Prosecutors Isia Jasiewicz, Jennifer Blackwell, Sara Levine and Carolyn Jackson left the U.S. Lawyer’s workplace in Washington this yr. Now they’re working collectively once more within the workplace of the Commonwealth’s Lawyer for Arlington County, Va.
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Inside a sunny convention room throughout the river from Washington, D.C., Monika Isia Jasiewicz described her unlikely path this yr.
It began when she obtained an invite to the inauguration from her Yale Regulation College classmate JD Vance.
Lower than two weeks later, she and greater than a dozen different authorities attorneys who prosecuted individuals who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, obtained one other message from the brand new Trump administration. They have been fired — by e-mail.
“It feels surreal to see my friends be within the management of this nation and to expertise , us as civil servants, being forged apart,” Jasiewicz mentioned.
She and three extra ladies who left the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace in Washington this yr have discovered their manner again to public service — working collectively, once more, as prosecutors in Arlington County, Va., not removed from the District.
The small group of assistant commonwealth attorneys meets for lunch most days within the shadow of the native courthouse, bonded by the trauma of shedding jobs they cherished.
Carolyn Jackson, one other member of the group, mentioned she had a number of prosecutions of Capitol rioters in progress on the time of the inauguration. These instances all vanished after the president granted clemency to each Jan. 6 defendant on his first day in workplace.
“We will do good right here,” Jackson mentioned. “And I feel all people, we are able to get by means of some darkish occasions and a few scary occasions if all people focuses on doing the great that they’ll.”
A horrible time to search for a authorized job
The prosecutors who had been dismissed had began work on Jan. 6 instances on Sept. 11, 2023, because the Justice Division employed a wave of younger attorneys to assist perform one of many largest and most complicated legal investigations in American historical past.
Shortly earlier than the Biden administration got here to an in depth, DOJ officers moved to put these attorneys into prosecution jobs based mostly in Washington’s municipal court docket, the place the majority of road crimes are delivered to justice.
However the brand new leaders within the Trump Justice Division rejected that method and terminated all of them. As a result of they have been thought of probationary attorneys, they’d fewer job protections.
The White Home says the president has monumental energy over the federal workforce — and may hearth individuals beneath his broad authority.
The probationary attorneys who exited DOJ entered a job market that will have been uniquely horrible.
In February, President Trump started to slap govt orders on massive legislation companies that employed individuals who had investigated him. These orders barred attorneys from federal buildings, yanked their safety clearances and threatened the companies’ purchasers.
Jasiewicz spent 9 years on the distinguished litigation agency Williams & Connolly earlier than she went to work as a prosecutor. She as soon as fended off weekly calls from recruiters. However by February, she mentioned, she couldn’t even get a gathering. All the massive companies felt terrified of doable retribution from Trump, headhunters advised her, as a result of she was related to the Jan. 6 prosecutions.
The night time Sara Levine had been terminated, she labored her telephone, calling a former boss. “I reached out and mentioned, ‘Hey, I do not suppose you have got any positions open?'” Levine recalled.
On the opposite finish of the road was Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, the elected, Democratic commonwealth lawyer in Arlington, Va. She mentioned she could be glad to welcome Levine again to the workplace. And he or she had a number of extra openings too.
“These are people who find themselves on the high of their discipline,” Dehghani-Tafti mentioned. “These are individuals who care about public service. Our complete job as prosecutors is to do justice and to do it with out concern or favor and in my thoughts there is not any higher instance of people that have been doing that than the individuals who have been working within the Capitol siege division.”
Levine, Jackson and Jasiewicz now deal with instances that run the gamut from shoplifting at a neighborhood mall to malicious woundings.
In the meantime, again in Washington, new U.S. Lawyer Jeanine Pirro has been recruiting for brand spanking new prosecutors to replenish the ranks in her workplace. Just lately, Pirro introduced in 20 attorneys from the navy’s Choose Advocate Common (JAG) Corps to fill important vacancies within the municipal court docket.
“We have been one another pondering, 15 of us simply obtained fired after we had completed coaching for that actual job,” mentioned Carolyn Jackson. “You recognize, you did not have to usher in JAG officers to do the job that we have been prepared, prepared and in a position to do.”
Jennifer Blackwell spent 20 years on the Justice Division, rising to the extent of deputy chief of the legal division on the U.S. lawyer’s workplace within the District. She mentioned watching the fired Jan. 6 prosecutors go away the workplace was among the many hardest days of her profession.
“I’ve considered it as my job as a supervisor not solely to guard the ethics and integrity of the workplace but in addition to guard these which are beneath my supervision, and never having the ability to shield them from what was finally coming … was actually traumatizing,” Blackwell mentioned.
Blackwell mentioned she not acknowledged the Justice Division and reluctantly concluded she needed to go away. She’s glad to be working in Arlington, alongside her former colleagues.
“It’s my hope that we are going to be again sometime to combat the great combat,” Blackwell mentioned. “And I actually imagine that day will come, however that it isn’t now.”
