Ed Martin is Wreaking Havoc in DC

Ninety-five former prosecutors say he is 'an affront to the singular pursuit of justice'

Before getting on Substack, I wrote several Facebook posts about former Missouri GOP Chairman Ed Martin, trump’s utterly unqualified pick to be US Attorney in Washington D.C., arguably the most powerful prosecutorial perch in the country. Martin, a rank opportunist who was held in contempt even by many of his fellow Republicans in Missouri, stands out even among trump’s clown car of grifting, incompetent, sycophantic and criminal appointments for his trashing of legal norms in the service of Dear Leader. So egregious have his actions been in just the two months that he’s served as interim U.S. Attorney that no fewer than 95 former federal prosecutors have urged the rejection of his appointment.

It isn’t every day that former prosecutors, Democratic and Republican appointees alike, feel impelled to oppose the appointment of a key figure in any administration, so it’s worth taking the time to look at the reasons those former prosecutors cited for their opposition. Their open, six-page letter makes clear that Martin is not just hopelessly mediocre; he’s irredeemably corrupt and lawless. As the letter says, “He is unworthy of the position, incapable of the task, and an affront to the singular pursuit of justice for which this Office has stood for more than two centuries.”

What are some of those affronts? According to the letter:

• He was a leader of the “Stop the Steal” movement who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

• He believes the January 6 rioters who overran the Capitol should not have been prosecuted.

• He terminated the prosecutors who were involved in the prosecution of the January 6 rioters.

• He investigated prosecutors for pursuing criminal charges against the rioters.

• He has tweeted or otherwise publicly commented on matters under investigation or outside his purview.

• He contacted sitting members of Congress on matters protected by the Speech and Debate Clause while garbling basic facts at issue.

• He ordered the head of the office’s criminal division to freeze the bank accounts of a $20 billion Biden climate grant program although there was no probable cause to do so. She resigned rather than obey him.

• He moved to dismiss a criminal case against a rioter whom he represented as a private attorney before he was named interim U.S. Attorney. (According to the Washington Post, former colleagues described the rioter, Army reservist Timothy Hale-Cusinelli, as “having extremist or radical views pertaining to the Jewish people, minorities and women.”)

• He threatened to investigate a law firm that provided pro bono services to a potential target without any basis in law and fact.

• He wrote supportively to Elon Musk, who had urged the impeachment of judges who rule against trump.

Maybe they ran out of space or deemed that bill of particulars sufficient, because they somehow left out this one: Martin threatened to investigate the dean of Georgetown University’s law school if the school didn’t jettison its DEI initiatives. How that is the business of the DC US Attorney let alone a criminal matter is, to say the least, a head-scratcher. (Interesting factoid: Martin got his law degree from St. Louis University, which, like Georgetown, is a Jesuit institution.)

The former prosecutors’ letter is noteworthy because it comes at a time when several of the nation’s most powerful law firms have capitulated to trump’s threats to target them with lawless executive orders unless they meet his extortionate demands. Those law firms would do well to heed this paragraph in the letter: “There is a time when we are all called to stand for the full and fair administration of justice and the rule of law. For those of us who have served in the Office of the United States Attorney and still have a breath, that time is now.”

Given how thoroughly Senate Republicans have bent the knee to trump, it’s doubtful those words, stirring as they are, will have the slightest effect on them when it comes time to confirm his appointment. But one day, after Ed Martin has thoroughly disgraced the office, which he will do almost as assuredly as he disgraced the Missouri governor’s office when he served as chief of staff to Missouri Governor Matt Blunt in 2007, those senators, many of them lawyers, will come to regret it. (An investigation by the Kansas City Star and St. Louis Post-Dispatch found that when Martin was Blunt’s chief of staff, he improperly used his office to encourage anti-abortion groups to oppose then-Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon, who was considered likely to oppose Blunt in the next election.)

As the former prosecutors’ letter states, Martin “has butchered the position, effectively destroying it as a vehicle by which to pursue justice and turning it into a political arm of the current administration.”

As mind boggling as it is that someone like Martin will likely end up becoming the most powerful prosecutor in the country, it’s also entirely in keeping with the trump regime’s thoroughgoing contempt for the rule of law and ongoing crusade to muzzle trump’s critics.

Another native son of Missouri, Harry Truman, would have called out this lawless lout. Here’s what he had to say back in 1950: “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

Unless his confirmation is rejected, that’s where Ed Martin wants to take us.