Police bodycam footage introduced at the trial of Jared Wise showed him berating police officers on Jan. 6, 2021 and yelling "kill 'em" as rioters attacked law enforcement.
Less than five years after urging rioters to "kill" police at the Capitol, a former Jan. 6 defendant is working as a senior adviser for the Department of Justice, which has been dramatically remade under the second Trump administration.
NPR has obtained police bodycam footage from multiple angles of the former defendant and current administration official, Jared Wise, berating officers and calling them "Nazi" and "Gestapo." NPR located the footage, which has not previously been published, in a review of thousands of court exhibits from Jan. 6 criminal cases, obtained through legal action by a coalition of media organizations. The Department of Justice had introduced the footage as an exhibit in Wise's trial. NPR also obtained the transcript of Wise's testimony, in which he acknowledged that he repeatedly yelled "kill 'em" as officers were being attacked and tried to explain his actions. Wise was not convicted of any crimes related to Jan. 6, due to President Trump's order to end all Capitol riot prosecutions.
A Department of Justice spokesperson said in a statement, "Jared Wise is a valued member of the Justice Department and we appreciate his contributions to our team."
The videos depict a tense period in the middle of the riot that day.
The Capitol building had been breached two hours earlier, with doors knocked off hinges and windows smashed. The air was thick with pepper spray. The Vice President, along with members of Congress, had been forced to evacuate and halt the certification of the 2020 election, as rioters yelled, "give them the rope," "hang Mike Pence," and "traitors get the guillotine."
The Capitol grounds were almost entirely overrun with angry Trump supporters, many of whom had assaulted police with weapons including a bat, a hockey stick, stun guns, metal bars and chemical sprays. Law enforcement officers were bruised, bloodied and, in some cases, temporarily blinded from the attacks, but still trying to hold the line where they could.
At 4:21pm, Wise stepped up to a police line on the upper west terrace of the building.
Wise had already entered the Capitol building through a door that was forced open, exiting about ten minutes later through a broken window, according to charging documents. He remained on Capitol grounds for hours during the ongoing chaos.
"You guys are disgusting," Wise told the officers, as captured in the bodycam footage. "I'm former law enforcement. You're disgusting. You are the Nazi. You are the Gestapo."
Wise had served at the FBI from 2004 to 2017, where he worked on international counter-terrorism and eventually became a supervisory special agent. By Jan. 6, 2021, according to later testimony, he was working as a consultant in Bend, Oregon, and he traveled to Washington, DC to support Trump.
As he stood in front of the police line, he continued to berate the officers.
"Shame on you," he yelled. "Shame on you. Shame on you."
Violence erupted again, as rioters pushed against officers, knocking one to the ground, according to prosecutors.
""Kill 'em! Kill 'em!" Wise yelled, as he watched the skirmish. "Get 'em! Get 'em!"
In 2023, prosecutors obtained an indictment against Wise for civil disorder, disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, as well as aiding and abetting an assault on law enforcement officers.
Wise pleaded not guilty, and at the beginning of January 2025, just before Trump took office, he went on trial.
Greg Rosen led the Justice Department's "Capitol Siege Section," which prosecuted the Jan. 6 cases, and personally oversaw Wise's prosecution.
Rosen told NPR that Wise's history as an FBI agent informed his team's approach.
"His prior experience as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer certainly informed his understanding of what was right and what was wrong and the circumstances that he was presented with that day in the middle of that riot," Rosen said. "Somebody who is in a position of authority and somebody who's in a position of trust should know better."
Wise's attorneys argued that his speech was protected by the First Amendment, and that "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."
Wise testified in his own defense.
On the witness stand, according to the trial transcript, Wise acknowledged entering the Capitol building and tried to explain why he called the police "Nazis" and "Gestapo" and said "kill 'em" as other rioters assaulted officers.
He testified that he was responding to what he viewed as "police brutality" and acting out of anger.
"Those are terrible things to say. Of course. I shouldn't say those things," Wise testified. "I think I was careless and used, like, terrible words when I was angry."
He said the terms Nazi and Gestapo came to mind because of law enforcement training he had received from the Anti-Defamation League and past visits to Holocaust museums.
A federal prosecutor pressed Wise about his rant against police.
"You yelled, 'shame on you, shame on you?'" Assistant U.S. Attorney Taylor Fontan asked.
"I did," Wise replied.
"And you meant it or you wouldn't have said, right?" Fontan asked.
"I assume yes," Wise said.
"And you meant 'Kill 'em, kill 'em, kill 'em, get 'em, get 'em,' right?" Fontan asked.
"No," Wise said. "I think that was just an angry reaction."
"Okay. So you meant it 10 seconds before and then all of a sudden you didn't mean it, right?" Fontan said.
"No," Wise testified. "I don't think I meant kill 'em, I don't want people to die."
Wise did not personally assault police, though he that testified he would have been "morally justified" if he had tried to stop police from using what he viewed as excessive force on Jan. 6.
He described his decision to enter the Capitol as "irrational," and acknowledged during cross examination that "it was probably obvious" he wasn't supposed to go into the building.
Both the defense and prosecution had completed closing arguments in the case when Trump took office on Jan. 20, and ordered the case dismissed, referring to the Capitol riot prosecutions as a "grave national injustice."
The day after the inauguration, federal Judge Randolph D. Moss formally dismissed Wise's case.
It's unclear what precise role Wise is now playing at the Department of Justice.
According to email records from multiple sources viewed by NPR, Wise holds the title of senior adviser in the office of the deputy attorney general and has been working on internal reviews of alleged "weaponization" of law enforcement. In its statement, the Justice Department did not respond to NPR's questions about Wise.
Meanwhile, Trump appointed conservative activist Ed Martin as U.S. Pardon Attorney and director of the administration's new "Weaponization Working Group." Attorney General Pam Bondi tasked the group with reviewing "improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions" related to the Capitol attack.
Before joining the administration, Martin served on the board of a nonprofit group that financially supported Jan. 6 defendants and their families. In interviews, he has suggested that violence against police on Jan. 6 may have been justified because the events were "staged" — a conspiracy theory not backed by credible evidence.
"I'm not saying if you hit a cop, you can get excused. I'm not saying that," Martin said in 2024. "Although, I am saying the more we find out about how staged and managed this was, the more we have to have less judgment on somebody who hits a cop."
"I've seen people hit a cop and that doesn't make it the end of the world," Martin added.
The hiring of a former Jan. 6 criminal defendant at the nation's top law enforcement agency is just the latest example of how the Trump administration has attempted to rewrite the history of the Capitol riot.
"The Department of Justice could have hired anyone," said Rosen. "They chose someone who was alleged and credibly alleged to have participated in a riot, encouraging other rioters to kill police officers protecting the Capitol."
While the White House has portrayed itself as a firm advocate of law enforcement, the administration's actions have made clear that its notion of "Back the Blue" has a Jan. 6 exception.
"The hypocrisy is astounding," said Rosen.
Just hours after his inauguration, Trump granted clemency to all of the more than 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants, including the most violent.
Most Jan. 6 defendants received "full, complete and unconditional" pardons. Some had prior criminal records or pending charges for rape, manslaughter, domestic violence, drug trafficking, possession of child sexual abuse material and other crimes.
14 defendants, all of whom were linked to the extremist groups the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, received commutations, releasing them from prison though not erasing their felony convictions from their records.
All of the defendants facing ongoing cases — like Wise — had their charges dismissed. Active investigations into assaults on police were closed.
Former FBI director Christopher Wray referred to the Jan. 6 attack as an act of domestic terrorism. The current FBI director, Kash Patel, previously helped produce a song performed by Jan. 6 rioters in jail, including some who violently assaulted police.
Two former Jan. 6 defendants, one of whom smashed a Capitol window with a tomahawk and was convicted of assaulting police, received a White House tour.
The Trump administration paid nearly five million dollars to settle a wrongful death suit brought by the family of Ashli Babbitt, a Jan. 6 rioter who was shot and killed by police while trying to breach a barricaded door by the House chamber. The Department of Justice had previously determined that the shooting was justified .
The administration fired dozens of career prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases. Rosen himself was demoted before he decided to leave the government to join the firm Rogers Joseph O'Donnell.
After Martin joined the government, he said that former Jan. 6 defendants like Wise deserve "restitution."
"If you're damaged, you should be made whole," Martin said in May. "That's what's at stake with weaponization."
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