The stakes are always high, whether Temidayo Aganga-Williams \u201908 is advocating for the federal government or for a private client.\u00a0But he felt a unique weight in his work as senior investigative counsel for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th\u00a0Attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour professional success is tied to the survival of American democracy,\u201d Aganga-Williams said.<\/p>\n
His work with the committee over 15 months was both an honor and a responsibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe consequences of failure felt \u2013 and still feel \u2013 very present,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In February, Aganga-Williams followed up his committee work by joining the partnership at Selendy Gay Elsberg, a New York City law firm.\u00a0He grew up in Atlanta and checked every future-lawyer box: \u201cI like a good argument, I like to debate,\u201d he said, laughing. His favorite television show? “The Practice,” obviously.<\/p>\n
At Furman, he majored in political science and philosophy. His professors pushed him to \u201cthink outside of the southern and regional box,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Following law school at Cornell, Aganga-Williams worked as a litigation associate at a Wall Street firm. He clerked for a federal judge and ultimately became an assistant U.S. attorney in New York. Prosecuting offered an intense opportunity to practice the skills he\u2019d already been developing.<\/p>\n
A federal prosecutor handles a case from investigation to indictment to the courtroom, all the way through appeals. Sometimes the victim is impersonal \u2013 society, or the financial system, for example. But Aganga-Williams had a special affinity for cases with individual victims, opportunities to \u201cvindicate someone\u2019s rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you meet a victim and you see your work can give some semblance of justice to that individual \u2013 that is going to give you a drive that\u2019s hard to replicate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
When the January 6th committee was formed in the summer of 2021, senior staff went looking for the group\u2019s investigative team. A previous supervisor from the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office recommended Aganga-Williams.<\/p>\n
He got the first call on a Wednesday in early fall. By Monday he was hired, and in less than two weeks he had left the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office and was in Washington, D.C., with about 25 other lawyers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere really wasn\u2019t a day to waste,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Aganga-Williams was part of a group investigating three major areas: President Trump\u2019s assertions that he was the winner of the 2020 election, his campaign\u2019s use of those false claims to raise money and the funding behind the rallies that led up the Jan. 6 attack.<\/p>\n
The work felt a lot like his job as a prosecutor: subpoenas, interviews, depositions, \u201ctrying to find out what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Team members set aside a variety of political perspectives to achieve a single objective: \u201cFolks who were really, really focused on getting it right, being fair and making the country proud,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that they were untouched by what the entire country had watched unfold mere months before. But the truth was the priority.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou didn\u2019t have the luxury to sit around and feel your feelings,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was immense pressure to get it right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aganga-Williams took two months off after the Jan. 6th committee delivered its report. Now, at his new firm, he specializes in high-stakes commercial litigation and government enforcement actions. And he never forgets that a small case for a lawyer may be a watershed for a client.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile there may not be American democracy at stake, something for them is at stake.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Temidayo Aganga-Williams \u201908 felt a unique weight in his work as senior investigative counsel for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th\u00a0Attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":25901,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,60,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-alumni-profiles","category-politics-and-international-affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}