Ed Martin is going fishing. On Sunday, the lawyer and Donald Trump loyalist tapped to lead a Justice Department “weaponization” group that’s targeting the president’s perceived enemies vowed to rummage around in the lives of New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in search of what he says could be potential fraud — or … something.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly targeted people who had been investigated or opposed him with thinly veiled threats of legal prosecution. Now, Martin, in his capacity as head of the so-called Weaponization Working Group at the Department of Justice, has been tasked with putting those prosecutions into action. The list of targets includes James, who led a successful mortgage fraud case against the Trump organization that resulted in a judgment of hundreds of millions of dollars; and Schiff, who served on the House Jan. 6 select committee that documented Trump’s role in fomenting insurrection in 2021.
Officials at DOJ are investigating both Schiff and James of mortgage fraud; both deny any wrongdoing and accuse the administration of political retribution. Martin, a former “Stop the Steal” organizer and attorney for Jan. 6 insurrectionists, has been assigned to oversee the cases. He’s previously said his group would be used to “shame” people it can’t charge with crimes.
In comments to Fox News this Sunday, Martin suggested his group intends to use its powers to poke around in other parts of James’ and Schiff’s lives in search of things unrelated to the mortgage allegations.
He said, “We’re gonna go to the very bottom of the facts, and if somebody did something wrong, we’re not only gonna hold them accountable, we’re also gonna look at everything else that they’ve been doing. Because when you’re a liar, you lie not just on one thing. When you’re a cheater, you cheat not just on one thing. When you’re doing corruption, you generally don’t just do it on one thing.”
As MSNBC legal analyst Kristy Greenberg noted, Martin seemed to be claiming carte blanche to pry into his target’s lives based on mere suspicion and a presumption that these people must be up to something. 🚨Ed Martin said he planned to use criminal investigations into James and Schiff to “look at everything else they've been doing.” That’s not how it works. A criminal investigation is not an excuse to pry, harass and threaten people about non-criminal conduct. This is dangerous. https://t.co/3FNNhSPHbX Martin personally showed up outside a property James owns in Brooklyn on Friday, telling a neighbor he was just “looking at houses,” according to the New York Post. Martin seems eager to follow the tradition of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who notoriously used his powers to stalk and harass civil rights figures like Martin Luther King Jr. Or perhaps he’s hoping to take a page out of the playbook of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other dictators Trump admires, who haven’t hesitated to put their political opponents in prison or conjure up “kompromat” that can be used against them.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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