Trump nominates January 6 activist to serve as top DC prosecutor

A conservative activist who has consistently defended the January 6 storming of the Capitol has been nominated by Donald Trump to serve as the permanent top federal prosecutor in the city where it happened.

Trump named Ed Martin for US attorney for the District of Columbia, the top prosecutor for all serious local crimes by adults in the district. His appointment must be confirmed by the US Senate.

Martin has echoed Trump’s baseless and incorrect claims that the 2020 election was stolen, including speaking at a “Stop the Steal” rally in DC on 5 January, and consistently defended the actions of the insurrectionists.

He has said he was part of the crowds of Trump supporters who gathered near the White House in Washington DC on 6 January to hear Trump urge them to march on the US Capitol, where many engaged in a attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election and keep Trump in power.

He also defended the behavior of the insurrectionists in real time, posting on social media: “Rowdy crowd but nothing out of hand. Ignore the #FakeNews.”

Martin is further listed in court filings as a lawyer for at least three Capitol riot defendants, including a member of the Proud Boys who pleaded guilty to felony charges. He has also served on the board of the Patriot Freedom Project, which has raised money to support 6 January defendants and their families.

In one social media post, Martin appeared to describe federal prosecutors as “the President’s lawyers”. Martin also recently reposted a comment from a conservative activist who asked, “Where does it say in the Constitution that the Department of Justice is independent from POTUS?”

Martin has been serving as the US attorney for the District of Columbia on an interim basis since Trump was sworn in for his second term last month.

Alexis Loeb, the former deputy chief of the section that prosecuted the 6 January cases, argued when Martin was appointed on an interim basis that he appears to be in the role “purely to execute on the president’s political priorities more so than the work of protecting public safety in Washington”.

In the short period he has spent as interim US attorney since Trump took office, Martin has already overseen the dismissals of hundreds of January 6 cases after Trump pardoned the defendants and commuted their sentences or vowed to dismiss them.

He also drew particular scrutiny for putting his name on a request that a judge drop charges against one of the same 6 January defendants that he represented as a defense attorney. Lawyers generally are prohibited from taking both sides in the same case and justice department regulations require lawyers to step aside from cases involving their former clients for at least a year.

Richard Painter, the former chief ethics official in Republican president George W Bush’s administration, told Reuters it was “a fundamental conflict of interest” and said “attorneys don’t switch sides in cases”.

Reuters reported that Martin sent an office-wide email defending himself by saying he had “stopped all involvement” in the cases more than a year and a half ago, that he had handled them pro bono and that he was “under the impression that I was off the cases”. In the email, he also reportedly complained that an internal query about the matter from an ethics lawyer had “immediately leaked to the media”.

Furthermore, Martin’s early actions have included firing about 30 federal prosecutors who worked on 6 January cases, the Washington Post reported.

He also ordered an internal review of prosecutors’ use of a felony charge against hundreds of Capitol rioters and directed employees to hand over files, emails and other documents.

When a federal judge ordered prominent 6 January defendants, including Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, to stay away from Washington DC and the US Capitol after their pardons, Martin asked him to reverse the ban, which the judge did.

Martin has also defended the work of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, saying that prosecutors would “pursue any and all legal action against anyone who impedes” the group’s work, which includes accessing government computer systems and scrutinizing spending.

In a 3 February letter to Musk posted on X, the billionaire’s social media platform, Martin wrote that he was concerned about “some of the staff at DOGE” being “targeted publicly” and said that he would pursue legal action against anyone who “threatens your people”.

In a follow-up message to Musk on 7 February, he wrote: “If people are discovered to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically, we will investigate them and we will chase them till the end of the earth to hold them accountable.”

Martin’s pledges prompted statements of concern from press freedom groups, which reminded him that “it is not a crime to identify or criticize individuals openly conducting government work” and said his remarks could threaten Americans’ first amendment rights.

One of Trump’s first actions when he returned to office this year was to offer “unconditional” pardons to about 1,500 people involved in the 6 January attack, including leaders of far-right groups that had been convicted of the most serious charges. Martin’s confirmation as the US attorney for Washington DC would mark a further step in Trump’s attempts to rewrite the history of the violent 6 January 2021 attack.

“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,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “He will get the job done.”

Martin, who earned a law degree from St Louis University, supervised legal clinics for low-income residents as director of the human rights office for the Roman Catholic archdiocese of St Louis. For two decades before becoming US attorney, he ran his own law practice and was active in Republican politics, including as the head of the Missouri Republican party.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting