The Trump-appointed prosecutor who gave an unauthorized interview to CBS about criminal investigations into the Capitol insurrection has left the Justice Department for private practice.
Michael Sherwin, the former acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, faced an internal DOJ probe into his decision to talk about the probe, which a federal judge as recently as Monday reportedly described as “highly unprofessional.”
Sherwin gave the interview days before departing the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, to which Bill Barr appointed him last year from a position as a line prosecutor in Miami. Sherwin had taken the lead on investigating the insurrection attempt in the days after Jan. 6, and gave the interview as he was scheduled to return to his line job in Miami.
But the law firm Kobre & Kim has now hired Sherwin, per an update on the firm’s website. His bio doesn’t include much about how or why he ended up in the position that he did, other than to note that his “last assignment for the DOJ” was to serve as “chief prosecutor for all criminal cases related to the Washington, DC Capitol riots of January 6, 2021.”
The bio notes that more than 400 criminal cases were filed before he departed and that more than 500 search warrants were executed in the first 10 weeks of the investigation.
Sherwin did not immediately return a request for comment.
Prosecutors virtually never speak about ongoing criminal investigations outside of court appearances, though in Sherwin’s case, the details were interesting: he revealed that sedition charges were under consideration, and that he believed former president Trump himself may be “culpable” for the attack on the Capitol.
It’s not clear when the DOJ inspector general inquiry into Sherwin’s decision to speak publicly about the case will conclude.
