A lawyer appointed to the Donald Trump administration’s “Weaponization Working Group” once compared the Justice Department attorneys who prosecuted January 6 defendants to the Third Reich war criminals who carried out the Holocaust, according to a report.
Taking part in a YouTube livestream in January, Jonathan Gross agreed with host Mark Groupert’s comparison between the attorneys and the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, NPR reports.
“Exactly! That’s exactly what this is,” Gross responded. “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.”
The Independent has reached out to the DOJ for its response.
Gross has defended people accused of engaging in violent acts during the rioting at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The collective in question was formed by Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this year to investigate the “politicization” of the federal government under Biden and the investigations into Trump that resulted in him being indicted four times in the summer of 2023.
According to NPR, ex-DOJ officials “expressed concern” about Gross’s hiring at the time, citing his limited professional experience and history of controversial statements.
Mike Gordon, a former federal prosecutor who has faced off against Gross in court, told the network: “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.
On the Nazi comment specifically, Gordon said: “It’s unbecoming of a lawyer and deliberately inflammatory. It cheapens the Holocaust and the experience of those who survived it.”
Gordon was dismissed by the administration shortly after Gross was hired and is currently suing.
NPR adds that a review of Gross’s past social media output reveals he has previously argued that, in addition to being pardoned by the president, the rioters should receive financial compensation, suggested the attack was a false flag operation staged by federal agents and declared: “It’s time for the police and government to pay for their crimes against the American people.”
Before training in civil law, Gross was reportedly a rabbi for “more than a decade” and, according to his LinkedIn profile, graduated from the University of Baltimore School of Law in 2019, leading to complications when he defended the Jan 6 defendants in court and was forced to concede, at one point, that he had no experience of criminal law.
After Trump’s election win last year, Gross guested on a series of conservative podcasts and, in calling for blanket pardons, reportedly argued that no serious violence occurred during the Capitol riot, despite 140 officers being injured in clashes with the insurrectionists and myriad video evidence and court documents recording the use of chemical sprays, poles, stun guns, stolen police batons and baseball bats by the assailants during the attack.
He has also insisted that political bias was the sole basis for the prosecutions and reposted conspiratorial content from InfoWars host Alex Jones, suggesting the whole event had been “staged” by a “Deep State Democrat Cabal.”
The network further adds that Ed Martin, the right-wing attorney leading the group, has previously suggested the rioters might have been justified in assaulting Capitol police, and another of its members, Jared Wise, was caught on camera urging rioters to “kill” cops, whom he referred to as “Gestapo.”
