Spokesperson who handled press on Jan. 6 riot is fired from DOJ. She has N.J., Philly ties.

Salem County, N.J., native Patty Hartman, who wrote news releases for the Justice Department about defendants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, said she was “blindsided and surprised” when she was fired by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi without explanation on July 7.

Hartman has worked in the news media in the Philadelphia area, as well as in public affairs for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia and in the FBI field office in Newark.

“I was fired without reason, and I’m completely perplexed,” Hartman said in an interview Tuesday.

“I was doing nothing more than putting out press releases, sharing public information,” said Hartman, who lives in the Philadelphia suburbs but declined to say where for security concerns. “My job did not involve deciding what individual was worthy of a press release.”

Hartman said she issued hundreds of news releases about people who had been arrested for participating in the Jan. 6 riot, written in a “boilerplate way, with just the bare facts” and no bias or political commentary.

In the largest prosecution in DOJ history, about 1,500 people were federally charged in the riot, according to figures from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington. Of more than 1,000 who pleaded guilty, about 260 were convicted, according to the office.

President Donald Trump, who was impeached for incitement of insurrection during the final days of his first presidency but was acquitted in the Senate, commuted sentences for 14 rioters and issued a blanket pardon for all other Jan. 6 defendants on the first day of his second presidency.

“It’s ironic you would fire the person responsible for transparency,” Hartman said. “But I’m just another faceless, dedicated federal employee being sacrificed.”

A supervisory public affairs specialist for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, Hartman said she was one of several Justice Department employees who were recently dismissed by Bondi. On Friday, Bondi fired Joseph Tirrell, the senior ethics attorney at the department, according to news reports.

Nearly three dozen other department employees have been fired in recent weeks, including three prosecutors who were sacked last month. Many of the fired employees were connected to the Jan. 6 prosecutions or other investigations related to the first Trump administration.

The staffers were identified by the department’s so-called weaponization working group as employees involved in what the Trump administration labels as politically motivated cases launched by the administration of former President Joe Biden.

In a LinkedIn post, Hartman referred to her firing as a “shameful” act perpetrated by an agency “to which I dedicated nearly 20 years of my life.”

Asked to respond to Hartman’s assertions, a DOJ spokesperson declined to comment Wednesday.

Around 4 p.m. on July 7, Hartman said, her computer suddenly stopped working.

Soon after, a colleague appeared and handed her a memo signed by Bondi. It said that Hartman was being “removed from ... [her] position of Supervisory Public Affairs Specialist” and that she also was ”removed from federal service effective immediately.”

Hartman, who had supervised a four-person team, said she had received only positive performance reviews for her work. Her firing, she said, deprived her of “due process.”

She explained that in the federal government, officials must follow strict procedures before dismissing employees. Workers are told what they did wrong and receive a letter explaining it, followed by a plan to improve performance.

“I was not given any of that,” she said.

Hartman began her career in 1995 working in media in Wilmington and Philadelphia. She held several TV news jobs, including as a writer and producer at Philadelphia at NBC Universal/WCAU. She was also a special projects producer at FOX 29 in Philadelphia.

She began her work for the federal government in 2007, when she was public affairs specialist for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, a job she held until 2016.

She went on to work in similar positions at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Arlington, Va., and at the FBI.

Asked what happens next, Hartman said, “I am looking for work.”

Her attorney, Mark Zaid of Washington, said he planned to file a lawsuit on Hartman’s behalf “to ensure due process protections are provided and to seek reinstatement.”

“The targeting by this administration of individuals such as Patty, who served in nonpartisan roles protecting Americans, is not only reprehensible, but it’s illegal.”