CNN
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While Trump administration officials were preparing to install a seasoned conservative lawyer as the top prosecutor in Washington, DC, the firebrand right-wing activist in the job on a temporary basis was waging a public campaign to keep the job permanently.
Within hours of becoming interim US attorney for DC on President Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day, Ed Martin swiftly used his powers to dismiss pending January 6-related cases. He then fired prosecutors who were involved, and launched an internal review to hunt for possible misconduct.
He also publicly allied with Elon Musk and offered to file charges against anyone who threatens members of his team in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
People familiar with the matter said Martin’s stock rose in Trump’s orbit as he used his temporary powers to aggressively push a retribution agenda and chronicled his moves in social media postings, often bashing Democratic critics and praising Trump.
On Monday, Trump announced Martin, a fellow election denier in 2020 and defense lawyer for US Capitol rioters, would be getting the nod.
That left the man originally envisioned for the role, former Bush-era Pentagon official Cully Stimson, falling by the wayside, despite a recent meeting with Attorney General Pam Bondi at Mar-a-Lago to discuss priorities for the US attorney’s office. Trump had even told allies that his pick for the position was Stimson.
Martin’s actions have jolted prosecutors in the office, and he contributed to fresh internal tumult this week. The top criminal prosecutor in the US attorney’s office, Denise Cheung, resigned Tuesday after refusing an order from Martin and others to open a grand jury probe into climate funding under the Biden administration.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday, Trump highlighted Martin’s clerkship on a federal appellate court and his past legal work for the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis, and said, “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.”
In one of his only interviews as interim US attorney, Martin recently told the local ABC affiliate in DC that he was looking to make changes “as quickly as we possibly can,” and emphasized his desire to crack down on local violent crime.
“It used to be you’d go to the bad section of town, and you knew you were in the bad section,” Martin said. “When you’re in all the sections and you’re worried about gun violence, that’s where the thugs with guns have to be stopped… we’re going to raise the cost for you to be a thug with a gun in this district.”
Martin will need to be confirmed by the Senate, which has a 53-47 Republican majority. It’s quite the rise for Martin, who was tapped after the November election to serve as the chief of staff for the director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Stimson and the White House declined to comment.
‘Folks are demoralized’
Some prosecutors in Martin’s office reacted to the announcement with dismay, according to current and former officials who are in touch with colleagues at the office. A specific point of friction is Martin’s background as a political activist and his lack of prosecutorial experience.
“Folks are demoralized,” an official in Martin’s office told CNN, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “He fired over a dozen experienced, trained, apolitical prosecutors and last week put out notice that he wants to hire 20 new prosecutors ASAP. He’s saying he’s going to kill the perceived weaponization through actual weaponization.”
The official added: “I’m sure there’s an example of a team that found success despite having a coach that doesn’t know the rules and hates his own team. I’m not aware of one, though.”
Sean Brennan, a former prosecutor in Martin’s office who handled January 6 cases and was fired last month with other newer employees, blasted Martin’s elevation to the top post.
“The leader of the largest US attorney’s office in the country is more focused on serving as a political lackey, as a tool that the Trump administration can wield for political purposes, instead of protecting the people of our district and the people of America,” Brennan said.
In an interview with CNN, Brennan recounted a town hall where Martin urged staff to work hard to prepare DC for the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, which is happening next July and will feature major celebrations in the capital city.
Martin talked about “how we need to clean up DC’s streets, not necessarily because of safety, but because of a conversation he claimed to have had with Trump about the importance of the 250th anniversary of the founding,” Brennan said, adding that Martin seemed focused on making Trump look good, because he wanted to invite world leaders to DC for the celebration.
Neither Martin nor the US attorney’s office responded to requests for comment.
January 6 activism
Martin, who was briefly a CNN contributor in 2017, was an organizer in the “Stop The Steal” movement that falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Trump.
CNN reported that Martin assisted with financing for Trump’s infamous Ellipse rally on January 6, 2021. Later that day, while the US Capitol was being violently breached by Trump supporters, Martin posted to Twitter, saying, “I’m at the Capitol right now. Abd (sic) I was at the POTUS speech earlier. Rowdy crowd but nothing out of hand. Ignore the #FakeNews.”
Later, Martin worked as a defense attorney for some people charged in the January 6 riot. He went farther than other senior Trump officials – like Vice President JD Vance and FBI director nominee Kash Patel – by backing mass pardons for rioters convicted of assaulting police.
Within days of taking over the US attorney’s office in DC, Martin initiated an internal investigation to look into one of the “great failures of our office,” referring to the decision, later overruled by the Supreme Court, to charge some rioters with obstructing Congress.
“We have a lot of people in the Republican Party who are very nervous of conflict, but he has a reputation of not being afraid of conflict,” said Suzzanne Monk, founder of the J6 Pardon Project, which pushed for full pardons for all January 6 defendants. “Let’s see how much teeth that investigation has, and how much of a leash that President Trump gives his pit bulls.”
Martin’s actions in a matter of weeks on the job won him a place on Bondi’s newly named Weaponization Working Group, according to a person briefed on the discussions. The purpose of the group is to look into allegations that the Biden administration acted inappropriately in pursuing investigations of the January 6 US Capitol riot and Trump.
A DC resident, Monk praised Martin for putting a focus on crime in DC instead of January 6 cases. She said she noticed that “his posts on Twitter are about actually prosecuting crimes in DC instead of prosecuting January 6ers.”
Among other posts, Martin recently shared an image of his new iPhone wallpaper: a picture of a 3-year-old girl who was fatally shot in southeast DC last year.
Political career in Missouri
Over the years, Martin has also tried his hand at electoral politics, without success.
In 2010, a Republican wave year, he tried to unseat Democratic Rep. Russ Carnahan, with support from Tea Party groups, but lost the St. Louis-area seat by about 2%. Martin then ran for Missouri attorney general in 2012, challenging incumbent Democrat Chris Koster. The race wasn’t close: Martin lost by 15%, in part because he fell short in traditional GOP areas.
He became the chairman of the Missouri Republican Party in 2013 and was at the helm for two years. In a series of op-eds, he bashed the GOP establishment “racket” and candidates like Scott Walker and Jeb Bush in the 2016 primary, and argued that the professional class of GOP consultants “hate the populist energy that Mr. Trump is capturing.”
Martin has worked closely with Phyllis Schlafly, a fellow Missourian and one of the most prominent women in the conservative movement. He led the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, an activist group that says it fights for “pro-family” values and opposes “radical feminists.”
During Trump’s first campaign, Martin and Schlafly co-wrote “The Conservative Case for Trump,” which was published after her death in September 2016. The book was a watershed moment for Trump as he courted support from the religious right and conservative women.
Hardliner against abortion
As a conservative radio host, Martin espoused extreme anti-abortion views that go far beyond any policies that Trump has proposed, according to reporting last year from CNN’s KFile.
An examination of dozens of episodes of Martin’s radio show from 2022 to 2024 found that, among other things, he has suggested that there could be criminal punishments for women who get abortions. “Could be criminal, could be a jail sentence, I suppose,” he once said.
He has publicly called for a national abortion ban without exceptions for rape and incest. In one radio show, he reiterated his opposition to any exceptions by singling out the case of a 10-year-old girl from Ohio who was raped in 2022. He said: “I have said over and over again the examples that shouldn’t be the rule, right? You can’t let the exceptions be the rule.”
Martin also falsely claimed that medically induced abortion and birth control pills were “damaging” and dangerous for women. He has falsely claimed it was “an absolute scientific fact that no abortion is ever performed to save the life of the mother,” despite medical findings that abortions can be necessary to treat life-threatening pregnancy complications.
Obsessed with leaks
Within the US attorney’s office, Martin has already become infamous for his near-daily emails to the entire staff, which are sometimes riddled with typos and angry outbursts over leaks.
After one of his emails leaked during his first week in office, Martin complained, “Wow, what a disappointment to have my email yesterday to you all was leaked almost immediately. Again, personally insulting and professionally unacceptable. I guess I have learned my lesson (‘Fool me once…’).” That email was subsequently leaked to CNN and other media outlets.
Many in the office have also picked up on Martin’s heavy presence on X.
Earlier this month, Martin publicly posted a letter that he sent to Musk, pledging to prosecute anyone who doxes or threatens staffers from Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. This came after news reports identifying DOGE staffers who were involved in disruptions and firings at key agencies like the Treasury Department and the US Agency for International Development.
“We will chase them to the end of the Earth to hold them accountable,” Martin wrote, adding, “Noone (sic) is above the law.”