A key federal prosecutor in the classified documents case against President Donald Trump declined to answer questions during a House Judiciary Committee deposition Wednesday, invoking his Fifth Amendment right as a spokesperson suggested the government had been weaponized against him.
Jay Bratt is a former Justice Department national security prosecutor who spearheaded the case in which Trump was charged with taking classified national defense documents from the White House after he left office and resisting the government’s attempts to retrieve the materials. He entered the committee room Wednesday morning, and two sources familiar with the matter confirmed he invoked his Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. He left after a little less than two hours.
“This administration and its proxies have made no effort to hide their willingness to weaponize the machinery of government against those they perceive as political enemies” Bratt spokesperson Peter Carr said in a statement to CNN. “That should alarm every American who believes in the rule of law. In light of these undeniable and deeply troubling circumstances, Mr. Bratt had no choice but to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights.”
Bratt retired from the Justice Department in January 2025. Carr worked as a Justice Department and special counsel spokesman before he was fired by the Trump administration last month.
Invoking the Fifth Amendment is typically done to avoid answering specific questions. Though it can be perceived by the public as a way of avoiding accountability, the US Supreme Court has long regarded the right against self-incrimination as a venerable part of the Constitution and, in legal proceedings, tried to ensure that a witness’ silence not be viewed as evidence of guilt.
GOP Rep. Andy Biggs, who was in Bratt’s deposition, told CNN, “he’s not saying a lot.”
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan declined to comment on Bratt’s deposition but told CNN he has a list of other former DOJ officials he wants to interview. His panel sent letters in March requesting interviews with David Weiss, the former special counsel who investigated Hunter Biden, and seven other former DOJ officials, including some who were involved in prosecuting Trump. In his letter to Weiss, Jordan said the former special counsel failed to answer many of the panel’s questions during his closed-door interview in 2023 and needed to come back.
The Trump administration has been relentless in targeting the prosecutors that investigated the president; more than a dozen US Justice Department officials who prosecuted him have been fired. In February, the administration established a “Weaponization Working Group” to examine the investigations into Trump by the Special Counsel’s Office, which handled both the classified documents matter and a separate prosecution over Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. That group will now be led by Ed Martin, who Trump had initially nominated to be US Attorney for Washington DC until withdrawing him in the face of pushback from Republicans on Capitol Hill.
At a Tuesday news conference, Martin suggested that in his new role, he would seek to identify and embarrass people even if he could not charge them. “There are some really bad actors, some people that did some really bad things to the American people. And if they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them, and we will name them. And in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are shamed. And that’s a fact, that’s the way things work. And so that’s that’s how I believe the job operates.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi had hinted before taking office that those involved in investigating Trump would face consequences. She said in 2023 shortly after Trump was indicted on the election interference case, “the Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated.”
Carr noted that Bratt, who has spent more than three decades working at the Department of Justice, did not seek out the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
“He did not choose to investigate Mar-a-Lago; rather, the facts and evidence of a serious breach of law and national security led him there,” Carr said.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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