Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, but as it turns out, she wasn’t the only highly controversial figure to exit Main Justice this week. NBC News reported:

Jared Wise, a former Jan. 6 defendant who was later employed by the Trump administration, resigned today from the Justice Department, where he was working with the ‘weaponization working group.’

‘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,’ he wrote on X.

If there were a competition for the most controversial hire of the Trump administration’s second term, Wise would be a top contender.

Last summer, the Justice Department’s “weaponization working group” (itself an absurdity) hired Wise, a former FBI agent. Though his name is probably unfamiliar to most Americans, he was a ridiculous choice for a position in the DOJ for an important reason: Wise was a Jan. 6 rioter accused of encouraging the insurrectionist mob to kill police officers.

Indeed, NPR obtained police body camera footage from multiple angles that showed Wise berating officers and calling them “Nazi” and “gestapo.” While MS NOW hasn’t independently verified the footage, NPR did obtain a transcript of Wise’s testimony from his criminal case, in which he acknowledged that he repeatedly yelled “kill ’em” as officers were being attacked.

He was later seen celebrating after breaching the Capitol.

Federal prosecutors, however, didn’t have time to proceed with Wise’s criminal case before Trump started handing out pardons to rioters, including violent felons who clashed with police officers.

The New York Times last summer explained that Wise’s role within the Justice Department was “a remarkable development” because it meant “that a man who had urged violence against police officers was now responsible for the department’s official effort to exact revenge against those who had tried to hold the rioters accountable.”

The administration didn’t deny any of this. The Justice Department was unembarrassed about its hiring of an insurrectionist captured on video urging rioters to kill cops. In fact, a DOJ spokesperson conceded Wise’s role and described him as “a valued member” of the team.

This week, however, Wise decided to step down, which is notable in its own right, though I’m struck by his description of the circumstances. He didn’t resign because Justice Department officials no longer wanted to be associated with him; Wise resigned because he no longer wanted to be associated with them.

I don’t know when the Justice Department’s reputation will recover, but it won’t be anytime soon.

The post Jared Wise’s departure from the Justice Department isn’t just another resignation appeared first on MS NOW.

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