Justice Department employee who was prosecuted over Jan. 6 Capitol attack says he resigned

Source: CBS News

April 2, 2026 / 8:25 PM EDT / CBS News
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A former FBI agent who was prosecuted for his alleged role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and later hired by the Trump-era Justice Department has left his government post, he announced Thursday.

In a post on X, Jared Wise said he came to the Justice Department hoping to expose alleged abuses by prosecutors and agents who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, but he now believes it's not possible to complete that mission from his role at the department.

"I returned to Washington to fully expose the abuses by the FBI and DOJ against J6 defendants, but it became clear that this will only happen from outside of government. So I left and will do so," Wise wrote in his social media post.

Wise served as an FBI agent and a supervisory agent from 2004 to 2017. After leaving the bureau, he was charged in connection with Jan. 6, facing felony charges of civil disorder and assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers, as well as four misdemeanor counts. Prosecutors said that Wise encouraged the crowd outside the Capitol to hurt law enforcement officers, yelling: "Yeah, kill 'em!" They also accused him of entering the Capitol building.

Wise was pardoned by President Trump on the first day of his second term in office, along with nearly 1,600 other alleged rioters. Wise was in the middle of his trial at the time.

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/justice-department-employee-prosecuted-jan-6-capitol-riot-resigned/