Washington – Michael Romano spent more than 17 years in the Department of Justice, and finally became supervisor in the team that would process more than 1,500 people accused The attack on the United States Capitol.
At the time he observed the largest investigation in the history of the department to be cleaned with the blow of a pen, on the first day of President Donald Trump in the White House, Romano knew he had to leave.
“I knew on January 20, when the pellets were announced, which needed to find my departure,” Romano said in an interview with The Associated Press weeks after his resignation from the Department of Justice. “It would be unsustainable for me to stay, given the pardons and given the false narratives that were extending around January 6.”
Now, Romano says he fears Trump’s decision to forgive even the most violent rioters, whom his own vice president once said “Obviously” should not be forgiven -He could be emboldened to right -wing extremists and encourage future political violence.
“The way in which the defendants of January 6 have received the pardons and other right -wing extremists, as I understand, is to recognize that if he supports the president and if he commits violence in support of the president, he could isolate him from the consequences, he could protect him from the criminal justice system,” Romano said. “And that could encourage people to commit this type of acts.”
Romano is among dozens of lawyers from the Department of Justice who resigned, have been expelled or fired in the weeks since Trump’s new leadership took over and began to make radical changes to align the agency to apply the law with the priorities of the Republican President to whom the department once processed.
Trump’s return to the White House has introduced a vertiginous change for many in the Department of Justice, but perhaps few have felt more than the lawyers who spent years working on the serious larger -scale attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812.
As deputy director of the siege section of the now dismissed Capitol that processed the vision of January 6, 2021, Riot, Romano had a vision of the foreground of the evidence, including the heartbreaking videos and the judicial testimony that detailed the violence that was developed when the pro-trump mafia assaulted the capitol when the legislators met to certify the victory of the former president of the former president Joe Biden 2020.
Romano joined the Department of Justice in 2007 directly outside the Law Faculty, and was working in the Washington section that manages the cases of public corruption on January 6, 2021. He remembered to see how the riots developed on television and quickly decide that he wanted to help with the prosecution of what he described as a “crime of historical proportions.”
Trump’s pardons consolidated the president’s years of years for Rewrite the story of the January 6 attack.
While competing to return to the White House, Trump repeatedly minimized the violence that left more than 100 injured police officers, and praised the uproarists as patriots and hostages whom he said they were unjustly persecuted by the Department of Justice for their political beliefs. Only two accused of disturbances of the Capitol were acquitted of all the charges, that Trump that supporters cited as evidence that Washington’s jurors cannot be fair and impartial. Some defendants of January 6 are now considering running for a position.
The scope of Trump’s clemency after the inauguration was a surprise for many, considering that the president had suggested in the previous weeks that instead of the general forgives, would look at the defendants of January 6, case by case. Trump’s proclamation described the Prosecutor’s Office as “a serious national injustice” and declared that the pardons would begin “a national reconciliation process.”
Trump’s forgives led to the release of the prison of the leaders of extreme right -wing groups convicted by Orchestrating violent plots To stop the peaceful transfer of power, as well as the rufflers convicted of brutal attacks against the police, many of whose crimes were captured in the camera and were broadcast on live television. Trump has defended his pardons, saying that the prayers transmitted by shares that day were “ridiculous and excessive” and that “these are people who really love our country.”
Romano said that the notion that the defendants of January 6 were not treated fairly in the justice system or not given the due process that they were entitled is “simply not true.” In many cases, he said that prosecutors had overwhelming evidence because the defendants “filmed proudly committing crimes.”
“They had the full protection of the rights guaranteed by the American justice system and the Constitution,” Romano said. “It was my experience when dealing with these cases and seeing the way in which the fuss and some of their lawyers behaved in court, which their opinion was that they should be treated as heroes and not processed at all.”
Despite the pardons, Romano said he still believes that the work of the Capitol’s siege section was important because he left a “historical record” of what happened on January 6 that cannot be changed.
“In the light of efforts to bleach the history of that day, in the light of efforts so that people lie about that day for their own benefit, which is what is happening, it is important that people really understand the truth about what happened on January 6,” he said.
