Amid his flurry of first moves as president, Donald Trump tapped a vehement supporter of Jan. 6 rioters, right-wing activist Ed Martin, to serve as Washington, D.C.’s interim government prosecutor, NBC News reports.
Unlike other regions where district attorneys are elected, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., handles both local and federal cases, and the U.S. attorney is handpicked by the president.
The announcement, made on the day Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters, means the top lawyer in Washington — a place Republicans have tried to portray as crime-ridden because of liberal policies — will be a vocal advocate of the pro-Trump insurrectionists who sought to overturn the 2020 election.
NBC News’ Ryan Reilly noted that Martin is a member of an advocacy group for Jan. 6 defendants that “held fundraisers at Donald Trump’s properties, including events where Trump spoke.” And he laid out what Martin was up to himself on Jan. 6:
Martin was a prominent member of the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement. In a speech at the Capitol on Jan. 5, 2021, he called on ‘die-hard true Americans’ to work until their ‘last breath’ to ‘stop the steal.’ On Jan. 6, Martin tweeted that he was ‘at the Capitol’ and said the crowd was rowdy ‘but nothing out of hand,’ and he then tweeted, ‘Like Mardi Gras in DC today: love, faith and joy.’ At the time of Martin’s tweet, rioters had breached the building and Ashli Babbitt had been shot; on the other side of the Capitol, a Jan. 6 rioter would soon drive a stun gun into an officer’s neck during the brutal battle at the lower west tunnel.
CNN reported in December that Martin, who staunchly opposes abortion rights, has discussed the idea of jailing women who receive abortions and doctors who provide them.
With Republicans controlling virtually all of the levers of power in Washington, Martin’s arrival could signal a troubling shift in the federal government’s posture toward the city, which Trump vowed to “take over” if elected president.
As with other cities with large Black populations, Republicans have worked for years to impose their political will on Washington, despite its liberal leanings. During the Biden administration, conservatives succeeded in pushing the administration to wield its power over the district by weakening local criminal justice reforms that were authorized after the civil rights protests in the summer of 2020.
Choosing a supporter of Jan. 6 insurrectionists to prosecute crime in the very district where the assault on the Capitol took place is a clear warning sign to Washington residents of how they might expect the law to be implemented for the next four years.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.