Capitol Rioters Turn on Lawyer Who Has Gone AWOL
John Pierce, the MAGA-minded lawyer and anti-vaxxer representing scores of defendants charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, was fired Thursday by one of them after just 10 days on the job—and nine days since he mysteriously disappeared from public view.
On Aug. 23, Pierce was hired by accused insurrectionist Deborah Lynn Lee. As The Daily Beast reported this week, he hasn’t been seen since. Lee has now apparently had enough, telling the judge in her case on Thursday she’d rather be assigned a public defender than continue working with Pierce. She is the third Jan. 6 defendant to cast Pierce aside, and the first to let him go in the wake of his sudden—and shocking—vanishing act.
When Pierce skipped another client’s court hearing on Aug. 24, his law partner, a 30-year-old law school grad named Ryan Marshall who is not licensed to practice law anywhere in the U.S., showed up in Pierce’s place.