Trump will replace polarizing DC US attorney pick Ed Martin
President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will replace interim U.S. attorney Ed Martin, his embattled nominee to serve as the top prosecutor for D.C., after 15 tumultuous weeks in office marked by his threats to investigate Trump’s perceived political adversaries and firings and demotions of career prosecutors who investigated the president and the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack.
Martin, 55, an ardent Trump loyalist named by the president to a 120-day interim post on Inauguration Day, can serve until May 20.
Addressing reporters, Trump praised Martin and expressed disappointment at the Senate’s refusal to advance his nomination.
“I just want to say Ed is unbelievable. And hopefully we can bring him in to, whether it’s DOJ or whatever, in some capacity,” Trump said in response to questions after a White House announcement on a trade agreement with the United Kingdom. “We have somebody else that we’ll be announcing over the next two days who’s going to be great.”
Martin, a pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” and antiabortion activist with no prior experience as a trial lawyer or prosecutor, has been a polarizing figure from his first day overseeing the nation’s largest and one of its most powerful U.S. attorney offices. The D.C. office has more than 350 prosecutors and unique authority to prosecute both local and federal crimes in the nation’s capital, as well as public corruption, national security and other sensitive matters in the seat of the federal government.
Martin began by carrying out Trump’s campaign promise to seek retribution against those connected to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Martin also went after Jan. 6 prosecutors, whom he called “despicable people who decided to do something wrong.” In addition to purging top prosecutors and Jan. 6 prosecutors still on probationary terms, Martin dismissed the remaining cases of about 1,600 Capitol riot defendants pardoned by Trump, including three he still represented as a defense lawyer. And he announced investigations into the handling of riot prosecutions and of subordinates who disclosed his actions to the public.
Democratic critics accused Martin of going further, violating the law and legal ethics by attempting to freeze the bank accounts of a $20 billion Biden climate grant program without adequate evidence of a crime over the objections of career prosecutors and a federal judge, and improperly “weaponizing” his public office to intimidate or chill perceived political opponents.
Former prosecutors and legal experts objected that in a series of letters, social media posts and other communications, Martin used the levers of law enforcement to hint at possible official action against lawmakers, protesters, journalists, medical journals and others he said opposed the agendas of Trump or billionaire adviser Elon Musk, even in instances when they did not commit a crime but “acted simply unethically.”
Republican senators, meanwhile, questioned Martin’s praise for a pardoned Jan. 6 defendant who made antisemitic, racist and sexist comments, and his support for nearly 400 others pardoned after being charged with assaulting police. Martin has suggested they were caught up in a “staged” government operation that was covered up with Republican help.
“We have to be very, very clear that what happened on January the 6th was wrong. It was not prompted or created by other people to put those people in trouble. They made a stupid decision, and they disgraced the United States by absolutely destroying the Capitol,” Sen. Thom Tillis (North Carolina), a key Republican who helped sink Martin’s confirmation chances, said Tuesday.
Martin’s busy but divisive tenure marked a brief but historic chapter for a prosecutor’s office whose members have touted their independence from White House political interference in criminal investigation since before President Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate scandal of the 1970s. It is not clear whether turmoil will continue under Trump, who has ordered investigations of two officials from his first administration, law firms, universities and others who have challenged him.
Trump will now turn to his fifth U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., in his last 16 months as president. That turnover suggests the challenges Martin’s successor will face in taking over an office with wide jurisdiction to prosecute important national security, corruption and other sensitive cases involving current and former top government officials and private interests.
Trump replaced two other D.C. U.S. attorneys in 2020 as he grew unhappy over the office’s handling of the prosecution of political confidant Roger Stone and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and its failure to secure an indictment against former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, figures involved in the FBI and special counsel investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Trump later pardoned Stone and Flynn.
Trump’s third appointee, Michael R. Sherwin, served the final eight months of the president’s first term and oversaw the start of the Capitol breach investigation.
In office, Martin has appeared at times to be at war with subordinates. But outside, he has championed a “Make D.C. Safe Again” initiative, focusing on cracking down on gun and violent crime and reviving a federal prosecution strategy of felon-in-possession gun cases.
He has met with community members and city leaders. Martin supported Trump’s controversial pardoning of two D.C. officers convicted in the vehicular-pursuit death and cover-up case involving 20-year-old moped driver Karon Hylton-Brown. He said he would rewrite office rules about turning over evidence of police misconduct to defense attorneys and judges. He also declared that the office would no longer hire lawyers from law schools that “teach and utilize DEI.”
City leaders have sought to work with Martin, while bristling at Trump’s derision of Washington as a liberal-run, “nightmare of murder and crime.” Violent crime began falling before Martin took office, they have said, leery of being used by the Republican administration as political foils.
Trump spoke warmly of Martin on Thursday, calling him a “terrific person” who has “done a very good job” and claiming credit for an ongoing drop of violent crime in the District over the past year. But he said he could not afford to spend much more political clout on Martin’s bid. “I can only lift that little phone so many times of the day,” he said. “It would be hard.”
Martin was a planner and organizer of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” effort after his 2020 election defeat, and he was at the Capitol briefly on Jan. 6, 2021, where he was a scheduled speaker. He disclosed receiving $30,000 last year for serving on the board of the Patriot Freedom Project, a nonprofit that raised money for Jan. 6 defendants.
Martin also has been dogged by his initial omission from committee disclosure statements of hundreds of his appearances on far-right and Russian state media outlets, as well as his past abrasive criticism of Republican senators he has called “soft,” brainless or “traitors” for taking positions he opposed. His vast body of media statements drew more than 500 written questions from senators, far more than normal, and they often appeared at odds with what he told lawmakers.
“Ed Martin is unfit to practice law, let alone serve as a United States attorney,” said Senate Judiciary Committee member Adam Schiff (D-California), who had vowed to demand a floor vote over Martin’s nomination. “I will keep working to ensure that the January 6 deniers are not confirmed to positions from which they can undermine our rule of law and threaten our democracy.”
Martin’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. About 40 minutes after Trump’s announcement, Martin posted “Plot twist …”, with an apparently A.I.-generated image of himself as the pope, days after a similar photo of Trump as pope was shared on his and White House social media accounts.
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