Copyright Cable News Network
Failing to win Senate approval as US Attorney for Washington, DC, has made Ed Martin a more formidable force inside the Trump Justice Department. After three chaotic months as interim US attorney earlier this year, Justice Department officials placed Martin in the department’s headquarters in a traditionally more supervised position. Unconfirmable and intent on rewriting the consequences of the January 6 prosecutions, Martin was, as one Trump ally said, being put under more “adult supervision.” That move, though, didn’t appear to hold him back. Martin now wields a surprising amount of political power and four titles: Associate Deputy Attorney General, Pardon Attorney, director of the Weaponization Working Group and Special Attorney for Mortgage Fraud. He’s also become the chief enforcer of using the Justice Department to exact President Donald Trump’s personal agenda — including by playing a role behind the scenes in the recent indictments of Trump foes James Comey and Letitia James, delving into so-called “weaponization” within the federal government and Biden-era pardons, and continuing to bear down on others Trump wants to see investigated. On Monday, Martin told the Republican-led House Oversight Committee that he was working on an “ongoing investigation” of pardons and commutations during Joe Biden’s presidency. The effort, which adds fuel to Trump’s attacks of presidential clemency given to members of the House Select Committee that investigated January 6 and others before they faced charges, recasts the traditional role of a pardon attorney in the extreme. Previously the job focused on reviewing and making recommendations to the president after prisoners petitioned for clemency. Under Martin, it’s become a much more active, politicized approach, where he is now critiquing past presidents’ clemency, a Constitutional power that has few limitations. “My ongoing investigation has revealed abuses of the pardon and commutation process by political actors in the Biden Administration. The use of AutoPen at the direction of staff and perhaps others is troubling,” Martin wrote to committee chairman James Comer, according to an email to obtained by CNN’s Jake Tapper. The Justice Department has previously said a president’s use of an autopen is legally sound. Martin’s influence also has become evident in cases where career prosecutors have balked at charging Trump political opponents and which his bosses, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, had reservations about before bringing. In recent weeks, prosecutions of Comey and James have moved ahead over the protests of career prosecutors and even some Trump political appointees. Firings and resignations by experienced prosecutors have followed, and Martin has been in close contact with Lindsey Halligan, whom Trump placed as the lead US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, who initiated those indictments, sources tell CNN. More recently, Martin has turned his focus toward building his connections to other US Attorneys’ Offices, including in Atlanta, St. Louis and upstate New York, according to sources familiar with Martin’s efforts. Some of that effort may include known probes around Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor whom Trump has tried to fire, on mortgage fraud allegations. “Ed Martin is one of the most dangerous people in the Justice Department. He’s not a serious lawyer, but he has serious power,” said Liz Oyer, a former career Justice Department official who preceded Martin as pardon attorney. “He seemingly has the power to open criminal investigations, which is serious business. Being subject to a criminal investigation can ruin someone’s life.” Oyer noted that investigating Trump’s political opponents and holding the pardon post gives Martin especially unusual influence — as a political force who can both punish Trump’s enemies and reward his friends. His willingness to use the Justice Department to advance MAGA movement politics stands in contrast with the Justice Department norms since the Richard Nixon era. Reforms after the Watergate crisis led to a tradition under Republican and Democratic administrations to distance prosecution decisions from the White House. Even in the first Trump administration, attorneys general generally enforced rules limiting contact between White House officials and Justice Department employees. Martin has no such qualms and is known to maintain regular contact with White House officials, according to people briefed on the matter. A Missouri Republican, Martin burnished his MAGA credentials following the 2021 Capital attack, becoming a vocal defender of Trump vote fraud claims in the 2020 election and of January 6 rioters — some of whom he represented as an attorney. As part of his so-called weaponization probe, Martin brought onto his staff former FBI agent Jared Wise, who was prosecuted for allegedly urging January 6 rioters to attack law enforcement officers, calling the officers “Nazis” and the “Gestapo.” Martin maintains at least two offices at the Justice Department – one in a complex north of the US Capitol where the pardon attorney office is located, the other inside the Justice Department headquarters. His active social media presence including a Substack blog and his support for January 6 rioters caused wary Senate Republicans to tank his nomination to lead the federal prosecutors’ office in Washington, DC, which prosecuted more than 1,000 January 6 riot defendants, in May. But Martin appears undaunted despite receiving cautions from top Justice officials about some of his public comments. In recent weeks, Martin has been posting nearly every day on social media photos of people he meets with, including right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the comedian Russel Brand, US Attorneys from outside of DC, and Trump supporters in politics from around the country. He also has been lobbying prosecutors in Maryland to pursue mortgage fraud allegations around Democratic California Sen. Adam Schiff, another one of Trump’s political opponents, who helped lead congressional investigations of him, sources say. The Justice Department and Martin didn’t comment for this story. Martin sought to flex his influence earlier this month as former New York Rep. George Santos won a sentence commutation from the president, after serving in a minimal-security federal prison camp only three months of his seven-year sentence for fraud. Santos for months had sought the help of intermediaries to get Trump’s attention for a pardon and Martin tried to help behind the scenes, according to a person briefed on the matter. After the president granted the commutation, Martin said in a post on X: “I was honored as U.S. Pardon Attorney to have played a small role” in the clemency grant, and he thanks the president for “making clemency great again.” “Martin has made it known that his intent with pardons is to use them to benefit people with MAGA affiliations,” Oyer said. “For Martin to have both of those roles,” of pardon attorney and prosecutor, “it shows how this department is operating a system of both punishment and reward.” Catching Trump’s attention Some of Martin’s recent campaigns have been channeled into the president’s own social media feed. For instance, with Martin as the mortgage fraud investigator, Trump lashed out at Bondi, demanding in a remarkable Truth Social post for the prosecution of his political enemies. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” Blanche has sought to bring a measure of control to Martin’s efforts, according to people briefed on the matter. The tension between Blanche and Martin spilled out into the public in late September, after Martin sent a letter to an FBI agent who had responded to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. Martin, in his letter, disclosed what he said was an investigation of the agent, after the agent had testified about being smeared in a conspiracy theory pushed by Jones, who gained notoriety with claims that the Sand Hook attack was staged by the FBI. The agent was awarded nearly $100 million in a case against Jones. Jones made Martin’s letter public, demanding responses from the FBI agent, until Blanche demanded Martin retract his requests. Martin then wrote to the agent’s lawyer, “I write to inform you that there is no investigation of you or your client. Because of this, I hereby withdraw my request for information from you or your former client.” An ally in Virginia But Martin’s power has accrued alongside the arrival of another former Trump adviser, Halligan, who Trump installed to run the powerful US Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, Virginia, in late September. While career prosecutors and top Justice officials viewed cases against Comey and James to be duds, Halligan managed to deliver the two indictments Trump publicly called for. Halligan replaced Erik Seibert after attorneys in the office objected to charging Comey with lying to Congress. Both Comey and James have pleaded not guilty and are challenging the prosecutors’ handling of the cases. In the James investigation before she was charged, Martin took several steps that fall outside the norms of prosecutorial conduct. Martin this summer sent a letter to James’ attorney, Abbe Lowell, suggesting that James should resign as attorney general. And he paid a visit to James’ Brooklyn home in August, posing for photos outside it wearing a long trench coat, accompanied by an assistant who acts as an unofficial spokesperson, unusual for a person in Martin’s position to have at the Justice Department. “We’re going to go to the very bottom of the facts, and if somebody did something wrong, we’re not only going to hold them accountable. We’re also going to look at everything else that they’ve been doing. Because when you’re a liar, you lie not just on one thing,” Martin said on Fox News in August when asked about the mortgage investigations. Some senior DOJ officials were frustrated by the stunt, one source said, as they had no idea Martin would be traveling to New York. Attention in Maryland Apparently emboldened by the charging successes in Virginia, Martin’s fast-moving advocacy turned in recent weeks to Maryland’s US Attorney’s Office. The office’s US Attorney Kelly Hayes, a respected career prosecutor who worked for years out of Greenbelt, recently secured the indictment of former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, another Trump political foe. Prosecutors accuse Bolton of keeping national security secrets in unsecured personal accounts and on printed paper after he left the government. Hayes’ approach, and the Bolton case itself, are viewed more seriously than the indictments and investigations of other political figures who have faced charges at Trump’s urging, several sources familiar with the case and the office have told CNN. But the Maryland office still has a prosecutor looking into the financial records of Schiff, another Trump target, and Martin continues to push Hayes to bring an indictment against him. Last week after it became known Hayes’ team had doubts about the case, sources said the investigation was continuing and the Deputy Attorney General’s office may be working with Hayes, in a vote of confidence for the US Attorney in a precarious moment. Yet because of Martin’s pushes for prosecution in Maryland and Virginia, the districts are now buzzing with speculation Martin could end up as a prosecutor in one of the offices.
