When John Pierce, the anti-vaxxer and criminal defense attorney representing some 17 defendants charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, didn’t show up for a court date last week, a stand-in offered a suspiciously equivocal explanation.
“Mr. Pierce is in the hospital, we believe, with COVID-19, on a ventilator, non-responsive,” Pierce’s 30-year-old law partner Ryan Joseph-Gene Marshall told the judge.
A slew of credulous headlines followed about Pierce’s apparent intubation. No one by that name had been admitted to Cedars-Sinai or the UCLA Medical Center, the two major hospitals near where Pierce lives, and details about his condition were scant.
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Pierce, 49, had last been in touch with prosecutors on Aug. 23.
That evening, a self-described colleague of Pierce’s named Brody Womack told NPR reporter Tom Dreisbach in a statement that Pierce was in the hospital for symptoms he thought might have been COVID-related, but were in fact the result of “dehydration and exhaustion.” (Womack, who could not be reached by The Daily Beast, has a commercial driver’s license but no law license, according to a public records search of his name.) The day before, Marshall told the judge in another case that Pierce had been in an accident of some sort, and was on his way to the hospital at that time. Later, a source close to Pierce said he had been hospitalized but insisted that he was not on a ventilator.
The next day, Marshall—who said he recognized Womack’s name as being “a friend of John’s,” but otherwise didn’t know who he was—said he remained in the dark.
“I still don’t know what John’s exact condition is,” Marshall told The Daily Beast, adding that he would “be fine, and able to handle” the caseload on his own. “What I told you was what I was told. I have never been told anything by anyone else to the contrary.”
Marshall, who graduated from law school in 2019 but is not a licensed attorney, subsequently admitted in court that he hadn’t actually spoken directly with Pierce. Further, explained Marshall—who is under criminal indictment in Pennsylvania on 15 felony charges stemming from an alleged scheme that bilked an elderly widow out of $86,000—he had gotten different stories about Pierce’s condition from others in the missing lawyer’s orbit.
The Daily Beast tried unsuccessfully to reach Pierce via phone, text, and email. His office lines are no longer in service, and a contact number he submitted with his last court filing went straight to an unidentified voicemail box. A cellphone number listed for Pierce on his former firm’s website connects to a voicemail message with a woman’s voice telling callers, “This is no longer the number for John Pierce. Please do not leave a message.”
Prosecutors said that because Marshall has not been admitted to any state bar, he should not be allowed to do the work he has been doing for Pierce’s clients.
“The United States thus finds itself in a position where this defendant and 16 other defendants charged in connection with the Capitol riot appear to be effectively without counsel,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne McNamara wrote in an Aug. 30 notice sent to all 17 defendants represented by Pierce. “From the government’s perspective, given Mr. Pierce’s reported illness and the fact that Mr. Marshall is not a licensed attorney, this case is effectively at a standstill.”
On Monday, Pierce—who may or may not be able to speak at the moment—notified the court in a filing that he had taken on an 18th Jan. 6 defendant. The defendant, Shane Jenkins, had previously been represented by a public defender, who did not immediately return requests for comment.
A legal professional close to some of Pierce’s cases, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Pierce’s absence could prove problematic for clients.“I don’t know anything more than what you guys know. I think it’s odd that the guy has 18 clients, but I have no idea,” the person told The Daily Beast. “I think he took over for some court-appointed attorneys in some cases. I imagine the court would reappoint those attorneys [if Pierce does not reappear] but it throws a monkey wrench into a lot.”
An unrepentantly pro-Trump social media firebrand who said he’d never get a COVID vaccine and sees himself as a right-wing warrior taking on the political left, Pierce in 2018 called his now-defunct firm “the fastest-growing law firm in the history of the world.” Three years later, the firm is shuttered and saddled with accusations of financial irregularities and a debt load exceeding $70 million. Pierce, a Harvard Law grad and civil lawyer for the previous part of his career, withdrew as Kyle Rittenhouse’s lawyer in December (and was subsequently fired by the teen) after prosecutors raised ethical concerns about the cash-strapped Pierce, telling a judge they feared Pierce might take donations coming in for Rittenhouse and use them to settle his own debts.
Pierce’s ex-wife, who also went to Harvard Law, said she didn’t have any information about her ex-husband’s health beyond what she read in the news, but that she doesn’t subscribe whatsoever to his off-kilter worldview.
“He thinks COVID a big conspiracy theory,” Alyze Pierce told The Daily Beast, “but I got the vaccine and so did my three kids.”
An emergency protective order she was granted in 2019 described Pierce as having a history of substance abuse and subjecting Alyze to numerous violent threats. It was at least the second time Alyze asked the court to protect her and her children from Pierce after a previous protection order had already been granted.
“In May 2016, [Pierce] lost his job at K&L Gates for physically assaulting another employee,” the filing states. “[Pierce] detached his retina during the altercation. It was believed that the altercation was a result of [Pierce’s] drug and alcohol abuse, and so arrangements were made for [Pierce] to check-in to rehab at Promises Facility. [Pierce] refused to go.”
Pierce’s children were afraid of their father, the filing explained. Often absent from their lives, Pierce slept through the infrequent visits he did have with his kids, and left them unattended, it said.
“His house was unkempt, with alcohol bottles and cans of tobacco Iying about,” the filing stated. “[Pierce] complained of being tired throughout the visits and did not change his clothes. The children told me that they are scared to be with [Pierce].”
Pierce told Alyze he was suicidal in emails from 2016, which are included in the filing. He wrote that he loved his kids, and that his “whole life has collapsed.”
“i have always loved u more than u can imagine,” Pierce wrote in one. “i just want to sleep.”
In texts sent three years later from Pierce to Alyze that are included in the filing, flashes of vicious anger can be seen throughout:
Alcohol has also apparently caused Pierce to miss important meetings long before COVID was an issue. In a series of text messages included in a separate 2019 legal filing, Pierce’s colleagues discuss picking him up one morning and realizing he was still too drunk from the night before to be in front of clients.
“What’s the status?” one asks. “Puking? Stinky? Incoherent?”
Whatever Pierce’s actual COVID status turns out to be, Don Lewis, a Harvard Law grad and former law partner of Pierce’s who is suing him for wrongful termination, believes the legal system is better off without Pierce in it.
“The massively indebted Pierce has swindled private lenders and now he’s targeted the general public,” Lewis told The Daily Beast. “Pierce continues to put himself first while victimizing unsuspecting clients. He’s essentially stayed a step ahead of the authorities by taking advantage of a heavily burdened justice system. Unfortunately, Pierce’s misbehavior, made public long ago, continues unchecked.”
