He called Kamala Harris the new Rachel Dolezal, claiming she identifies as Black though she truly isn’t. He told Georgetown Law School to end any programs associated with diversity, equity and inclusion, vowing he won’t hire any graduate from a university that continues with DEI.
Appointed by Donald Trump to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Martin has referred to himself and other U.S. attorneys as “Donald Trump’s lawyers.” He hopes to shed the interim label soon, as he’s been nominated by the president to assume the office on a permanent basis.
But confirmation won’t be easy, due to Martin’s history of incendiary remarks that make him popular with the Trump base but a pariah to Democrats.
Georgetown’s dean William Treanor, writing in response to Martin’s letter, called his threat against the university a “constitutional violation” that attacks the “University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution.”
The exchange highlighted how Martin has used his newfound prosecutorial powers to “aggressively push Trump’s retribution agenda,” CNN reported.
Martin was appointed interim U.S. attorney in January and he quickly showed where his loyalties lie, demoting many of the career justice department attorneys who prosecuted the Jan. 6 rioters. He’s also vowed to investigate special counsel Jack Smith, writing ominously, in a post on X, “We’ll be in touch soon.”
He attempted to initiate a grand jury investigation into Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer over 2020 comments the Democratic leader made about Supreme Court justices and wrote letters threatening to prosecute Schumer and Texas congressman Robert Garcia over their criticism of billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.
He’s even waded into the “Gulf of Mexico” controversy, in which The Associated Press has refused to refer to it as the “Gulf of America,” as President Trump rechristened it. Martin wrote on X that as “President Trumps’ lawyers” [sic] his office would be “vigilant in standing against entities like the AP that refuse to put America first.” As a community note attached to the post reminded, the Justice Department “is not the personal law firm of the president.”
In response to Martin’s claim of being the president’s personal attorney, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN that the alarm should be raised. Calling Martin, “extraordinarily dangerous.”
Senate Democrats subsequently asked the D.C. bar association to investigate Martin for using his office to intimidate political opponents and pardon previous clients, including some of the Jan. 6 defendants.
The White House responded, “President Trump was given a resounding mandate by the American people to restore law and order. His nomination of Ed Martin underscores his commitment to making America safe again, starting with our nation’s capital,” said Liz Huston, the assistant White House press secretary.
But safety doesn’t seem to be among Martin’s top priorities. The Missouri-born lawyer, who began his career as president of Phyllis Schlafly’s anti-feminist group, Eagle Forum, has always been more of a political animal. He’s never been a prosecutor, which in the past has been seen as a virtual prerequisite for the U.S. attorney’s post.
During the presidential campaign he functioned more or less as one of Trump’s trolls with the comments about Harris, calling her the “DEI candidate” that beat Hillary Clinton to the punch to identify as Black. And just over a decade ago he was the leader of a local Tea Party, a group that emerged in popularity in response to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidency.
In a 2010 column, obtained by The Guardian, called “What would MLK Say?,” Martin used the memory of the Civil Rights leader to support prevailing racist stereotypes around entitlement programs.
“America has – for over 40 years now – engaged in a ‘war on poverty’ that has created an underclass of men and women who have too little education and too little family structure to ever make it out of poverty. Most are black and brown,” Martin wrote, dismissing the fact that most Americans under the poverty line are white.
He added, “Welfare and other entitlements encouraged young men to leave their kids, your women to never marry but have many kids, and both men and women to not work (and collect payments).”
Confirming the former conservative talk show host — who featured white supremacists as guests and appeared on their programs as well — “will be a real challenge,” said Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina on X last month.
“I want people to go into the FBI and the DOJ and not be guilty of the very thing that they’ve criticized their predecessors for…if somebody violated a law, cut and dried, but don’t name a person, then figure out what crime they did. I just think that that makes us no better than the people that we’re criticizing,” Tillis continued.
