Trump Abandons Controversial DC Attorney Nominee After Opposition from GOP Senators

AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades, File

Ed Martin, President Donald Trump’s nominee and the current interim acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, will not get to claim the role permanently, after the president dropped his support for Martin after opposition from Republican Senators.

Martin was highly controversial even before his nomination, during his wild few months as a CNN contributor, as an organizer of the “Stop the Steal” movement promoting baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election (including speaking at a rally in Washington on Jan. 5, 2021), and representing some of the January 6th rioters. He was the first U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. in at least half a century to be appointed without ever serving as a judge or federal prosecutor. CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig, who has been a federal prosecutor, lambasted Martin’s “toxic blend of traits” that included being wholly unqualified, bringing a “startling arrogance to the job,” and “most problematically, he is explicitly political.”

Since Martin began as interim acting U.S. Attorney, he has urged judges to remove some of the few remaining restrictions on the pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, tweeted a statement in February in which he declared that the U.S. Attorneys were “President Trumps’ lawyers” (punctuation error in original) and attacked the AP, and then just this week tweeted an open letter attacking public defenders and attacking police officers who Trump pardoned after they were convicted of murder and a coverup.

On Tuesday, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told CNN’s Manu Raju he would not support Martin’s confirmation. As the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, a “no” vote from Tillis would be enough to block Martin from moving forward, assuming the Democrats on the committee voted as predicted to oppose him as well.

With Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) telling reporters he did not see a path forward for Martin and Judiciary Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) not scheduling a hearing for Martin, his fate was all but sealed. Martin’s interim appointment expires on May 20, Huffington Post’s Jennifer Bendery reported, and since Grassley did not put Martin on the agenda for Thursday, the next possible committee meeting would be on May 22, after that deadline had passed.

If that May 20 deadline passes without Martin being confirmed, federal law has the judges in the District Court for the District of Columbia appoint someone as U.S. Attorney. Several U.S. Attorney nominees during Trump’s first term never made it to Senate confirmation and were approved by the district court judges for their districts after their 120-day interim period expired. However, it is virtually impossible that the D.C. District judges would confirm Martin after he took such a visible role advocating for the Jan. 6 defendants and supporting Trump’s pardons; these are the same judges who spent years presiding over those trials and sentencing many of the defendants to prison time.

There are some Senate procedures that would have theoretically made it possible for Martin’s nomination to move forward, but they were also highly unlikely to be deployed here. For example, a senator could move to confirm Martin by requesting unanimous consent for his nomination to be discharged from further consideration by the committee and brought to a floor vote, but unanimous consent was not happening with Tillis’ publicly declared opposition — not to mention the strenuous objections from Senate Democrats.

Trump made the end of Martin’s nomination official Thursday, telling reporters gathered in the Oval Office, “We have somebody else that would be great” and suggesting he would find another spot for Martin within the Department of Justice.

The president expressed that he was “disappointed” in Martin’s nomination failing, saying Martin was “unbelievable” and a “terrific person” who had done “a very good job.”

“I have to be straight,” said Trump. “I was disappointed. A lot of people were disappointed. But that’s the way it works sometimes. That’s the way it works. And he wasn’t rejected, but we felt it would be very — it would be hard. And we have somebody else that we’ll be announcing over the next two days who’s going to be great.”

This is a breaking news story and has been updated.