A lawyer who represented violent rioters charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and compared their prosecutions to the Nazi genocide has been hired by the Department of Justice, where he is now working with the Trump administration's "Weaponization Working Group."
"These prosecutors are evil people," said attorney Jonathan Gross during a January YouTube livestream prior to joining the administration. "They will put you on a cattle car to Auschwitz without batting an eye."
Former Justice Department officials expressed concern about the hiring, particularly regarding the direction of the administration's probe into the alleged "weaponization" of law enforcement, given Gross' scant experience in criminal law and history of inflammatory rhetoric.
The Justice Department announced Gross' hiring in June, noting that he would join the Civil Rights Division.
"The DOJ that I grew up with, that I joined, and that I worked for for eight-and-a-half years would never have hired Jonathan Gross — let alone for a job like this," said Mike Gordon, a former federal prosecutor who faced off against Gross in court and was fired by the Trump administration shortly after Gross' hiring. Gordon is suing the administration over his dismissal.
An NPR review of Gross' social media feed and podcast appearances revealed that prior to his appointment, he had advocated for financial compensation for former Jan. 6 defendants, compared prosecutors to a notorious Nazi war criminal, amplified conspiracy theories that the attack was instigated by federal agents, and reposted on social media a statement that "it's time for the police and government to pay for their crimes against the American people."
Gross' comments and work with the "Weaponization Working Group" have not been previously reported.
A Department of Justice spokesperson did not respond to NPR's requests for comment.
When an NPR reporter contacted Gross by phone, he abruptly ended the call as soon as the reporter identified himself. He did not respond to text messages seeking comment.
In his new role, Gross joins other prominent advocates for Jan. 6 defendants in the administration.
Another member of the group, Jared Wise, is a former riot defendant, who urged rioters to "kill" police during the attack and called the officers "the Gestapo." The charges against Wise were dismissed after Trump took office and issued mass pardons to Jan. 6 defendants, including the most violent.
The leader of the "Weaponization Working Group," Associate Deputy Attorney General Ed Martin, also previously defended Jan. 6 defendants in court, and has suggested that rioters may have been justified in assaulting police.
On Sunday, Martin told Fox News that he is leading a "fulsome investigation" into the government's handling of Capitol riot prosecutions.
"I've never practiced criminal law"
Gross took an unconventional path to representing defendants charged in the Jan. 6 attack, which injured 140 police officers.
"I was not always an attorney," Gross told the American Radicals podcast last year. An Orthodox Jew, Gross served as a rabbi for more than a decade but "at a certain point, I decided I wanted to do something else."
He went to the University of Baltimore School of Law, graduating in 2019, according to his profile on LinkedIn.
After graduation, Gross worked on civil litigation. It wasn't until he became "outraged" by the prosecutions of Jan. 6 defendants that he decided to assist them, despite having no experience in criminal law.
In at least one case, his lack of experience caused problems in court.
In the spring of 2023, Gross requested a delay in the trial of his client Christopher Quaglin, citing, among other issues, the fact that he had not previously worked in criminal defense. "I am a civil attorney," Gross told federal judge Trevor McFadden, according to the court transcript. "I've never practiced criminal law."
McFadden, a Trump appointee, expressed frustration in response to the motion.
"Quaglin's attorneys have now delayed this trial multiple times to the detriment of their client," McFadden wrote in a subsequent order, though he ultimately granted the delay.
"He was a pure ideologue, who was in way over his head," said Gordon, who prosecuted one of Gross' other Jan. 6 clients.
Quaglin was later convicted of 12 felonies for assaulting police officers, tackling one to the ground, and deploying a chemical spray in officers' faces.
Gross ultimately went on to represent several Jan. 6 defendants. Among his other clients were Ryan Nichols, who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers with a chemical spray, and Richard Barnett, who posed for photos with his feet propped on a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office. Barnett was convicted of multiple felony and misdemeanor charges.
Quaglin, Nichols and Barnett all received full presidential pardons.
Gross: Jan. 6 prosecutors "no different" than Nazi doctor Josef Mengele
After Trump won the 2024 election, Gross appeared on several podcasts. In those interviews, he advocated for blanket pardons for Jan. 6 offenders, called for reparations for the defendants from the government, and condemned the judges and prosecutors who worked on their cases.
Gross argued that "honestly there weren't" any serious violent rioters on Jan. 6, despite defendants using weapons like chemical sprays, metal poles, stun guns, stolen police batons and even a bat to assault officers.
Gross' claim is contradicted by evidence and court records describing serious violence during the riot, including at the sentencing of one of his own clients, Christopher Quaglin. A police officer who was assaulted by Quaglin and suffered a long-lasting back injury said in a victim impact statement read in court, "after January 6th, I suffered from unbearable back pain that kept me from playing with my children. Before I was attacked, I could run and play with my children and enjoy time and activities with my wife. I loved to do yard work and it gave me great joy. But the Defendant took that away from me."
Gross insisted that the Justice Department's record of securing convictions in virtually every Capitol riot case that went to trial was not due to overwhelming evidence, but rather bias. "The juries and the judges don't care," Gross said. "The verdict is already determined in advance."
On social media, he shared a post by far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who claimed the attack was "staged" by a "Deep State Democrat Cabal." Gross also reposted a statement saying "it's time for the police and government to pay for their crimes against the American people."
He urged the Trump administration to give the Jan. 6 defendants money as compensation and suggested a path to make that happen.
"There has to be compensation," Gross told the Justice in Jeopardy podcast. "People's lives have been destroyed. And the way they can do that is they can just let everybody file a lawsuit and settle the lawsuits."
In early June, prior to Gross' hiring, the Trump administration agreed to a nearly five-million-dollar settlement to resolve a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Ashli Babbitt, a rioter who was shot and killed during the breach. The government had previously declared that the shooting was justified.
In his podcast appearances and social media posts, Gross reserved his most intense criticism for prosecutors.
On a Jan. 21, 2025, YouTube livestream, the day after Trump's inauguration, Gross said he was offended that junior prosecutors were assigned to Capitol riot cases.
"Because these cases were such boilerplate, cookie cutter, they used it as a training simulation for new attorneys!" said Gross, despite his own inexperience with criminal law.
Host Mark Groubert then compared the prosecutors to Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor who performed experiments on Jews, Roma, and disabled people during the Holocaust. Gross agreed with the analogy, saying, "That's exactly what this is. It's no different. These prosecutors are evil people. They will put you on a cattle car to Auschwitz without batting an eye. I will tell you, some of them were scarier than others. The scariest ones of them are cold-blooded killers."
Former Jan. 6 prosecutor Gordon said of Gross' comments, "It's unbecoming of a lawyer and deliberately inflammatory. It cheapens the Holocaust and the experience of those who survived it."
Before joining the Trump administration, Gross demanded investigations and "consequences" for Justice Department officials involved in the Capitol riot investigation.
"There has to be consequences and there has to be accountability," said Gross. "The real crime of January 6th was not what happened on that day. It's what happened since."
In addition to mass pardons for Jan. 6 offenders, the Trump administration has started to rewrite the history of the insurrection. Two former defendants — including one convicted of assaulting police — received a tour of the White House. The Justice Department broadened the scope of the Jan. 6 pardons to include gun and drug charges not directly connected to the Capitol riot. And dozens of Jan. 6 prosecutors were fired and now face investigations by the government they used to serve.
Gordon told NPR that Gross' hiring sends a troubling message about the future of the Department of Justice.
"What this so-called 'Weaponization Working Group' is doing," said Gordon, "is actually weaponizing the government against its own employees."
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