As this week got underway, a weird conspiracy theory, which was made up out of whole cloth, started making the rounds in far-right circles. The details were a little murky — the details of weird conspiracy theory usually are — but the public was apparently supposed to believe that former Obama administration officials and some congressional Democrats quietly sabotaged a minerals deal between the White House and Ukraine.
This would’ve been easy to overlook, were it not for one unsettling detail: Ed Martin, the acting U.S. attorney in the nation’s capital, apparently took it seriously. Indeed, the hyper-partisan prosecutor and former “Stop the Steal” organizer, even made veiled threats related to the made-up allegations.
As this week neared its end, the controversial prosecutor was finding new ways to tarnish his already dismal reputation. The Washington Post reported:
Interim D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin demanded that the dean of Georgetown Law School end all diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the school, asserting in a letter that his office will not consider hiring anyone affiliated with a university that utilizes DEI. The warning was delivered in a letter dated Feb. 17 to William M. Treanor, a constitutional law scholar and one of the longest-serving deans of the largest law school in the nation’s capital.
Ordinarily, federal prosecutors focus their time on matters of law enforcement, since that is their job, but in this instance, Martin decided to use his office to lean on Georgetown — a private university.
In his correspondence, the acting U.S. attorney told the dean of Georgetown Law School that its graduates would be locked out of his office if the university teaches or utilizes DEI — which went undefined in the letter.
According to the Post’s report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, Martin added two questions: “First, have you eliminated all DEI from your school and its curriculum? Second, if DEI is found in your courses or teaching in any way, will you move swiftly to remove it?”
He reportedly went on to explain that he’d “begun an inquiry” into the school’s practices.
It was a bizarre attack on academic freedom, targeting a private Catholic institution for reasons unknown. Why Martin believes he’s positioned to make demands of Georgetown Law about how it teaches students about inclusivity was also unclear.
The absurd circumstances did, however, offer the prosecutor’s target an opportunity to offer a reminder about facts Martin ought to understand. NBC News reported:
The dean of Georgetown Law wrote in a letter today that the conservative activist whom Trump named as Washington’s top federal prosecutor had launched “an attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution” by demanding explanations about Georgetown’s DEI policies.
William M. Treanor, the dean and executive vice president of Georgetown Law, confirmed to NBC News that he wrote to Martin, explaining that the acting U.S. attorney’s outreach “challenges Georgetown’s ability to define our mission as an educational institution” and violated “a bedrock principle of constitutional law.”
Treanor also wrote that the principle that “sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding” was “a moral and educational imperative” that “defines our mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution.” The First Amendment, Treanor added, “guarantees that the government cannot direct what Georgetown and its faculty teach and how to teach it,” noting that the Supreme Court “has continually affirmed that among the freedoms central to a university’s First Amendment rights are its abilities to determine, on academic grounds, who may teach, what to teach, and how to teach it.” Martin, Treanor went on to explain, was threatening to deny students and graduates of Georgetown opportunities until Martin approved its curriculum, and he said the school looked forward to confirming that applicants for employment would receive “full and fair consideration” in the future, adding that the Constitution was clearly on Georgetown’s side. “Given the First Amendment’s protection of a university’s freedom to determine its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind this threat is clear, as is the attack on the University’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution,” Treanor concluded. The New York Times reported that Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have asked the D.C. Bar’s disciplinary counsel to investigate Martin, arguing that the Trump-appointed Republican has “abused” his prosecutorial powers. If members of the bar association agree to open such an inquiry, they’ll have an overwhelming amount of evidence to review.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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