June 12 (Reuters) – Disciplinary officials in Washington said on Friday that a former federal prosecutor should be suspended from practicing law for six months, finding she used deceptively edited videos as evidence in criminal cases against protesters during Republican President Donald Trump’s first inauguration.
The D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility recommended the sanction against Jennifer Kerkhoff Muyskens, saying a three-month suspension proposed by a board committee last year was too lenient.
Muyskens’ conduct was “egregious, willful, and sustained,” the D.C. Board said in its 105-page recommendation, opens new tab. Her disciplinary case now goes to the D.C. Court of Appeals, which has the final say on attorney disciplinary matters in the district.
Muyskens’ attorneys at Greenberg Traurig did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Muyskens has denied wrongdoing.
Hamilton Fox, the head of the D.C. bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, declined to comment.
Police in Washington arrested more than 200 people in connection with the January 20, 2017, protests, during which black-clad activists smashed store windows, blocked traffic and fought with police. Muyskens served as the lead federal prosecutor on those cases.
Twenty people entered guilty pleas, Reuters reported in December 2017. Six others were acquitted and federal prosecutors dropped charges against at least 100 others, the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel said.
Fox’s office accused Muyskens of editing videos recorded by Project Veritas, a conservative activist group known for making undercover videos that had infiltrated one of the groups protesting Trump’s inauguration.
The disciplinary complaint against Muyskens alleged that the edited videos omitted footage of protesters telling others to remain non-violent and use de-escalation tactics with police, allowing the government to argue at trial that the defendants had planned to riot.
The D.C. Board on Friday said Muyskens’ “dishonesty was a deliberate, sustained effort to conceal exculpatory evidence and her own prior misconduct in failing to disclose that evidence.”
Muyskens last year said the disciplinary counsel’s evidence showed “there was no conspiracy to suppress evidence. There were no lies. There was no intentional misconduct.” She the disciplinary charges led her to resign as a federal prosecutor in Utah and to “quit the legal profession.”
David Thomas
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