Former US Attorney Jessica Aber found dead in her home at 43

Aber, 43, was discovered by Alexandria Police officers just before 9:20 am. Her cause of death has not yet been determined.

Before resigning in January as President Trump took office, Aber had led high-profile cases involving national security, Russian fraud, and leaks of classified intelligence, reports the New York Post.

One of her most notable victories came when former CIA analyst Asif Rahman, 34, pleaded guilty to leaking top-secret documents about Israel’s planned strike on Iran. Rahman had posted sensitive information on Telegram, which resulted in Israel delaying its October attack on Tehran.

Aber condemned Rahman’s actions as a “violation of his oath, his responsibility, and the law,” emphasizing that the leak “placed lives at risk, undermined US foreign relations, and compromised our ability to collect vital intelligence in the future.”

She also prosecuted Eleview International Inc., a Virginia-based company accused of illegally exporting sensitive US technology to Russia. The company’s senior executives, Oleg Nayandin, 54, and Vitaliy Borisenko, 39, were charged with using ports in Turkey, Finland, and Kazakhstan to bypass US sanctions against Moscow. According to the Department of Justice, the illegal shipments were worth more than $6 million.

Aber’s work extended to combating cybercrime, securing indictments against Russian nationals Sergey Ivanov and Timur Shakhmametov.

The pair, who had a $10 million reward for their arrests, allegedly operated one of the largest online money laundering networks. US authorities accused them of facilitating transactions for cybercriminals and ransomware groups targeting American financial institutions.

She was also involved in the Justice Department’s unprecedented indictment of four Russian soldiers accused of war crimes against an American living in Ukraine.

Prosecutors said the victim was kidnapped from his home in the Kherson region, tortured, and subjected to a mock execution.

The indicted soldiers included commanding officers Suren Seiranovich Mkrtchyan, 45, and Dmitry Budnik, along with two lower-ranking soldiers identified only by their first names, Valerii and Nazar.

At the time, Aber had vowed to hold war criminals accountable, saying, “We are proud to be at the forefront of the Justice Department’s effort to hold perpetrators of war crimes violations accountable in Ukraine and will continue to pursue them.”

A Virginia native, Aber graduated from the University of Richmond in 2003 and earned her law degree from William & Mary Law School in 2006. She joined the Eastern District of Virginia as an assistant US attorney in 2009 and later served as counsel to the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Criminal Division.

Throughout her career, Aber spoke about her commitment to restoring public trust in law enforcement. She told The Washington Post in January that she had traveled more than 50,000 miles across Virginia in her Hyundai to meet with local residents.

In one of her final LinkedIn posts, she shared a “lovely” photo of US attorneys at a 2024 conference, signed by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland. “It was lovely, though, to receive this surprise in the mail,” she wrote. “Good memories.”

The current US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, expressed his grief in a statement on Saturday.

“We are heartbroken beyond words to learn of the passing of our friend and former colleague, U.S. Attorney Jessica Aber. She was unmatched as a leader, mentor, and prosecutor, and she is simply irreplaceable as a human being,” Siebert said.