Trump's Trials - Trump DOJ hired lawyer who compared Jan. 6 prosecutions to the Holocaust

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

A lawyer who represented violent rioters charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and compared their prosecutions to the Nazi genocide has been hired by the Department of Justice, where he is now working with the Trump administration's "Weaponization Working Group." NPR's Tom Dreisbach reports.Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Scott Detrow, and this is Trump's Terms from NPR. We're going to be doing all sorts of things. Nobody ever thought was even possible. President Trump has brought back string to the White House. We can't just ignore the president's desires. This will be an entirely different country in a short period of time. Every episode, we bring you one of NPR's latest stories about the 47th president and how he is trying to remake the federal government.

Today's story starts right after this. I'm Elsa Chang. An NPR investigation has revealed a new member of the Justice Department's team looking into the alleged weaponization of law enforcement. He's an attorney who represented violent January 6 rioters. He called for reparations for those defendants and compared their prosecutions to the Holocaust. NPR's Tom Dreisbach reports. It was the day after Trump's inauguration. Trump had just issued mass pardons for the people who were charged for attacking the Capitol. and the attorney Jonathan Gross was ecstatic. It was an unbelievable thing to witness. It was biblical.

Gross represented several January 6th defendants, including violent rioters. He said Trump releasing them from prison was like Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt. And now, he said, it was time for the Trump administration to enforce consequences. Because in his mind, the prosecutors who brought the Capitol riot cases were no different than Nazi war criminals. These prosecutors are evil people. They will put you on a cattle car to Auschwitz without your eye. I will tell you, some of them were scarier than others. The scariest ones of them are cold-blooded killers.

Just a few months later, Gross joined the Civil Rights Division of the Trump Department of Justice. He's working with the administration's Weaponization Working Group. That group is investigating the January 6th prosecutions, which Trump called a grave national injustice. The hiring of Jonathan Gross shocked some former Justice Department officials. The DOJ that I grew up with, that I joined, and that I worked for for eight and a half years, would never have hired Jonathan Gross, let alone for a job like this. That's Mike Gordon. He was a January 6th prosecutor, and like dozens of his colleagues, he was abruptly fired. He's suing the government over his dismissal. Gordon prosecuted one of Jonathan

Gross's clients. You may remember Richard Barnett as the guy who bragged about putting his feet on a desk in Pelosi's office and then called for war. This is war. They're trying to take over our country. Barnett was convicted of nonviolent felonies and misdemeanors for storming the Capitol while armed with a stun gun. Gordon faced off against Jonathan Gross during that trial. Just what were your impressions of him during that time? That he was a pure ideologue who was,

way over his head. Before January 6th, Gross had never worked on any criminal cases. He was actually a rabbi for more than a decade before he decided to make a career change and got his law license in 2019. He did not respond to our requests for comment. He hung up on me when I called him. But he has said he took on the January 6 cases because he was personally outraged, not so much by the attack on the Capitol, but by the prosecutions of the rioters. The real crime of January 6th was not what happened on that day. It's what happened since. Gross argued that there was no serious violence on January 6th, despite the injuries suffered by 140 police officers. The Biden Justice Department had a near-perfect record of convictions in the Capitol Riot trials. But Gross said on a podcast,

that was not because of overwhelming evidence, but bias. The problem is that the juries and the judges don't care. The verdict is already determined in advance. Gross argued that in addition to mass pardons, the riot defendants should receive reparations. There has to be compensation. People's lives have been destroyed. And the way they can do that is they can just let everybody file a lawsuit and settle the lawsuits. They have to compensate people. The Justice Department has now paid $5 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit by the family of Ashley Babbitt, who was shot and killed during the breach. And the Trump DOJ says it is leading a fulsome investigation into the January 6th prosecutors. Like Mike Gord.

He said hiring Jonathan Gross to help run that investigation sends a bad signal. That what this weaponization, so-called weaponization working group is doing, is actually weaponizing the government against its own employees. Gordon pointed to another recent DOJ hire working on that investigation, a former January 6th defendant who urged rioters to kill cops on that day. Now he and Gross are inside the government, and Mike Gordon is left to wonder what happens next. Tom Dreisbach, NPR News. Before we wrap up a reminder, you can find more coverage of the Trump administration on the NPR Politics Podcast, where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down the day's biggest political news with new episodes every weekday afternoon. And thanks, as always, to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsor messages.

You can learn more at plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow. Thank you for listening to Trump's terms from NPR.