The Capitol riot of January 2021 set off the largest criminal investigation in the Justice Department’s history.

For federal prosecutor Ashley Akers, it was a defining moment in a seven-year career spent untangling complex cases, from wire fraud to domestic terrorism.

She helped put away dozens of rioters – including some who swung bats and beat police officers.

Then the tables turned. On his first day back in office, U.S. President Donald Trump granted clemency to every criminally charged January 6 rioter.

Akers resigned. And as rioters celebrated their freedom, a chilling threat arrived.

One so grotesque it still lingers, said Akers: an online message invoking Seven, the 1995 thriller, imagining her decapitated head in a box.

Now, Akers and other prosecutors who handled Capitol riot cases face a new threat.

Reuters has learned that pardoned January 6 rioters have been advising Justice Department officials how to pursue – and perhaps prosecute – the very prosecutors who helped put them behind bars.

Inside the Justice Department, a “Weaponisation Working Group,” led by Ed Martin, a former defense lawyer for January 6 rioters, is drafting a previously undisclosed report that is re-examining the Capitol attack, according to four January 6 prosecutors and a review of government documents.

When presented with Reuters’ findings, a department spokesperson confirmed the report is being drafted.

Martin and other Justice Department officials have held talks individually with at least three people charged in the Capitol attack since Trump’s inauguration, the three pardoned defendants said.

During those meetings, the former defendants urged officials to pursue charges against prosecutors, FBI agents and judges who presided over their cases. One ex-defendant drafted a sample indictment at the request of a Justice Department official.

Half a dozen January 6 prosecutors told Reuters they fear that the report and Martin’s investigators could allege widespread wrongdoing by Capitol riot prosecutors, creating a pretext for taking legal action against them or to justify government payouts to rioters.

Told that the Justice Department is drafting a report re-examining the January 6 attack, U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who led the House committee that investigated the riot, said he was “absolutely shocked.”

Capitol riot prosecutors were “doing their job,” Thompson said in an interview. Prosecutors should be insulated from political interference, he added.

Martin’s task force is part of a broader Trump administration effort to target the Republican president’s perceived foes.

That campaign includes an initiative known as the Interagency Weaponisation Working Group that was first reported by Reuters in October, and pulls in officials from the White House, intelligence agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other departments.

A longtime conservative activist, Martin helped organize the “Stop the Steal” movement, a failed effort to pressure courts and Republican lawmakers to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. He and his allies have long pushed unsubstantiated claims portraying the rioters as victims of politically motivated prosecutions.

Asked about Martin’s Weaponization Working Group and its focus on January 6, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Trump campaigned on a pledge to end “the weaponization from the Biden administration” and to “restore integrity” to the Justice Department.

“The president and his entire administration is keeping that promise,” Jackson said.

The Capitol riot investigation involved at least 200 federal prosecutors.

At least 46 of them have been fired or resigned since Trump’s inauguration, according to a Reuters review of LinkedIn profiles, media reports and interviews with former prosecutors.

And at least 187 of the prosecutors have been targeted in hundreds of online attacks by rioters or their supporters, urging punishments ranging from disbarment and firing to criminal charges.

The Justice Department spokesperson condemned political violence, saying: “Any violence targeting current or former government officials is wrong and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

This account is based on interviews with 26 Capitol riot prosecutors, 13 defendants, and a review of government documents and thousands of pages of court records, Trump administration directives and social media posts.

Trump made “retribution” a central plank of his 2024 bid to return to office. The campaign against Capitol riot prosecutors is part of that larger promise, a project Reuters has chronicled in a series of stories this year.

Since taking office in January, Trump and his administration have targeted at least 470 people, institutions and other entities with criminal prosecution and other forms of punishment, Reuters reported last month – an average of more than one a day.

The Trump administration denies it is seeking revenge, saying recent investigations and indictments of political opponents are efforts to correct policy and address wrongdoing.

In a profile published by Vanity Fair magazine on Tuesday, however, Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, acknowledged that the president was targeting people who he believed came after him.

“In some cases, it may look like retribution,” she said.

“And there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me.”

She later posted on X that “significant context was disregarded” in the article but didn’t go into specifics.

The attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters was aimed at stopping certification of Biden’s presidential victory.

That day was the closest the U.S. has come to a violent disruption of the peaceful transfer of power since the Civil War.

Rioters smashed through security barriers, stormed the building and clashed with law enforcement, injuring dozens of officers.

Trump has defended those charged in connection with January 6 as “Great American Patriots” and cast their prosecutions as “a grave national injustice.”

In one of his first official acts in his second term, he granted clemency to all the nearly 1,600 people charged in the attack and issued a proclamation promising a “process of national reconciliation.”

He later called for an inquiry into what he labeled the “January 6th Hoax,” alleging, without evidence, that undercover FBI personnel helped incite violence.

Among those granted clemency was Jared Wise, a former FBI agent himself. According to bodycam footage submitted in court, Wise urged rioters to kill police during the Capitol siege.

Wise now serves in the Trump administration.

According to government documents reviewed by Reuters, he is advising Martin and has helped arrange meetings with officials who are re-examining January 6.

Wise declined to comment. His hiring by the Justice Department was reported in July by The New York Times.

His role in organizing meetings tied to the January 6 review is previously unreported. The Justice Department spokesperson said Wise “is not assigned to” January 6 matters, but declined to comment on whether he has done work related to the Capitol riot in his role.

“Jared Wise is a valued member of the Department of Justice,” the spokesperson said.

Martin, who declined to comment for this article, has spoken publicly about his broader aims.

“There is a group of us working on January 6,” Martin said on Fox News in August.

“That’s a fulsome investigation on January 6, and it will make clear the hoax, which is really the 2020 election hoax.”

Last month he reported “regular progress” on that effort.

“We need more prosecutions, we need more convictions.

I get it,” he said on a November 10 podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser who served prison time for defying a congressional subpoena on the Capitol riot.

Government lawyers who handled the January 6 cases have defended their prosecutions.

They point to the overwhelming video evidence showing the pro-Trump mob breaching the Capitol and assaulting police officers.

Congressional investigators found that several rioters carried firearms or stockpiled weapons nearby. Some of those charged belonged to far-right extremist groups.

Some of the harassed prosecutors have bolstered home security, scrubbed their online presence and lined up lawyers, they said in interviews.

Some sought therapy to manage anxiety; others quietly left government service, worried that speaking out could jeopardize their safety or new jobs. Still others were fired.

One former prosecutor said he carried a folding knife for three months wherever it was legal after a rioter called for his imprisonment on a right-wing online talk show.

At least a dozen told Reuters they believe the retaliation campaign could undermine the independence of the U.S. justice system.

Matthew Beckwith, who worked on Capitol riot cases, said he was fired by Martin in January.

Five days later, rioters posted a list on X naming Beckwith and at least 88 other January 6 prosecutors, along with calls for them to be fired or jailed. One user replied with a photo of a noose, suggesting prosecutors should be hanged.

The online venom unsettled Beckwith’s wife, who was five months pregnant with their first child at the time, he said.

"I don’t think anybody with an objective sense of reality can look at the Justice Department right now and honestly say it’s acting as a neutral arbiter."

The Justice Department, Beckwith said in an interview, is becoming a “weaponized prosecutorial force” with no independence. “I don’t think anybody with an objective sense of reality can look at the Justice Department right now and honestly say it’s acting as a neutral arbiter.” He now works in private practice.

Threats and retaliation

Some of the people threatening January 6 prosecutors claim the official account of the Capitol siege was fabricated.

They are intent on rewriting it.

One of them is Christopher Quaglin, a 40-year-old electrician from New Jersey who now lives in Florida.

He told Reuters he filed an administrative claim with the Justice Department – a formal request for compensation – seeking $150 million for what he contends were violations of his civil rights.

Before storming the Capitol, Quaglin called for “civil war” on social media, a battle of “traditional” Americans against a “radical left” that he believed supported a stolen election.

In the months before January 6, he said his anger was growing, fueled by pandemic lockdowns, violence at some Black Lives Matter protests and a business deal that was falling apart.

In October, the month before the 2020 election, he said he drove to Trump Tower in Manhattan and poured 100 gallons of paint across a Black Lives Matter mural. He was not charged in that incident.

Quaglin attacked police officers “over and over again” on January 6, prosecutors said in a court filing, requesting he remain detained before trial.

As he forced his way through police lines, prosecutors alleged, he grabbed one officer by the neck and tackled him, seized a police shield, used it to strike other officers, and pepper-sprayed another in the face, shouting “traitors!” as he attacked.

A judge convicted him of 12 felonies – including assaulting officers, robbery, obstruction and civil disorder – and two misdemeanors tied to violence and disorderly conduct. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

He had pleaded not guilty and claimed prosecutors overstated his actions.

After being pardoned, Quaglin called for reprisals against Akers and another prosecutor. In an interview, he cast them as conspirators in a plot to entrap rioters and arrest Trump to prevent him from taking office.

“I want their heads on a pike,” he said, adding that he was speaking metaphorically.

This summer, Quaglin visited the FBI’s Newark office to retrieve two handguns seized during his arrest, he said. The FBI declined to comment.

Akers, who spent seven years at the Justice Department, told Reuters she was convinced Quaglin could once more carry out political violence.

“A guy who has been convicted of felonies now has firearms, and that’s just terrifying,” she said.

Quaglin said he no longer plans to take part in any “civil war.”

“I did my part and I’m done.”

But he issued a warning to Akers when told of her concerns about him.

“She should be scared, because I’m going to go after her legally and civilly.”

After the rioters were freed, the new Trump Justice Department began embracing their cause.

In January, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek “accountability” for what he called the “weaponization of the federal government” during the Biden years.

The order cited January 6 prosecutions as an example.

Two weeks later, Bondi established the Weaponization Working Group, with instructions to probe “improper investigative tactics” and “unethical prosecutions” arising from the Capitol assault.

Twenty-six January 6 prosecutors told Reuters they began noticing a surge of social media posts attacking them and calling for revenge after Trump pardoned the rioters and issued his executive order to Bondi.

Reuters analyzed nearly 350 such posts that have been viewed more than 27 million times on X.

Among the posters who called for retribution against the prosecutors, nearly two dozen had been convicted of assaulting police during the attack, according to their social media posts, local news accounts and interviews with four rioters convicted of those assaults.

At least three online posts listed the names of January 6 prosecutors, sometimes noting where they currently work.

Early this year, Trump nominated Martin to be the U.S. attorney in Washington D.C., a powerful role that oversees the largest U.S. attorney’s office and handles high-profile cases involving federal agencies. Martin, 55 years old, has spent years in Republican politics, running and losing bids for U.S. Congress and state attorney general in Missouri.

In 2016, he co-authored a book, “The Conservative Case for Trump,” a show of loyalty that foreshadowed his rise.

During his brief 16-week stint as interim U.S. attorney, Martin fired 15 prosecutors who handled January 6 cases. After bipartisan criticism in Congress over his support for rioters sank his nomination, Trump named him to lead the Justice Department’s pardon office and chair its Weaponization Working Group in May.

Bondi has enlisted Martin to work on probes targeting New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who won a business fraud judgment against Trump in a civil case.

A judge dismissed a mortgage fraud case against James in November, and this month grand juries rejected subsequent attempts to charge her.

Martin also helped with investigations into Democratic Senator Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook over mortgage-fraud allegations, which they both deny.

Martin has said he supports financial restitution for the rioters.

“If you put somebody in jail for years,” he said on a May podcast, “and you lied about it, you should have to pay for it.”

Direct line to justice

In recent months, at least three people pardoned for their roles in the Capitol attack – along with their allies – have shifted from airing grievances online to speaking directly with Justice Department officials, according to interviews, a review of social media posts and the government documents.

Advocates for the rioters have met with Martin at least four times since February.

Troy Smocks, who owns a radio station in Texas, was convicted of threatening violence related to January 6 and later pardoned.

He told Reuters he spoke in July with a Justice Department official and was asked to put his ideas in writing.

He produced a memorandum and, at the official’s request, a draft sample indictment that named 26 federal judges as potential targets.

“I hope they read it and I hope that it shakes them in their boots,” he said in an interview.

In his draft indictment, reviewed by Reuters, Smocks proposed charging the judges with kidnapping under Texas law, arguing that they conspired with other officials to unlawfully arrest, prosecute and try January 6 defendants.

In a July text message with a Justice Department attorney seen by Reuters, he said he chose Texas because its people “despise” D.C. judges and would likely convict them at trial.

The document alleged that judges, working with prosecutors and law enforcement agencies, had “conspired to deprive individuals of liberty without due process of law.”

There is no evidence of any such conspiracy.

The prosecutors who charged Smocks described him as having a “lengthy criminal history” from his teens through the mid-2000s for crimes including forgery, theft, and bank fraud. Now 63 and battling bladder cancer, Smocks told Reuters he disputes some of those charges.

After the riot, he pleaded guilty to making threats on social media from his Washington hotel room on January 6.

The posts urged armed followers to return on January 19 and “hunt these cowards down like the Traitors that each of them are,” including moderate Republicans, Democrats and technology executives.

Pardoned rioter Treniss Evans entered the Capitol through a broken window on January 6.

He too has met Martin and other Justice Department officials, he said in an interview.

He expressed confidence in Trump and said he believed “justified” action would be taken by the Justice Department in response to January 6.

“That’s all I’m asking for.”

The Justice Department spokesperson said Martin “may have met him at some point but does not recall a formal meeting.”

During the attack, Evans used a megaphone to beckon other rioters inside the Capitol and downed a shot of Fireball whiskey in a congressional conference room.

“You’re damn right I took shots of Fireball,” Evans, 51, told Reuters.

He said his only regrets were the brand of whiskey and a subpar rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner he performed during the riot.

“Anytime I show up at a federal building and want to sing the national anthem, anybody who has a problem with it can shove it up their ass,” he said.

Evans pleaded guilty in 2022 to unlawfully entering the Capitol.

He now argues that the rioters were victims of a “weaponised legal system.”

He has founded Condemned USA, an advocacy group for January 6 defendants.

While he acknowledges that some demonstrators “did things they know were wrong,” he still wants Justice Department officials who handled the cases prosecuted.
“I want perp walks,” he said.

In June, Martin met in his office with another pardoned rioter, Brian Mock, who served prison time after being convicted of assaulting four police officers on January 6, Mock told Reuters.

During the meeting, Mock said he accused his prosecutor, Mike Gordon, and FBI agents involved in January 6 cases of committing crimes.

He also claimed that judges had orchestrated a campaign to deprive defendants of their civil rights.

Afterward, Mock said Justice Department officials requested more information, and he responded by sending them memos.

“What I was very impressed with was the fact that (Martin) sat intently and gave me well over an hour in a kind of impromptu meeting and diligently took pages upon pages of notes, as did the other staffers in there,” said Mock.

The Justice Department spokesperson said that if Martin met Mock, “he does not recall the meeting.”

"These people are pursuing the same mob vengeance that drove January 6 in the first place."

Mock, 46, had run a small landscaping business.

In 2010, he was convicted on a weapons charge after pointing a gun at three boys during his son’s birthday party a year earlier, surrendering only when a SWAT team surrounded his home, according to a sentencing memo tied to his January 6 case and the Anoka County Attorney’s office in Minnesota.

In the memo, prosecutors allege he assaulted his ex-wife in 2009.

They added that while he awaited trial on Capitol riot charges, an ex-girlfriend secured a restraining order, saying she was frightened by his behavior.

Mock called all those past allegations “complete bullshit.”

Mock’s prosecutor, Gordon, was fired on June 27.

“These people are pursuing the same mob vengeance that drove January 6 in the first place,” Gordon said in an interview.

“It’s sort of a lynch mob trying to put as many heads on stakes as they can for having the temerity to enforce the law.”

His termination letter, which Reuters reviewed, gave no reason for his dismissal.

Gordon and two other former Justice Department officials have filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, claiming their termination amounted to retaliation. The suit seeks their reinstatement.

The department has moved to dismiss the case, arguing the claims should be handled by an agency that protects civil servants from retaliation, not by a federal court.

Two members of Martin’s weaponization group also phoned a January 6 defense lawyer twice in August, seeking ideas on what “wrongs” to investigate, the attorney, Carolyn Stewart, told Reuters.

Stewart said she urged them to examine the conduct of Capitol Police during the riot, whether prosecutors withheld evidence that could have cleared January 6 defendants, and possible misconduct during the arrests.

Few people embody the convergence of January 6 defendants and Justice Department insiders as neatly as Wise, the former FBI agent turned Capitol rioter.

He has arranged multiple meetings of the Justice Department’s weaponisation group, according to the government documents reviewed by Reuters.

Wise entered the Capitol on January 6 and, in footage captured by police cameras, urged rioters to “kill” officers.

He had spent nearly 13 years at the FBI and led a counterterrorism squad in New York before leaving the bureau in 2017, according to court records.

Raised on a farm in Modesto, California, Wise began a career in finance before pivoting to law enforcement after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

His defense team later described lingering trauma from overseas’ deployments while he was at the FBI.

Wise was charged in 2023 with encouraging the mob to kill police and illegally entering the Capitol. Before his trial, he said January 6 prosecutors should “go to prison” in a post on X.

In court testimony, he described the scene at the Capitol of officers struggling with rioters as “police brutality” but said he regretted encouraging people to kill the police.

His case was dismissed after Trump’s grants of clemency. Wise soon posted a to-do list on X that included investigating, unmasking, reassigning and firing Justice Department officials.

Within months, he was working to shape an early draft of the riot re-examination report, according to the government documents reviewed by Reuters.

Other January 6 defendants have landed back in legal trouble.

At least seven rioters have been arrested in new incidents since Trump pardoned them. The allegations range from burglary and kidnapping to death threats against House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Some rioters say they are counting on Martin and Wise for payback.

“Ed, I think God wants you to help in destroying the wicked,” Larry Brock, a former Air Force officer who stormed the Capitol in combat gear, wrote to Martin in a post on X in August.

Brock, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, then named three of his prosecutors and accused them of violating his rights.

“Arrest them,” he said.