Knives are Out for Ed Martin

As the Trump appointee pursues investigations into the most corrupt practices in the Department of Justice's recent history, Democrats and other interests are collaborating to sink his confirmation.

With his interim appointment set to expire soon, Ed Martin, the acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, is not backing down amid attempts by top Senate Democrats to prevent his confirmation as the office’s permanent top prosecutor.

Martin continues to clean house at one of the most notoriously corrupt and politicized U.S. Attorney’s offices in the country. Since taking the reins of the office shortly after Inauguration Day, Martin has demoted and reassigned line prosecutors who handled January 6 cases and forced a top prosecutor to resign after she refused to follow orders related to investigating a $20 billion Biden-era climate grift.

He recently sent a letter to a former member of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team seeking a sit-down to discuss the DOJ’s dirty prosecution of a Trump 2016 campaign aide. Aaron Zelinsky, who resigned from the DOJ on January 10 and later whined on social media that he was “furious, heartbroken, and disappointed at what the President and his appointees are doing to DOJ,” handled the cases against George Papadopoulos and Roger Stone; Martin wants to address misrepresentations made by Zelinsky in the prosecution of Papadopoulos, one of the fall guys in the Russian collusion hoax.

His no-holds-barred approach is one reason why Martin’s nomination faces heavy headwinds in the U.S. Senate, which must confirm each U.S. attorney. California Senator Adam Schiff appears particularly afraid of Martin; Schiff placed a hold on Martin’s nomination by claiming “no one embodies Donald Trump’s personal weaponization of the Justice Department more than Ed Martin.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who recently was investigated by Martin over the New York senator’s 2020 threats against two Supreme Court justices, just announced his intention to use the “blue slip” privilege to block two U.S. attorney nominees from New York and is expected to help lead the charge against Martin as well.

Further, Martin is the near-daily subject of intense media scrutiny despite the fact his predecessor, Matthew Graves, received no corporate media criticism over his influential wife’s ties to the Biden White House or for using his office to ruthlessly pursue nearly 1,600 J6ers who had protested the election of Joe Biden, the man who nominated him to the powerful post in 2021.

DOJ lifers also are making noise. More than 100 former employees of the office just signed on to a letter opposing Martin’s confirmation. “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,” the group, which included some prosecutors who left the office more than 50 years ago, wrote.

But Martin’s critics appear more worried about his success in exposing and holding accountable those responsible for weaponizing the office over the past few years, particularly the unprecedented prosecution of Trump supporters involved in the events of January 6.

Unlawfully Punishing Political Dissidents with White Collar Crime Felony

In one of his first acts in office, Martin announced an inquiry into the Biden DOJ’s use of a post-Enron corporate fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2), obstruction of an official proceeding, against hundreds of January 6 defendants. Signed into law in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley act in the aftermath of the Enron accounting scandal, the DOJ for the first time charged the felony in cases involving political protesters who temporarily disrupted a government function.

While the Trump DOJ brought the first obstruction charges against J6ers, Graves accelerated its use. His office systematically opposed defendants’ motion to drop the count; following convictions, either plea deals or at trial, Graves then sought an “administration of justice” enhancement to add time to prison sentences for those found guilty of the charge. (The D.C. appellate court later reversed how Graves and several D.C. judges had applied the enhancement.) He also sought a separate “terror” enhancement, which added months in federal prison for a crime already punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

But in June 2024, the Supreme Court overturned how the DOJ had applied the law, determining the statute required proof of evidence tampering or destruction. (At least 17 D.C. federal judges, including James Boasberg, the current chief judge of the district court, had consented to the DOJ’s unlawful use of the statute over the course of three years.) But relief from SCOTUS came too late for at least 100 J6ers who had served, or were in the process of serving, time in federal prison on a 1512(c)(2) conviction.

SCOTUS’ decision exposed an unprecedented abuse of the law by federal prosecutors and judges. Even more brazen is the fact that after SCOTUS reversed the DOJ, Graves fought to keep J6ers in prison for the same amount of time even though the conviction, a felony driving the bulk of the sentence, had been vacated.

“The use was a great failure of our office…and we need to get to the bottom of it,” Martin, a longtime advocate for J6ers, wrote in an email on January 27. He assigned two prosecutors to collect all records and information related to 1512(c)(2) cases. “The 1512 Project is important work.”

Earlier this month, Martin announced the project “is growing” and now involves input from lawyers and judges among others. “We continue to look at exactly how and why so many Jan 6th cases were charged using 1512 which led to the dramatic failure before the Supreme Court.” Leaks to the news media about specific cases, Martin disclosed, also are the subject of the investigation. “It was bad all around.”

Consequences for J6 Lives Destroyed

That comment represents an uncharacteristic understatement by Martin. The cruel, vindictive, and destructive prosecution of J6ers using a corporate fraud statute is one of the greatest travesties of justice in the department’s history. At least one J6er, Matthew Perna, took his life after learning the DOJ would seek years in prison for his 1512(c)(2) plea. Dozens of families were destroyed and bankrupted. The human wreckage left in the wake of the DOJ’s illegal use of 1512(c)(2) will never be fully accounted for.

Full public disclosure as to who was responsible—whether it was Graves, Attorney General Merrick Garland, or Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who sat on the Enron Task Force that masterminded the obstruction statute——is necessary. So, too, are consequences.

Martin is the man who could accomplish just that. Which is what the powers-that-be are truly afraid of.