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In January, James Sasso 鈥�12 completed his year-long tenure as a Senior Investigative Counsel on the Justice Department committee that was created to investigate the US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021. Sasso, a 2019 graduate of Harvard Law School, helped to draft the committee鈥檚 final report to Congress, and later wrote about the experience in an op-ed for the New York Times. He now practices law at a Washington, DC, law firm.聽

His first months on the committee were spent on a team tasked with digging into the details of how the riot unfolded. The work included interviewing people who pleaded guilty to participating. Later, he helped to write scripts and compile footage to be used during the committee鈥檚 televised hearings. Watching body camera footage, he said, made the horror and violence of the day more real. 鈥淵ou hear people chanting 鈥楾rump鈥� and 鈥�1776鈥� and loving it when cops are getting assaulted,鈥� he said, 鈥淎nd you鈥檙e like, 鈥榃hat? This is America? What is happening here?鈥欌��

The experience opened his eyes to the threat of domestic extremism and the fragility of democracy. 鈥淲e鈥檝e become completely unmoored from our faith that if we lose an election, it鈥檚 okay,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd the only way democracy survives is that the losers accept the results.鈥澛� 聽