Former FBI Agent Who Attended Jan. 6 Riot Leaves DOJ Weaponization Role

Jared Wise, a former FBI agent whose Capitol riot prosecution was erased by presidential pardon, resigned Thursday from his senior advisory post at the Justice Department, saying exposing what he called institutional abuse "will only happen from outside of government."

Wise had served as a senior adviser in the office of the deputy attorney general, working as an investigator and counselor to the department's Weaponization Working Group, a task force Attorney General Pam Bondi created in February 2025 to examine alleged misconduct in Jan. 6 prosecutions and other politically sensitive cases. His departure closes one of the more unusual chapters in the post-Jan. 6 legal reckoning: a man who stood inside the Capitol on January 6, 2021, later sat inside the department charged with adjudicating what happened there.

The path from defendant to federal adviser ran through a presidential pardon. Wise was present at the Capitol on January 6, and police body-camera footage captured him calling officers "Nazis" and "Gestapo" while yelling "Kill 'em! Kill 'em! Kill 'em!" He remained inside the building for roughly nine minutes before exiting through a broken window. Arrested in Oregon in May 2023 on charges including unlawfully entering a restricted building and using threatening language, he was on trial in Washington when President Trump took office on January 20, 2025, and immediately pardoned or moved to dismiss cases against nearly all of the more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the attack. Wise's case was dismissed before the jury reached a verdict.

Weeks later, Wise was appointed to the DOJ as a senior adviser. He worked under Ed Martin, Trump's pardon attorney and head of the Weaponization Working Group, conducting internal reviews of what the administration characterized as improper investigative tactics in Jan. 6 cases. Before joining the department, Wise had represented three Jan. 6 defendants and served on the board of the Patriot Freedom Project, a nonprofit that raised more than $2.5 million for Capitol riot defendants. He was also a former Project Veritas contractor.

The appointment drew immediate institutional pushback. In September 2025, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats led by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois wrote to the Justice Department demanding Wise's dismissal, saying they could not be confident in his ability to uphold his oath given his "documented actions actively participating in the disruption of a peaceful transfer of power and the assault against law enforcement officers." Critics further noted the friction with the Trump administration's "Back the Blue" rhetoric: approximately 140 law enforcement officers were injured during the January 6 attack. The Justice Department called Wise a "valued member" of the administration and declined to answer detailed questions about his appointment.

Wise's resignation unfolded against a broader restructuring at both the FBI and DOJ. The administration had fired or forced out multiple senior officials who had worked on Jan. 6 prosecutions, including former acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll, who was removed after resisting demands to produce a list of thousands of agents who had worked on Capitol riot cases.

The institutional dynamic cut in two directions at once: officials who built Jan. 6 prosecutions were being pushed out, while Wise, himself prosecuted under one of those cases, walked out voluntarily, concluding the department's internal resistance was more than he could overcome. He worked as a special agent or supervisory special agent for the FBI from 2004 through 2017, long before the events of January 6 set his career on its improbable arc through the Capitol, an Oregon courtroom, and ultimately the Justice Department itself.