In a court filing this week, one-time D.C. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Kerkhoff Muyskens denied any wrongdoing while prosecuting hundreds of protesters arrested in D.C. during Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration.
In July, the D.C. Bar’s Board of Professional Responsibility alleged Kerkhoff Muyskens hid key video evidence and made false statements about video evidence at least 12 times to judges, defense attorneys and even internal investigators at the Department of Justice.
The D.C. Bar case could result in her losing her law license, but that could take years.
The D.C. ACLU’s Interim Legal Director Michael Perloff called the Kerkhoff Muyskens case “an egregious example of prosecutorial misconduct.”
On Jan. 20, 2017, hundreds of protesters took to D.C.’s streets to protest Trump’s inauguration. D.C. police mass arrested more than 200 people, and many were later indicted on felony rioting charges.
Alexei Wood, one of the arrested protesters who was acquitted at trial, said Kerkhoff Muyskens, “really had absolutely nothing [at trial]. And she just kept going and going and going and going."
In court, not a single person was convicted, and dozens of cases were eventually dismissed.
In her denial filed Monday, Kerkhoff Muyskens, who is now an assistant U.S. attorney in Utah, acknowledged she was the prosecutor in the protest cases but denied any misconduct, paragraph by paragraph.
While she waits for the D.C. case to proceed, federal court records in Utah show she's withdrawn or been replaced by another attorney in dozens of cases that just weeks ago she was prosecuting.
The records don't currently show a single case she's actively working on in Utah. The bulk of the removals came days after the D.C. ethics case was filed and started the same day the I-Team reached out to the U.S. attorney in Utah. That office is not commenting except to confirm she's an employee.
The News4 I-Team found Utah lawyers are paying attention. At least one asked for a delay in sentencing of their client to review the ethics charges against Kerkhoff Muyskens. A judge granted it.
Attorneys in Utah told the I-Team other delay requests may soon follow.
Kerkhoff Muyskens and an attorney linked to her have not returned the I-Team's repeated requests for comment.
This story was reported by News4 Investigative Reporter Ted Oberg and News4 Investigative Producer Rick Yarborough, and shot by News4 Photojournalist Carlos Olazagasti
