A top prosecutor in the classified documents case against former President Trump was once cited for unethical behavior in a federal drug case, court records show.
Karen Gilbert, 59, who now has a leading role in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of former President Trump, was forced to resign as chief of the narcotics section of the Miami U.S. Attorney’s office for her role in secretly taping a defense lawyer in 2009, court papers show.
The case involved Dr. Ali Shaygan, a Florida family medicine physician, who faced 141 counts of illegally dispensing pain medication. In June 2007, James Brendan Downey, a patient of Shaygan, died days after receiving a methadone prescription from Shaygan.
The feds also accused Shaygan of handing out other controlled drugs like Xanax, hydrocodone, and Roxicodone,
Gilbert, and her then-colleague Sean Cronin, suspected witness tampering on the part of the defense. And so without approval from the local U.S. Attorney at the time, R. Alexander Acosta, Gilbert, and Cronin authorized a wiretap of Shaygan’s lawyer — which ultimately yielded nothing.
Shaygan, who was acquitted on all counts, says Gilbert has no business being a federal prosecutor.
“I have no reason to believe that she will behave ethically in any circumstance,” he said. “I do not find it appropriate for her to still be employed by the Department of Justice.”
He added: “She was a sorry sack of lies.”
In a sharply critical 50-page decision — which described Gilbert and her team as acting in “bad faith” and with “gross negligence” — U.S. District Judge Alan Gold ordered the government to pay Shaygan $601,795 in legal fees. That order was later overturned by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“The government acknowledges and deeply regrets that it made serious mistakes,” the Department of Justice said in court papers.
Gilbert has also come under fire for a history of political donations to Democratic candidates for federal office, including more than $2,000 to the presidential campaigns of President Biden and former President Obama, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Earlier this week Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding the names of all the people working in Smith’s office on the Trump case.
“It should be obvious that doing due diligence in vetting an office that has apparently done no vetting of its own personnel, or worse, might affirmatively be seeking to staff with sanctioned lawyers and partisan hatchet-men (and women), is an entirely appropriate purpose and one small reason I am requesting this information,” Gaetz wrote.
