It might seem like ages ago, but about a month after Election Day 2024, Donald Trump had a specific employment plan in mind for Ed Martin: The longtime Republican operative was poised to serve as the White House Office of Management and Budget’s chief of staff.
At the time, this was a controversial move, given Martin’s record as a far-right anti-abortion activist, organizer for the misguided “Stop the Steal” movement and lawyer representing Jan. 6 criminals. But Trump made the call anyway.
It wasn’t long, however, before Martin took on even greater responsibilities. A month after being chosen for the OMB role, Martin learned that Trump had also tapped him to serve as the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. And a month after that, the president has apparently decided that the word “interim” should be removed from Martin’s title. NBC News reported:
President Donald Trump has nominated the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — a “Stop the Steal” organizer who advocated for Jan. 6 defendants — to be the district’s top prosecutor on a permanent basis.
Announcing the nomination by way of his social media platform, the president described Martin as “highly respected” — a phrase Trump has long used to refer to people who agree with him — adding that during Martin’s tenure as the interim U.S. Attorney in the nation’s capital, the Republican lawyer “has been doing a great job … fighting tirelessly to restore Law and Order.”
As it happens, that’s not quite how I would describe Martin’s work over the last four weeks. As the interim head of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., the former “Stop the Steal” organizer:
Or put another way, when the president said Martin “has been doing a great job,” perhaps he was grading on an overly generous curve. For the record, we’re talking about a Republican who didn’t just endorse Trump’s anti-election conspiracy theories after his 2020 defeat. Rather, Martin called on “die-hard true Americans” to work until their “last breath” to “stop the steal” in a speech at the U.S. Capitol on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. In a normal administration, he might struggle to set foot in Main Justice. In this administration, this is the lawyer/activist Trump now wants to lead one of the nation’s most important prosecutorial offices. This is a Senate-confirmed position, and Martin’s confirmation hearing is bound to be interesting. Watch this space.
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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