On a bright September morning in 2025, four women gather for lunch in the shadow of the Arlington County courthouse, just across the river from Washington, D.C. Their camaraderie is palpable, but so too is the weight they carry—each of them, not long ago, was abruptly fired from one of the most high-profile legal jobs in the country. Now, Isia Jasiewicz, Jennifer Blackwell, Sara Levine, and Carolyn Jackson are finding new purpose as prosecutors in the office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Arlington County, Virginia, after a tumultuous year that upended their careers and, in many ways, their lives.
Their journey back to public service began with a twist of irony. Early in 2025, Jasiewicz received an invitation to the presidential inauguration from her Yale Law School classmate, JD Vance. Less than two weeks after that, she and more than a dozen other government lawyers who had prosecuted defendants from the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot received another, far less welcome message from the new Trump administration: they were fired, by email. As Jasiewicz told NPR, “It feels surreal to see my peers be in the leadership of this country and to experience, you know, us as civil servants, being cast aside.”
It wasn’t just Jasiewicz. Carolyn Jackson, another member of the group, recalled that she had several prosecutions of Capitol rioters in progress at the time of the inauguration. But those cases, too, disappeared overnight after President Trump granted clemency to every Jan. 6 defendant on his first day in office. “We can do good here,” Jackson reflected, speaking with NPR. “And I think everybody, we can get through some dark times and some scary times if everybody focuses on doing the good that they can.”
Their abrupt dismissal was part of a broader reshuffling at the Department of Justice. The group had started work on the Jan. 6 cases on September 11, 2023, as the Justice Department brought in a wave of young attorneys to help tackle what was described as one of the largest and most complex criminal investigations in American history. As the Biden administration drew to a close, DOJ officials tried to secure new positions for these lawyers in Washington’s municipal court, where the bulk of street crimes are prosecuted. But the Trump Justice Department leadership rejected that plan and terminated them all. Because they were considered probationary lawyers, they had fewer job protections and little recourse.
The White House maintained that the president has broad authority over the federal workforce, including the power to fire civil servants. But for the lawyers who exited the DOJ, the timing could hardly have been worse. In February 2025, President Trump issued a series of executive orders targeting major law firms that hired any of the lawyers who had investigated him. These orders barred such attorneys from entering federal buildings, revoked their security clearances, and even threatened the firms’ clients. The chilling effect was immediate and profound.
Jasiewicz, who had spent nine years at the prominent litigation firm Williams & Connolly before becoming a prosecutor, found herself locked out of the job market. Once, she’d had to fend off weekly calls from recruiters. By February, however, she couldn’t even get a meeting. “All the big firms felt scared of possible retribution from Trump,” NPR reported, citing headhunters who explained that her association with the Jan. 6 prosecutions had made her radioactive in legal circles.
Sara Levine, faced with the sudden loss of her job, reached out to a former boss in desperation. “I reached out and said, ‘Hey, I don’t suppose you have any positions open?’” she recalled. On the other end was Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, the elected Democratic Commonwealth’s Attorney in Arlington, Virginia. Dehghani-Tafti was more than happy to welcome Levine—and had several more openings. “These are people who are at the top of their field,” Dehghani-Tafti said. “These are people who care about public service. Our whole job as prosecutors is to do justice and to do it without fear or favor and in my mind there’s no better example of people who were doing that than the people who were working in the Capitol siege division.”
Now, Levine, Jackson, and Jasiewicz handle a range of cases, from shoplifting at a local mall to malicious woundings. The work is different from the high-profile federal cases they once managed, but it’s no less important to the community they serve. Meanwhile, back in Washington, the new U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has been busy recruiting to fill the gaps left by the mass firings. Recently, Pirro brought in 20 lawyers from the military’s Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps to handle critical vacancies in the municipal court. “We were looking at each other thinking, 15 of us just got fired when we had finished training for that exact job,” Jackson said. “You know, you didn’t have to bring in JAG officers to do the job that we were ready, willing and able to do.”
Jennifer Blackwell, who spent 20 years at the Justice Department and rose to the level of deputy chief of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney’s office in the District, found the experience of watching the Jan. 6 prosecutors leave particularly difficult. “I have viewed it as my job as a manager not only to protect the ethics and integrity of the office but also to protect those that are under my supervision, and not being able to protect them from what was ultimately coming … was really traumatizing,” Blackwell told NPR. Ultimately, she decided she could no longer recognize the Justice Department she had served for two decades and chose to leave, joining her former colleagues in Arlington.
The group now meets for lunch most days, finding solace and support in each other’s company. Their bond, forged in the fires of public service and tested by an extraordinary political upheaval, has helped them navigate what many describe as the most challenging period of their professional lives. They remain committed to the ideals that brought them to public service in the first place, even as the landscape around them has shifted dramatically.
Despite the trauma of their abrupt dismissals and the uncertainty that followed, these prosecutors have found new ways to make a difference. “It is my hope that we will be back someday to fight the good fight,” Blackwell said. “And I truly believe that day will come, but that it is not now.” For now, their fight continues—just across the river, in a different courthouse, but with the same unwavering commitment to justice.