Police deploy smoke and pepper grenades during clashes with protesters in northwest Washington, Friday, Jan. 20, 2017. (AP Photo/Mark Tenally)
A federal prosecutor is in hot water with the attorney licensing board in Washington, D.C., over allegations that she relied on deceptively edited footage to prosecute anti-Donald Trump protesters and intentionally kept relevant footage away from defense attorneys.
Jennifer Muyskens formerly worked in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office. She currently serves as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Utah.
In 2017, Muyskens was the driving force behind a series of failed prosecutions that aimed to put some 230 people behind bars for protesting Trump’s 2017 inauguration without the proper permits.
Now, she faces allegations she presented the defendants in a false light with videos obtained via notorious right-wing activist group Project Veritas and prevented the defendants from accessing additional information that supported their theories of the case.
Ethics officials laid out the case against the federal prosecutor in a 46-page specification of charges filed on Monday.
“Respondent was assigned as the lead prosecutor,” the filing reads. “Although Respondent supervised other government attorneys who assisted in the litigation, she was the only attorney who remained assigned to the prosecution through the indictment, discovery, and trial.”
The prosecution relied on over 70 different video segments supplied by the right-wing group. The videos were made by “operatives” who pretended to be activists while wearing hidden cameras and who feigned excitement over then-upcoming protests on Jan. 20, 2017.
The footage shown to grand juries, and later in court, however, was edited by both Project Veritas and the government, according to the D.C. Court of Appeals Board on Professional Responsibility.
Three video segments became what the government referred to as the “Planning Meeting Video.” This video purported to show people affiliated with left-wing activist group DisruptJ20 indicating their efforts intended to cause a riot that was “planned,” that it was “not a protest,” and that each of the 230 or so defendants “got the memo.”
In truth, the footage, when viewed without various deceptive edits allegedly made by Muyskens, showed nothing of the sort.
From the charges, at length:
The three video segments that Respondent and [MPD Detective Greggory] Pemberton omitted from the Planning Meeting Video — approximately the first 50 minutes of the January 8 Spokes Council meeting — provided exculpatory context supporting the defense’s theories. For example, the footage at the beginning of the meeting supported that DisruptJ20 advertised and broadcast the anti-capitalist march as simply one of many non-violent, unpermitted protest “Actions” planned for January 20, which supported defendants’ claim that their intent — consistent with the planning — was merely to protest, independent of the “small minority” of individuals who engaged in destructive acts. The omitted footage also showed that the “breakouts” were preliminary, open discussions. Any consensus or plan would have been determined by representatives at the “Spokes Council” after the depicted “breakout” session. However, the consensus part of the meeting was not shown in the Government’s Planning Meeting Video because the Project Veritas operative left early to interview two organizers in a separate part of the church.
The footage that Respondent and Pemberton cut — the Project Veritas operative’s undercover activity at the beginning and end of the Planning Meeting Video segments — revealed that the video was filmed as part of Project Veritas’s infiltration of DisruptJ20, which tended to undermine the credibility and reliability of the govemment’s evidence. In addition, the operative’s post-meeting report indicated that some DisruptJ20 protest organizers did not know anything about plans or decisions that were being made by an “upper echelon.” This lack of knowledge supported the non-violent defendants’ theory that, assuming a plan to riot existed at all, only a small group was involved, which they knew nothing about.
“Both judges who later considered the issue — Superior Court Judges Morin and Knowles — found that the complete, unedited footage was exculpatory,” the charging document continues.
On top of those omissions, Muyskens repeatedly lied about what she had done, according to disciplinary counsel Hamilton Fox.
Some of the prosecutors’ lies and dissembling came in response to a defense discovery request, the document alleges.
“Other than saying that the videos were given to the government by a third party, Respondent refused to disclose how the government obtained the videos, saying ‘I decline to provide you any information about who recorded the meetings or the circumstances under which they were recorded,”” the filing continues. “Respondent also refused to produce the original files. Instead, she falsely said that the government had made only two edits, which were both to redact the identity of the videographer and an undercover officer ([Bryan] Adelmeyer), and that, other than the two redactions, the defense had the same videos as the government.”
And some of the alleged lies and subterfuge by Muyskens came in comments she made to judges overseeing the cases — while under oath.
“Respondent falsely told the court that she had provided defense counsel with ‘the full entirety of those videos from that day,’” the filing alleges. “Respondent falsely said that other than redacting the identities of the Project Veritas operative and Adelmeyer, ‘the defense has the exact video we have.’”
The filing goes on to document a minimum of 12 additional times the prosecutor allegedly lied to the court, the Office of Professional Responsibility, and ethics investigators — largely to try and cover up the numerous discovery violations the government engaged in.
“Respondent’s statements and omissions to the government, OPR, and Disciplinary Counsel were false and misleading,” the filing reads.
By the end of the prosecutorial and law enforcement mishaps, all of the defendants were acquitted outright, had their cases summarily dropped, or had trials that resulted in mistrials and hung juries — and then had their cases dropped by the government in July 2018.
In sum, Fox accuses Muyskens of violating eight different ethical rules that govern attorneys’ behavior in the federal system.
Law&Crime reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Utah for comment on this story but no response was immediately forthcoming at the time of publication.
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