He is not occupationally prepared to be a federal prosecutor.
By Colbert I. King, WAPO, February 21, 2025
I’ll say it again: My Jan. 3 column predicting that D.C. would soon be in the new U.S. attorney’s crosshairs fell short of capturing the full scope of the prosecutorial train wreck we now have on our hands. It was safe, at the time, to speculate thatDonald Trump’s choice for the role would be hell on wheels.
If there’s going to be retaliation against Trump’s perceived enemies in the government or the press, I said, it will start in downtown D.C. with the new U.S. attorney, who initiates prosecutions, conducts grand jury proceedings and, most importantly, requests indictments. That was written without knowing exactly what Trump had in mind.
But it was hard to imagine back then, just as it is difficult to fathom now, that one of the largest and most important U.S. attorney’s offices in the country could be filled by someone with no experience as a federal prosecutor. But that is the case with Ed Martin, whomthe president has nominated to be the U.S. attorney for our nation’s capital.
Martin is not occupationally prepared to be a federal prosecutor. He is an affirmative action hire, favored for the job only because he sits squarely in Trump’s political camp.
Martinhelped organize the “Stop the Steal” movement to try to keep Trump in office after his 2020 election loss. That storied performance earned him Trump’s selection to be chief of staff for the Office of Management and Budget, which would have been swell from a D.C. standpoint. Except Trump switched gears, apparently impressed by Martin’s speed in reshaping the U.S. attorney’s office in an interim role, by dismissing Capitol riot charges and firing about 30 prosecutors who had worked on Jan. 6 cases.
Sothis week, Trump nominated Martin to be the top D.C. federal prosecutor, posting on his Truth Social account, “Since Inauguration Day, Ed has been doing a great job as Interim U.S. Attorney, fighting tirelessly to restore Law and Order, and make our Nation’s Capital Safe and Beautiful Again. He will get the job done.”
And what a job he has been doing.
In the space of a few weeks, Martin has demonstrated little respect for the moral, ethical and legal obligations that come with holding such a distinguished post.
Ethics-wise, Martin has done the unthinkable: As interim U.S. attorney he acted to dismiss charges against Joseph Padilla in a Jan. 6 case, while still representing Padilla as a defense lawyer. Conflict of interest, you say? Apparently, no conflict with Martin’s interests.
Consider, too, Martin’s letter posted Feb. 7 on Elon Musk’s X social media site that referred to Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service efforts to penetrate, commandeer and dismantle federal government programs. “If people are discovered to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically, we will investigate them and we will chase them to the end of the Earth to hold them accountable,” he wrote. As Stephen Gillers, a judicial ethics expert at New York University’s law school, told The Post, “A United States attorney has no jurisdiction to pursue people who have ‘simply acted unethically.’”
And there’s Martin’s “Operation Whirlwind,” announced this week, which will target supposedly “threatening” statements made by Trump’s political opponents. He is given to directing “letters of inquiry” to public figures, asking them to “clarify” statements, under the guise of detecting threats against public officials.
Mind your mouth or answer to Martin’s speech police, I surmise.
Most worrisome of all, however, was Martin’s pressure on the head of the U.S. attorney’s criminal division to launch a criminal investigation against a Biden administration environmental grant initiative without what that prosecutor consideredsufficient evidence of a connection to any alleged crime.
Assistant U.S. attorney Denise Cheung told Martin that there was neither sufficient evidence nor authority to take the action demanded of her. “Because I believed that I lacked the legal authority to issue such a letter, I told you that I would not do so. You then asked for my resignation,” Cheung said in her resignation letter to Martin.
Because she refused to conduct an unfounded investigation, a veteran federal prosecutoris out the door.
Outrageous and chilling.
I go back to my red alert of Jan. 3. Game on: Martin is going to have a field day conducting persecutions, excuse me, prosecutions in the political arena.
And his sights will also be trained on Washington. Under the guise of fighting crime and violence, I fear this U.S. attorney will take over the D.C. police department for his own purposes.
There’s more to worry about.
There are 11 vacancies for the D.C. Superior Court and two for the D.C. Court of Appeals.
In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in October 2023, Charles D. Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, former criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor in the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office, said, “Judges on the D.C. Superior Court trial bench, with a few notable exceptions, are uniformly liberal, lack viewpoint balance, are frosty (and at times hostile) to prosecutors, and are notoriously light sentences.”
Stimson’s characterization has gone largely unchallenged in D.C. official circles, but hardly unnoticed. Only Trump can fill those local court vacancies. Heritage is influential in the new administration, and the U.S. attorney will have Trump’s ear. Will they adopt Stimson’s view?
City leaders showed nothing but passivity when Martin surfaced as interim U.S. attorney. Not a word was spoken. The courts come next. Will D.C.’s elected, legal and civic communities find the courage to tell the White House “no” to extreme right-wing judges? Or will they duck, cover and meekly go down without a fight?
