WASHINGTON — President Trump is withdrawing his nomination of Ed Martin to serve as Washington, DC’s top federal prosecutor, he revealed Thursday after Senate Republicans balked at Martin’s past defenses of Capitol rioters.
“He’s a terrific person, and he wasn’t getting the support from people that I thought,” Trump said of Martin, whose period as acting DC US attorney will expire May 20.
“I can only lift that little phone so many times in a day, but we have somebody else that will be great,” he added.
Without a confirmed US attorney, DC District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg would be able to select a replacement, which would likely rankle the president and his top advisers, like White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who have lashed out at the judge’s rulings attempting to block Trump’s deportations of purported gang members.
A White House aide confirmed to The Post that the president would be selecting a new nominee — but didn’t immediately divulge their identity. A report from ABC News that current Fox News host Jeanine Pirro could replace Martin as interim DC US attorney could not immediately be confirmed.
Martin lashed out at Trump’s political enemies shortly after taking office and was instrumental in trying to overhaul his office’s approach to cases against Capitol riot suspects, with Trump eventually pardoning roughly 1,500 violent and non-violent offenders.
Martin told The Post in a phone interview Thursday that he was grateful for the opportunity to serve and touted “successes” in his acting position of having “protected cops” and cut down on DC crime, targeting both local and international perps.
“It was going to always require the Senate, and so I knew I had a window, maybe it was going to be 120 [days], maybe longer, so I came into it gangbusters and we’ve done an awful lot,” Martin said.
“We’ve taken more guns off the street, more felons and bad guys with guns off the street, in the last two-and-a-half months than [the Biden Justice Department] did all last year,” he boasted.
At the international level, Martin took credit for “seizing cryptocurrency from Hamas,” commandeering oil from “Iranian tankers” and the indictment of a Chinese spy purportedly embedded as a Federal Reserve adviser.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) came out against Martin’s nomination Tuesday, telling reporters on Capitol Hill that he had “no tolerance” for rioters who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and that led to “friction” in his private meeting with the Trump nominee.
“If Mr. Martin were being put forth as a US attorney for any district except the district where Jan. 6 happened, the protest happened, I’d probably support him but not in this district,” Tillis said.
The Senate Judiciary Committee would have deadlocked 11-11 without the North Carolina Republican’s vote.
“We agreed on a lot of stuff,” Martin said of his meeting with Tillis. “We disagreed on a few things, and I think that’s what advise and consent is supposed to be.”
“He was frustrated by the pardons,” he added. “I really thought, frankly, finishing the conversation, that he and I were communicating sufficiently that it would be ongoing.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) later told The Hill that “concerns” about Martin were even more “widespread” among Senate GOPers.
Last month, Martin apologized for praising a Nazi-sympathizing former Jan. 6 defendant who had even snapped a picture of himself done up as dictator Adolf Hitler.
“I denounce everything about what that guy said, everything about the way he talked, and all as I’ve now seen it,” Martin said told The Forward. “At the time, I didn’t know it.”
Resurfaced audio of the nominee’s podcast interviews later showed that he stood by the now-pardoned Timothy Hale-Cusanelli in 2023 and 2024, CNN reported.
“Tim Hale is an extraordinary guy. I’ve gotten to know him really well. I’d say we’re friends over the last few years, and especially in the last month since he’s been out of jail,” Martin had said.
Hale-Cusanelli was one of the first rioters to break glass to enter the halls of Congress on Jan. 6 and had a history of posting anti-semitic statements online.
“I had known vaguely that that he had a photo that was that was leaked … in the course of his prosecution,” Martin said Thursday.
“What I said to Senator Tillis about that situation and others was there were lots of people that were in jail for years who were freed from jail by the bipartisan Supreme Court decision,” he said in reference to the ruling last year tossing hundreds of obstruction charges against riot defendants.
“They were people that had not hit a cop,” Martin noted. “These people were really wronged — and they may be not nice people.”
Martin has never served as a prosecutor, but is a lawyer and former chair of the Missouri Republican Party.
The president as recently as Monday had backed his nomination, posting on his Truth Social: “Ed is coming up on the deadline for Voting and, if approved, HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN.”
Tillis told reporters earlier this week he was hoping that Trump will nominate ex-Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Jay Clayton in Martin’s place.
Clayton has already been nominated as US attorney for the Southern District of New York but is being blocked from consideration by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Senate Democrats had filed a complaint against Martin with the DC Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel in March for prosecutorial misconduct related to his defense work surrounding the Capitol riot, in what Martin characterized as a “Schumer smear.”
“The Schumer smear was, ‘Oh, this guy had bad opinions,’ and look, there was a lot of people on January 6th that were involved that I don’t know their backgrounds, and I probably wouldn’t be proud of them and including especially what I found out about the specifics,” Martin concluded.
“I also think that I’m proud of the 120 days because very publicly I think I’ve been effective at helping with [Trump’s] vision, vision of fighting weaponization of government, a vision of holding people accountable,” he added.
“You can’t see everything, but no one above the law.”
