Prosecutor who handled high-profile Capitol riot cases sues government over his firing

Michael Gordon prosecuted some of the most notorious members of the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. His latest case to make is proving that the Justice Department fired him because he was good at his job.

Gordon sued the federal government Thursday, claiming his June 27 termination was politically motivated retribution for his work on prosecuting Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol. He and two other former Justice Department officials are plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the department, Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Executive Office of the President.

Dozens of Justice Department attorneys have been fired, demoted or forced out or have quit since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January. Gordon and the other plaintiffs — Patricia Hartman and Joseph Tirrell — appear to be the first of them to file a lawsuit.

Hartman was a public affairs specialist for the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia. Tirrell led the department’s ethics office.

Gordon, 47, said he received a performance review two days before his firing and got the highest rating. His one-page termination letter, signed by Bondi, didn’t specify any reasons for his dismissal.

Gordon, who joined the department in 2017, said he is proud to have played a part in the largest investigation in Justice Department history.

“We did what was right for the right reasons, without fear or favor,” Gordon told The Associated Press this week. “I didn’t lose my job for breaking the law. I lost it for enforcing it.”

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.

After watching the Capitol riot unfold live on television from his office in Tampa, Florida, Gordon volunteered to join the team of federal prosecutors working full-time on Jan. 6 cases.

Nearly 1,600 people were charged with Capitol riot-related crimes. Gordon prosecuted more than three dozen of those defendants.

Among them was Richard “Bigo” Barnett, an Arkansas man who propped his feet on a desk in then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office; Eric Munchel, a Tennessee bartender who carried plastic zip-tie handcuffs and a stun gun into the Senate gallery; and Rebecca Lavrenz, a Colorado woman who promoted herself online as the “J6 praying grandma.”

Gordon also handled the case against Ray Epps, a former Arizona resident who became a target of right-wing conspiracy theories about Jan. 6. Fox News Channel and other right-wing media outlets amplified baseless claims that Epps was an undercover government agent who helped incite the attack to entrap Trump supporters.

Former colleagues describe Gordon as a hardworking attorney who was a valuable member of the Capitol riot team. And there’s no doubt in their minds that he was fired purely for political reasons.

“There is no reason why you would want to lose somebody like Mike Gordon,” said Michael Romano, who was deputy chief of the Justice Department’s now-disbanded Capitol Siege Section before resigning earlier this year.

Former federal prosecutor Jason Manning, who worked with Gordon on a Jan. 6 case, said his former colleague was “remarkably skilled at trial.”

“He did some of the early trials of some high-profile cases, so people looked to him as an example of how you successfully present these cases to judges and to juries,” said Manning, who left the department last summer.

Rep. Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat, has called on Bondi to immediately Leo Govoni, a Florida man charged with embezzling over $100 million from medical trust funds.

“The victims deserve closure, and the public deserves a justice system free from intimidation and partisan retribution,” Castor wrote.

Gordon said he would accept reinstatement.

“When prosecutors are punished for doing their jobs, we all lose the protection of the law,” he said. “I can’t just sit back and watch and let my children grow up in a country where justice means whatever the president says it is and not what the law says.”

Gordon was in his office with his door closed, preparing a witness for trial by video conference, when an office administrator interrupted the call and handed him his termination letter.

“You don’t fire one of your top prosecutors in the middle of a $100 million fraud case unless politics matters to you more than justice,” Gordon said. “They fired me not for anything I failed to do, but rather for prosecuting people they wanted protected.”

Gordon was bracing to get fired when Trump returned to the White House and immediately issued blanket pardons, commuted sentences and ordered the dismissal of charges in every Capitol riot case. Trump also installed Ed Martin Jr., a leading advocate for Jan. 6 rioters, to serve as interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Martin swiftly demoted several senior attorneys, including some who handled or supervised politically sensitive cases.

Gordon wasn’t included in the initial wave of firings and demotions, so he hoped his job was safe. He said he can’t explain why he and two other colleagues who worked on Jan. 6 cases were fired on the same day in June. Their termination letters cited only “Article II of the United States Constitution and the laws of the United States.”

“I feel like my firing is a small story, but what it means is a bigger one,” he said. “I’ve spent my whole professional career as a lawyer fighting on behalf of the government. And now they’ve forced me into a position where I am fighting the government.”

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