A former F.B.I. agent who was charged with encouraging the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to kill police officers has been named as an adviser to the Justice Department task force that President Trump established to seek retribution against his political enemies.
The former agent, Jared L. Wise, is serving as a counselor to Ed Martin, the director of the so-called Weaponization Working Group, according to people familiar with the group’s activities.
Mr. Martin, a longtime supporter of Jan. 6 defendants, was put in charge of the weaponization group in May after Mr. Trump withdrew his name for a Senate-confirmed position as the U.S. attorney in Washington. His nomination faltered in part because of the work he had done as an advocate and defense lawyer for people charged in connection with the Capitol attack.
Even in a Justice Department that has often been pressed into serving Mr. Trump’s political agenda, the appointment of Mr. Wise to the weaponization task force was a remarkable development. His selection 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.
It remains unclear exactly what role Mr. Wise will play as Mr. Martin’s adviser. But one person familiar with the working group’s activities said that Mr. Martin was proud to have Mr. Wise on his team, adding that there was no better person to serve on the weaponization task force than someone who had experienced the federal government being weaponized against him.
If “we could genetically design an adviser” to Mr. Martin, the person said, he would look like Mr. Wise.
When federal prosecutors initially charged Mr. Wise in May 2023, they accused him of telling the police outside the Capitol that they were like the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s feared secret police. As violence erupted, his charging document said, he told other rioters who were attacking law enforcement officers, “Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!”
Mr. Wise then raised his arms in celebration after breaching the Capitol in a face mask, prosecutors said, and escaped through a window.
The case against him was dismissed on Mr. Trump’s first day back in office as part of the sprawling grant of clemency the president gave to all of the nearly 1,600 people who took part in the Capitol attack. Mr. Trump’s act of mercy came at an especially significant moment for Mr. Wise: When his indictment was thrown out, he was in the middle of his criminal trial in Federal District Court in Washington.
Mr. Wise worked on public corruption and counterterrorism matters at the F.B.I. field offices in Washington and New York. Mr. Wise left the bureau after his supervisors in New York became unhappy with his work, and his career had stalled, a former senior F.B.I. official said.
Mr. Wise later joined the conservative group Project Veritas under the supervision of a former British spy, Richard Seddon, who had been recruited by the security contractor Erik Prince to train operatives to infiltrate trade unions, Democratic congressional campaigns and other targets.
At Project Veritas, according to a former employee with direct knowledge of his employment, Mr. Wise trained at the Prince family ranch in Wyoming with other recruits. Mr. Wise was among a group of Project Veritas operatives assigned to infiltrate teacher unions in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Kentucky, according to the former employee. Mr. Seddon oversaw the operation.
The Weaponization Working Group was created in February, not long after Mr. Trump returned to the White House, purportedly to root out “abuses of the criminal justice process” by local and federal law enforcement officers.
But as its name suggested, the investigative body was also an example of how Justice Department, under Mr. Trump’s leadership, planned to weaponize its expansive powers to investigate and perhaps take legal action against people who had run afoul of the president.
According to a memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi, one of the group’s missions was to look into the “improper investigative tactics and unethical prosecutions” arising from the Justice Department’s sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
Adam Goldman writes about the F.B.I. and national security for The Times. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.
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