The Trump administration is standing by a Department of Justice official who was seen berating police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol.
Jared Wise, a DOJ senior adviser, can be seen on bodycam footage from the attack repeatedly yelling "kill 'em" at police officers during the attack, NPR reported Thursday.
"The Trump DOJ official, Jared Wise, admitted in his testimony to urging people to kill police, but suggested he didn't mean it literally," CNN's Aaron Blake wrote Thursday morning on X.
"DOJ's response: 'Jared Wise is a valued member of the Justice Department and we appreciate his contributions to our team.'"
Wise was named an adviser to the DOJ task force that President Donald Trump established to scrutinize pardons that former President Joe Biden issued on his way out of the White House.
Biden administration prosecutors in 2023 arrested Wise, a former FBI agent, accusing him of illegally entering the Capitol during the events of Jan. 6, and encouraging protesters to kill police officers.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wise was charged with four misdemeanor counts, including disrupting the orderly conduct of government business and unlawfully entering a restricted building. He pleaded not guilty.
Defense attorneys argued that Wise's speech was protected by the First Amendment.
"There is no evidence that anyone involved in the skirmish heard and was encouraged by his words, especially given the cacophony of noise at the time," his attorney said, according to a trial transcript.
The case against Wise was dismissed after Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 defendants in cases related to the events of Jan. 6.
According to the criminal complaint, camera footage caught Wise, who was a special agent and supervisory special agent with the FBI from 2004 to 2017, going through the Capitol's Senate wing door. It said, upon entering, he "clapped his hands and raised his arms in triumph." It said Wise later exited through a window adjacent to the Senate wing door.
Saying it obtained multi-angle police bodycam footage in a review of thousands of court exhibits from Jan. 6 criminal cases, NPR reported Wise called law enforcement officials "Nazi" and "Gestapo."
The DOJ introduced the bodycam footage in Wise's trial.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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