In late March, Ed Martin, then the embattled acting US attorney for DC, showed up at a community meeting at a police station to tout his efforts to combat crime in the district.
Martin politely fielded questions from attendees, even answering one from a man who, citing Martin’s widely condemned description of his office as “President Trumps’ [sic] lawyers,” asked: “How do we as residents trust that you are going to have our back and not be a personal lawyer for the President of the United States, who is a felon and a racist?”
Martin responded by citing Matthew Graves, who had occupied his position under President Biden. “My predecessor” also “worked for the guy elected president, for his polices, for his vision,” Martin said. “And that was his preference. There is nothing wrong with that.”
“The president ran on an agenda,” Martin added. “The agenda includes major policy initiatives that a prosecutor has a role in. And I certainly, as you know, don’t shy away from being public about those.”
As far as I know, that is the most that Martin, whose nomination Trump pulled Thursday due to opposition by GOP senators, has said publicly in defense of his wildly controversial tenure.
It was a dishonest downplaying of his effort to make the country’s largest prosecutorial office into an instrument of MAGA retribution, but also telling.
As US attorney, Martin fired, demoted, and investigated January 6 prosecutors, threatened to prosecute congressional Democrats for hyperbolic political statements, suggested his office would investigate DOGE critics and former prosecutors faulted by Trump, and harassed medical journals, Wikipedia and Georgetown’s law school with threats to punish them over their speech.
Author: Dan Friedman
Dan Friedman is a senior reporter in Mother Jones' DC bureau
