WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would replace Ed Martin as his nominee for U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., after the longtime right-wing activist faced opposition from a key Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“He is a terrific person. He wasn’t getting the support,” Trump said of Martin. “I’m very disappointed in that. ... I’m one person. I can only lift that little phone so many times in a day.”
Trump said the White House would announce a new nominee for the position “over the next two days.” Martin’s term as interim U.S. attorney is set to expire May 20.
“We have somebody else that will be great,” Trump said, without elaborating on who that person would be.
Later in the day, Trump named Fox News host Jeanine Pirro to the post on an interim basis.
Trump lauded Martin on Truth Social on Thursday evening, saying that he “has done an AMAZING job as interim U.S. Attorney” and that he would be appointed associate deputy attorney general and pardon attorney and that he would direct a “weaponization working group” at the Justice Department.
“In these highly important roles, Ed will make sure we finally investigate the Weaponization of our Government under the Biden Regime, and provide much needed Justice for its victims,” Trump wrote.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said Tuesday that he would not back Martin’s nomination after he met with him Monday night. Tillis’ opposition meant Martin was unlikely to be reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which had been considering his nomination to Washington’s top prosecutor.
Martin had served since Inauguration Day as interim U.S. attorney for Washington, where he oversaw the firings of Jan. 6 prosecutors and demoted others and opened an investigation into the office’s handling of the Capitol riot investigation.
“If Mr. Martin were being put forth as a U.S. 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 Tuesday.
Martin, who had no prosecutorial experience when he took the position, had faced critical questions from senators over comments he made about a far-right Jan. 6 defendant whom the Justice Department called “an avowed white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer” and who had photographed himself in an Adolf Hitler-style mustache.
In a phone interview Thursday, Martin said that he was “honored” to be appointed and that he appreciated Trump’s words about him. Martin said the lawyers in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia were “very, very talented” and that the office deals with “incredibly complex cases every day.”
Martin said he agreed with Tillis that anyone who hits a police officer should be prosecuted, while adding that “weaponization is a problem” and that an obstruction charge that the Supreme Court found had been used too widely against Jan. 6 defendants “was really damaging to people.”
NBC News asked Martin whether his time in office has helped him dispel any of the conspiracy theories he spread about Jan. 6, 2021. One of them focused on a person Martin dubbed “Mr. Coffee,” a man who helped set up a gallows near the Capitol and who Martin implied was working for the FBI because video showed the man walking in the general direction of the FBI’s Washington field office on the day of the Capitol attack.
“As U.S. attorney, I didn’t investigate Mr. Coffee. As a citizen, I said isn’t it strange that the prop that has been used to iconically say something about America has never been investigated by the journalists or anyone else,” Martin said. “Mr. Coffee is something — I’m embarrassed for you guys, the journalists, that you didn’t find out who that is, because I can see a lot you know about, and I would think you could probably really, you know, you guys are good at this. You could track it down.”
Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who had placed a hold on Martin’s nomination, said Thursday that Martin was “unfit” for the position and that he had “abused his position as interim U.S. Attorney to advance a dangerous agenda that places the president’s personal interests above those of the public, tramples the rule of law, and puts our democracy at risk.”
In a statement, Schiff said Martin “opened political investigations where there was no evidence to warrant them” and “fired, demoted and forced the resignation of dedicated professionals who refused to go forward with his unethical edicts and those of others in the department.”
