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Mike Romano, who supervised the federal government’s effort to prosecute crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol, slammed President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon the rioters during a discussion at Harvard Law School on Wednesday.
The riot at the Capitol — which took place as a joint session of Congress was certifying former President Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election — drew a crowd of more than 53,000 Trump supporters, who called for the results to be overturned. Romano spent four years trying to prosecute individuals involved in the riots as Deputy Chief of the Capitol Siege Section at the Department of Justice under the Biden administration.
But on the first day of his second term in office, Trump granted clemency to every person charged or convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6 riots, dubbing the move the beginning of “a process of national reconciliation” — a decision Romano called “nonsense.”
“There’s not really an effort to actually confront what happened,” he said during the Wednesday discussion, which was hosted by the HLS Democrats. “We don’t really think of reconciliation as sweeping the truth under a rug, which is exactly what the administration is trying to do. ”
Romano said he knew he had to start looking for a new job when Trump announced the sweeping pardons in January, ultimately resigning from his Justice Department position in March.
“First thing I thought when I heard about the pardons and that proclamation is, ‘Wow, I have to quit,’” he said. “It’s, I think, personally hard to think about something that you were heavily invested in and very proud of doing for four years just being wiped away by a malicious lie.”
Romano said he worried that the pardons would embolden right-wing extremists and labeled the rioters “terrorists.”
“The whole point of occupying the building was to, either through force or by fear, force members of Congress to do what the mob wanted them to do — which is terrorism, even if it makes people uncomfortable to be called terrorists,” he said.
A majority of the Jan. 6 rioters convicted were charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct, both of which are misdemeanors. But Romano pushed back against viewing the crimes as “minor” offenses.
“The riot would not have happened but for the misdemeanor defendants. The violence would not have been possible, but for the misdemeanor defendants,” he said. “Take away people who are occupying the building and distracting attention, and police would have been able to contain the violence from the violent rioters much more quickly.”
Romano said the investigation into the riots was apolitical, and that no political leaders ever attempted to direct prosecutors on how to proceed. He contrasted that experience with the current state of the Justice Department, which he said had been weaponized by the Trump administration. He specifically pointed to the recent indictment of former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia A. James.
“These actions appear oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate government objectives,” Romano said.
He encouraged employees within the Justice Department to “take their ethical responsibilities” seriously, especially in the face of external political pressure.
“Some of the things that we are seeing now are abuses of the criminal side of the legal system that maybe we had thought had been in the rear view mirror, pre-Revolutionary War,” he said. “The Constitution obviously restricts the kind of behavior we’re seeing right now. But again, it requires people to hold the administration accountable.”
—Staff writer Caroline G. Hennigan can be reached at caroline.hennigan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cghennigan.
—Staff writer Sidhi Dhanda can be reached at sidhi.dhanda@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @sidhidhanda.
