Almost from the moment President Donald Trump named right-wing activist Ed Martin the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Martin has stirred controversy with brazenly ideological and legally and ethically dubious actions.
Now that Trump has formally nominated Martin for the position, which requires Senate confirmation, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are calling for hearings on Martin’s behavior, as well as his close association with a Jan. 6 insurrectionist described by co-workers and in court filings as expressing racist, white nationalist, and antisemitic ideologies.
Recognizing that hearings are not typical for U.S. attorney nominees, the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin, has made the case that an exception is merited because Martin is “so controversial and so objectionable.”
At an April 10 committee meeting, Durbin recounted Martin’s attacks on Capitol Police officers and Justice Department attorneys, as well as Martin’s embrace of the Oath Keepers, whose leaders and members were convicted of the most serious Jan. 6 charges. He displayed a photo of convicted Jan. 6 insurrectionist and alleged Nazi sympathizer Timothy Hale-Cusanelli wearing a Hitler-style mustache. Sen. Mazie Hirono, while also calling for hearings, condemned Martin comparing the prosecution of Jan. 6 defendants with the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II.
Durbin agreed with committee chair Sen. Chuck Grassley to hold off on calling for a vote on whether to hold a hearing on Martin’s nomination until senators have a chance to review written answers that Martin is expected to submit to more than 500 questions that have been submitted by members of the committee.
Committee Democrats have also asked the Office of Disciplinary Counsel at the DC Court of Appeals to investigate Martin for abusing his position and violating professional rules of conduct. And Rep. Jamie Raskin, a constitutional lawyer and top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has called on the Justice Department’s Inspector General to investigate Martin, saying that he has “used his office to illegally attack critics and perceived enemies of the Trump Administration while endangering the public safety of the citizens of and visitors to our nation’s capital.”
One focus of Democratic senators’ April 2 letter to Grassley was Martin’s “extensive ties” to Hale-Cusanelli, who worked as a security contractor at a U.S. Naval base. He was described in court documents as holding “White Supremacist and Nazi-Sympathizer ideologies that drive his enthusiasm for another civil war.”
An excerpt from the senators’ letter contains examples of Hale-Cusanelli’s offensive language and violent rhetoric:
Beyond inaccurately portraying Mr. Hale-Cusanelli as a victim of an unjust conviction, Mr. Martin has inexplicably praised Mr. Hale-Cusanelli’s character and intellect, despite Mr. Hale-Cusanelli’s extensive and well-known history of antisemitism, misogyny, and racism. According to one of his co-workers, Mr. Hale-Cusanelli once said, “Hitler should have finished the job.” Further, Mr. Hale-Cusanelli reportedly claimed that he “would kill all the Jews and eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and he wouldn’t need to season them because the salt from their tears would make it flavorful enough.” One co-worker recalled Mr. Hale-Cusanelli saying that “babies born with any deformities or disabilities should be shot in the forehead.” Another told authorities that Mr. Hale-Cusanelli referred to Black people as “shit skinned minorities.” According to videos Mr. Hale-Cusanelli himself recorded while storming the Capitol on January 6, he berated an officer guarding the West Front of the Capitol, stating, “Fuck you! The revolution will be televised, cunt!” Days after the riot, a confidential human source recorded Mr. Hale-Cusanelli saying he wished for there to be another civil war. Mr. Hale-Cusanelli could also be heard saying he would give Jewish people “24 hours to leave the country.”
In a 2020 video available online, Hale-Cusanelli delivered an antisemitic rant against Jewish leaders in New Jersey in which he called then-Gov. Phil Murphy a “crypto-Jew” because Murphy’s wife is Jewish.
The relationship between Martin and Hale-Cusanelli is no passing acquaintance. In September 2024, Martin presented Hale-Cusanelli with an award at Trump’s Bedminster Club, where Martin called Hale-Cusanelli “an extraordinary man, an extraordinary leader.” A bit more detail from the Democratic senators’ letter:
After Mr. Hale-Cusanelli concluded his remarks, he hugged Mr. Martin, who then returned to the podium to say, “It’s one of the goals of many of us to make sure that the world—and especially America—hears more from Tim Hale because he’s extraordinary.” This shocking conduct necessitates sworn testimony from Mr. Martin.
Notably, Martin’s relationship with Hale-Cusanelli has continued since he has been serving as interim U.S. Attorney. In March, Hale-Cusanelli and Martin both spoke at a fundraising event for Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, the advocacy group Martin has run since Schlafly’s death. The speech was also attended by former members of the Oath Keepers “who are still appealing their seditious conspiracy convictions in cases overseen by the DC United States Attorney’s Office,” reported Mother Jones:
While President Donald Trump pardoned around 1,600 convicted or accused Capitol attackers in January, Meggs, Harrelson, and Hackett are among 14 members of far-right groups who did not receive pardons. Instead, Trump commuted their sentences, freeing them from prison without expunging their felony convictions. The men are continuing to appeal those convictions, and Martin’s office is in charge of defending the guilty verdicts—even as Martin appears alongside some of the defendants in a smiling photo from the fundraiser.
In his remarks, Hale-Cusanelli praised Martin and called J6 “an absolute set-up” and “a psyop led by three-letter agencies.” Following Hale-Cusanelli to the microphone, Martin did not dispute any of his statements. Martin referred to the prosecution of Jan. 6 defendants as “truly an evil period.”
The problems with Martin’s nomination go well beyond this association. A few of the topics that deserve to be explored:
- Martin, who legally represented some Jan. 6 defendants even after taking his position, fired prosecutors involved in Jan. 6 cases. He has run interference for Elon Musk’s legally questionable DOGE operations.
- In 2020, as a leader of the so-called “Stop the Steal” movement, Martin sought to overturn the results of the presidential election; as interim U.S. Attorney, he has launched an “election integrity” unit, which TPM reporter Khaya Himmelman noted was using the Justice Department to “’investigate’ one of Trump’s oldest, and most baseless grievances to date.”
- Martin defended the White House blocking access to the Associated Press over its refusal to accept Trump’s unilateral declaration that the Gulf of Mexico should be called the Gulf of America. Martin referred to his office as “President Trumps’ lawyers” and declared that “we are vigilant in standing against entities like the AP that refuse to put America first.” (A Trump-nominated federal judge recently ruled in AP’s favor, telling the White House that it could not ignore the Constitution.)
- Like his boss, Martin has threatened universities and law firms.
- He has sought to undermine the legality of pardons issued by former President Joe Biden in ways that “highlight Mr. Martin’s hands-on approach and willingness to use one of the most important U.S. attorneys’ offices in the country to seek retribution against Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies,” as the New York Times reported.
“No one embodies Donald Trump’s personal weaponization of the Justice Department more than Ed Martin. He is unfit to serve as a lawyer, let alone one with the resources – and cover from the Senate,” said Sen. Adam Schiff in announcing last week that he would put a hold on Martin’s nomination. Said Schiff, “Confirming him to serve permanently in the role he has already abused in his interim capacity would cross the prosecutorial Rubicon that every single Senator would come to regret.”
A bipartisan group of more than 100 former federal prosecutors who served in the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia have urged senators to reject Martin’s nomination. The letter, which reviews multiple examples of Martin’s “rampant misbehavior and unfitness,” declares, “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 Washington Post’s Aaron Blake has called Martin’s nomination the biggest test yet of Republican senators’ “willingness to set aside personal misgivings and bow to Trump’s more extreme impulses…with potentially massive implications for our body politic and justice system.”
