A couple of weeks ago, in a middle-of-the-night missive published to his social media platform, Donald Trump wrote that he was unilaterally invalidating Joe Biden’s pardons for Jan. 6 committee members.
The assertion — without precedent in American history — was apparently based in part on the Republican’s belief that his Democratic predecessor suffered from mental deterioration to such a horrific degree that he wasn’t aware of his own policies and preferences.
In keeping with his usual m.o., the incumbent president offered no evidence to substantiate any of his claims. What’s more, my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained in a great piece that Trump’s pitch has no real basis in law.
What we did not know until this week, however, is that a Trump-aligned prosecutor decided to take all of this rather seriously. The New York Times reported:
Ed Martin, the ardent Trump loyalist serving as interim U.S. attorney in Washington, is pursuing an inquiry into whether former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was competent to pardon his family members and others during his final days in office. The inquiry, which includes previously unreported letters to Mr. Biden’s family and former White House staff members, uses the levers of federal law enforcement to try to harass Mr. Biden’s family and allies and undermine his decisions as president, while scoring political points with President Trump.
The Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added that the Republican lawyer has sent “provocative” correspondence to the former president’s aides and relatives, in addition to sending letters to some of the beneficiaries of Biden’s pardons.
The efforts, the Times added, “highlight Mr. Martin’s hands-on approach and willingness to use one of the most important U.S. attorneys’ offices in the country to seek retribution against Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies.”
Time will tell what, if anything, comes of this bizarre effort, but when it comes to the hyper-partisan prosecutor and his apparent willingness to use his office as a political tool, what’s striking is how unsurprising his Biden-related effort is.
Indeed, the former “Stop the Steal” organizer’s interest in Biden dovetails with a lengthy series of similar efforts launched by the Republican lawyer, who has no prosecutorial experience.
Martin’s “greatest hits” package features misguided fights with the dean of Georgetown University’s law school, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California and Democratic Rep. Eugene Vindman of Virginia. During his brief tenure, Martin has also:
- demoted multiple senior officials involved in Jan. 6 insurrection cases;
- falsely described himself as one of the president’s lawyers;
- weighed in on a civil case involving the White House, which had literally nothing to do with his office;
- intervened in a dubious Environmental Protection Agency investigation;
- made a dubious decision in the case involving Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida;
- launched the wildly unnecessary “Operation Whirlwind”;
- also launched the wildly unnecessary “Project 1512” initiative;
- also launched a wildly unnecessary “election accountability” unit;
- made a creepy public vow to wield his prosecutorial powers against those who get in Elon Musk’s way;
- engaged in brazen conflict of interest in a Jan. 6 case, in which he effectively took both sides of a criminal case;
- and kicked off a radically unnecessary investigation into Jack Smith and a law firm that gave the former special counsel pro bono legal services.
In a piece for New York magazine, Elie Honig recently described the lawyer as Trump’s “dangerous and ridiculous prosecutor.” Martin seems to be going out of his way to prove his many critics right.
What’s more, 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.
Trump has nevertheless nominated Martin to be the permanent U.S. attorney in the nation’s capital — one of the nation’s largest prosecutorial offices — though Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California this week placed a procedural hold on the nomination. Watch this space.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
