GOP senator sabotages key Trump nominee over Jan. 6th
President Donald Trump has withdrawn his nomination of Ed Martin for DC US Attorney after Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) withdrew his support over Martin’s defense of January 6th political prisoners.
Martin, who has been serving as acting US Attorney in DC since Trump took office, has compared the J6 political persecutions to the Japanese internment camps during World War II. Days after taking office, Martin launched an investigation into the office’s targeting of J6 defendants under his predecessor, Matthew Graves. Graves deliberately misapplied §1512 (c)(2), an Enron-era law against obstructing official proceedings, to intimidate J6 defendants into pleading guilty. Martin launched The 1512 Project to “get to the bottom of” what he called “a great failure of our office.”
Trump’s nomination would have made Martin’s role permanent. But last week, Sen. Tillis announced after meeting with Martin that he would not support him for the role of DC prosecutor, saying he has “no tolerance” for J6 defendants.
“I have no tolerance for anybody that entered the building on Jan. 6, and that’s probably where most of the friction was,” Tillis told reporters.
Trump pivots
Losing the support of Tillis, a member of the Judiciary Committee, meant that Martin’s nomination would come to an 11-11 vote, assuming that all other Republicans in the committee voted in his favor. Trump withdrew the nomination and expressed his disappointment.
“He is a terrific person,” said the president, who has referred to J6 defendants as “political hostages.” “He wasn’t getting the support from people that I thought.”
“I just want to say, Ed is unbelievable. Hopefully we can bring him into, whether it’s DOJ or whatever, in some capacity because he’s really outstanding,” he continued. “To me, it was disappointing. I have to be straight. 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,” he added.
On Thursday, Trump named former prosecutor Jeanine Pirro, who called the January 6th protest “deplorable, reprehensible, outright criminal,” as the interim United States attorney for the District of Columbia.
