Trump administration. They were fired by email."
"She and three more women who left the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington this year have found their way back to public service working together, again, as prosecutors in Arlington County, Va., not far from the District. The small group of assistant commonwealth attorneys meets for lunch most days in the shadow of the local courthouse, bonded by the trauma of losing jobs they loved."
"Carolyn Jackson, another member of the group, said she had several prosecutions of Capitol rioters in progress at the time of the inauguration. Those cases all vanished after the president granted clemency to every Jan. 6 defendant on his first day in office. "We can do good here," Jackson said. "And I think everybody, we can get through some dark times and some scary times if everybody focuses on doing the good that they can.""
A group of government lawyers who prosecuted Jan. 6 defendants were dismissed by the incoming administration, often by email, after some had received inauguration invitations. Several of those lawyers, including Monika Isia Jasiewicz and Carolyn Jackson, have transitioned to prosecution roles in Arlington County, Virginia, working together as assistant commonwealth attorneys. The group meets frequently and cites shared trauma from losing positions they valued. Many had begun Jan. 6 prosecutions after DOJ hiring waves in late 2023, and some active cases were nullified when the president granted clemency to Jan. 6 defendants on his first day.
Read at www.npr.org
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