John Pierce is defending more people charged in the U.S. Capitol riot than any other lawyer. His past had already raised concerns. And an unexpected absence from court only led to more questions.

Transcript

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There are now more than 600 people who have been criminally charged in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot. A conservative, pro-Trump lawyer has been representing nearly 20 of those cases, more than anyone else. But then, as NPR's Tom Dreisbach reports, the lawyer stopped showing up in court.

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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) Let them go. Let them go.

TOM DREISBACH, BYLINE: A lot of lawyers might be reluctant to lead a big public event like this one, a, quote, "rally against political persecution" for people charged in the Capitol riot. But a lot of lawyers are not John Pierce.

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JOHN PIERCE: We are going to take every one of these cases to trial. And in that process, we are going to find out exactly what actually happened on January 6.

(CHEERING)

DREISBACH: This was Pierce at a rally this summer. He's a pro-Trump, conservative attorney and in some ways as much a political figure as a lawyer. Despite a lack of evidence, he has hinted online that he believes the Capitol riot was a conspiracy by the so-called deep state to discredit Trump supporters. And at the event, he said he had taken on about a dozen cases stemming from the riot.

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PIERCE: I either have courage, or I'm fearless, or I'm very reckless. But these folks need representation.

DREISBACH: I interviewed Pierce a couple months after that event. And by then, his client list had only grown.

PIERCE: I think I represent the most of any lawyer in the country.

DREISBACH: What's the number now?

PIERCE: You know, I believe it's around 18. You know, it does kind of change on a day-to-day basis. But you know, don't hold me to it.

DREISBACH: Some of those cases involve high-profile conspiracy charges against alleged members of extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Each case involves sifting through thousands of hours of raw video footage, huge hard drives and other discovery material looking for a needle in a massive haystack of evidence. It's a big undertaking for even an experienced criminal defense attorney, and that's the thing.

How many criminal trials have you done before?

PIERCE: So I don't think I've done any criminal trials before.

DREISBACH: So how did this civil attorney end up with these major criminal investigations? Here's a bit more background. In the '90s, Pierce served in the Army. Then he went to Harvard Law School, worked for a couple big law firms in Los Angeles before starting his own in 2017. But in Pierce's words, his career and the firm imploded within a few years, leaving it with millions of dollars of debt and fending off multiple lawsuits. He said one reason for the implosion was his problem with substance abuse. He went to a 30-day rehab program in March 2020. Around that same time, court records show that his ex-wife obtained two separate restraining orders against Pierce after he allegedly threatened to kill her, in 2016 and again in 2019. Pierce declined to discuss his ex-wife or her allegations.

PIERCE: I care about her very, very much. I adore and love my children. And other than that, I'm just not going to comment on anything that's family related.

DREISBACH: A lawyer for Pierce's ex-wife said simply that the court records speak for themselves.

Since last year, Pierce has been trying to rebuild, and he's been doing that with some controversial political cases. First, he worked on the defense for Kyle Rittenhouse. He's the 18-year-old who shot and killed two people during unrest on the streets of Kenosha, Wis., and he's been supported by conservatives. But earlier this year, Rittenhouse fired Pierce. And his mother, Wendy, said she thought Pierce and his team were just in it for the money and attention, not to help her son. Here's Wendy Rittenhouse speaking to the website Law and Crime News.

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WENDY RITTENHOUSE: They used Kyle to gain money, gain Twitter followers. I felt now they didn't care about Kyle.

DREISBACH: Pierce did not want to get into the details of the dispute with the Rittenhouses, but he denied all wrongdoing. And despite the firing, it appears his involvement in that case helped raise his profile and led him to the Capitol riot cases. It may have helped that he's also what he calls a fiery, pro-Trump conservative. In fact, on the day of the riot, when someone tweeted that there was only room for, quote, "peaceful people in the Trump movement," Pierce responded, wrong. In another tweet after the riot, he wrote, quote, "When tyranny reaches a certain point, the time for peaceful protest comes to an end." I asked him about that.

PIERCE: That was a general statement. That was not, you know, honestly meant to suggest that what happened at the Capitol was a good or bad thing or legal or otherwise. That was a general statement about America's philosophy of government.

DREISBACH: But controversy around Pierce doesn't just come from his politics. In fact, other conservative attorneys have publicly called him a, quote, "grifter," and they point to the nonprofit group Pierce set up, the NCLU. Pierce said the group will fight for American civil liberties, a kind of conservative answer to the ACLU. And he did not hide how it will spend the donations it receives.

PIERCE: My law firm will receive, you know, substantial funds from the NCLU because we are doing so much of the work that's important right now.

DREISBACH: Pierce said he has not spent any of the money donated to the NCLU so far and that he will set up a board of directors to vet where the cash goes. He's adamant that he is not in these cases for the money.

PIERCE: I think anybody who really knows me - the suggestion that I would not be doing things with the clients' interests in mind just falls flat, and it's just completely false.

DREISBACH: I talked to experts in criminal defense about Pierce's role in these cases, and they were concerned. For one, there's the possibility that there could be a conflict of interest. For example, what if one of Pierce's clients wanted to cooperate with the government and testify against another Pierce client? Then there's the fact that Pierce encourages his clients to talk to the media, and all of those statements could be used against them in court.

But Erica Hashimoto, a former federal public defender and now a law professor at Georgetown, says the biggest problem is that he's trying to handle so many criminal trials with so little experience.

ERICA HASHIMOTO: It's not just something that you can walk into without ever having done it before.

DREISBACH: In other words, you really don't want to learn on the fly.

HASHIMOTO: That's exactly right 'cause somebody's life is in your hands.

DREISBACH: And it's not just a concern for these defendants. If prosecutors get a conviction and an appeals court finds that Pierce provided ineffective counsel, that conviction could get tossed. When I asked Pierce about these concerns, he insisted that, quote, "trial work is trial work" and that he and his team would be able to handle 18 cases or even more.

PIERCE: We're building an army of folks, and we'll be able to handle it no problem.

DREISBACH: But then, a couple weeks ago, Pierce did not show up to court. And that army never stepped up. Instead, a colleague who is not a licensed attorney and is actually himself facing criminal charges in Pennsylvania appeared in court. He told the judge that Pierce had COVID-19 and might be on a ventilator. Another person sent me a statement that Pierce actually had dehydration and exhaustion. I was unable to reach Pierce for nearly two weeks, and this is what happened when I called his law office.

RECORDED VOICE: The number you dialed is not in service at this time. Thank you for calling. Goodbye.

DREISBACH: Then, just yesterday, I heard back over email. Pierce said he just got out of the hospital over the weekend and there just hadn't been enough time to get someone to take over his cases because things were so chaotic. He did not want to talk about his medical problems in any detail, and he did not mention COVID, except to say he has not gotten the vaccine and does not plan to. He does plan to stay on all these cases, though, and said he is still building that army of lawyers. But at least a few defendants have fired him since his absence. Others have said they do want to stick with Pierce, seems to help that he shares their pro-Trump politics. But as one defense attorney told me, it's dangerous to mix politics with the unforgiving realities of a criminal trial.

Tom Dreisbach, NPR News, Los Angeles.

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