Under the Radar Blog Archives Select Date… August, 2020 July, 2020 June, 2020 May, 2020 April, 2020 March, 2020 February, 2020 January, 2020 December, 2019 November, 2019 October, 2019 September, 2019

Recently unsealed court records show a veteran prosecutor helping out Robert Mueller’s office also played a role in one of Mueller’s most celebrated cases more than two decades ago. | Alex Wong/Getty Images Prosecutor who worked with Mueller 2 decades ago surfaces again

Sometimes it seems like Special Counsel Robert Mueller has worked with almost every federal prosecutor out there.

Recently unsealed court records show one veteran prosecutor who’s helping out Mueller’s office also played a role in one of Mueller’s most celebrated cases more than two decades ago.

Elizabeth Trosman, who’s now the chief of the appellate section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, was serving in a similar role back in the 1990s when Mueller made a surprising move that has become one of the most-cited aspects of his impressive biography: He gave up a partnership in a high-paying law firm and went to work as a front-line homicide prosecutor trying to rein in Washington’s sky-high murder rate.

One of Mueller’s first cases was the heartwrenching killing of a 3-year-old girl, Rhonda Morris, in February 1995. The slaying was considered particularly gruesome not just because of the age of the victim, but because she was burned, choked and brutalized after her crack-addicted mother left her with a 19-year-old cousin, Aaron Morris.

The victim’s mother and others involved offered effusive praise for Mueller’s handling of the case, according to a 2017 article in the Daily Beast that contributed to the prosecution’s key role in the Mueller narrative.

At trial, Mueller sought a first-degree murder conviction of Morris, when the office might’ve been able to negotiate a plea to a lesser charge. The move was a bold one, but Mueller almost lost the case: the jury declined to convict Morris of murder, returning a guilty verdict for involuntary manslaughter instead.

Trosman’s role came in the next stage of the process, as prosecutors sought to defend the conviction on appeal. Briefs filed in the case identify both Trosman and Mueller as lawyers involved in the appeal.

That, too, was a close call. The D.C. Court of Appeals panel voted, 2-1, to uphold the conviction. One judge said he would’ve ordered a new trial because Morris’ videotaped confession was wrongly admitted.

Trosman’s name surfaced again last month when the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals released records about a grand jury subpoena showdown between Mueller’s special counsel team and a mystery company owned by a foreign government.

The case is one of several where lawyers from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. are sharing joint responsibility with Mueller’s prosecutors, a phenomenon thought to suggest that Mueller’s operation may soon wind down.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office confirmed Trosman’s role in both cases, saying she was the deputy chief of the appellate operation in the 1990s and serves as the head of it today.

Neither the U.S. Attorney’s office nor a spokesman for Mueller would address what role Trosman or others are playing in the mystery company grand jury fight or just how well Trosman and Mueller know each other.

A former prosecutor in that office, Glenn Kirschner, said it’s not surprising that the pair ended up on the same briefs following the Morris case two decades ago.

“Basically, we put everybody on the appellate brief that handled the case from the trial court on up,” Kirschner said.

However, Kirschner said he suspects Mueller and Trosman spent at least some time working together at that time.

“They would have known each other, probably, fairly well, professionally,” Kirschner said. “They would’ve worked in the same office of 300 to 350 prosecutors. But they would have been in different different divisions and different sections, so I can’t say for sure.”