People Power United joins coalition efforts to express concerns about the nomination of Edward R. Martin, Jr. to serve as the interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia
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People Power United joins coalition efforts to express concerns about the nomination of Edward R. Martin, Jr. to serve as the interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia. Shout out to Demand Progress for leading this effort. Here is the letter sent on behalf of our membership:
April 2, 2025
The Honorable Milton C. Lee, Jr. The Honorable Anna Blackburne-Rigsby Chief Judge Chief Judge
Superior Court of the District of Columbia District of Columbia Court of Appeals 500 Indiana Avenue N.W. 430 E Street N.W., Room 115 Washington, D.C. 20001 Washington, D.C. 20001
The Honorable James E. Boasberg The Honorable Sri Srinivasan Chief Judge Chief Judge
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit 333 Constitution Avenue N.W. 333 Constitution Avenue N.W. Washington, D.C. 20001 Washington, D.C. 20001
CC: Office of Disciplinary Counsel, District of Columbia Court of Appeals U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General
All Members of the U.S. Senate
Dear Chief Judges Lee, Blackburne-Rigsby, Boasberg, and Srinivasan:
The undersigned civil society organizations write to share our strong concerns about Edward R. Martin, Jr., the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia who was recently nominated by President Trump to serve permanently in the role.
As you know, Martin practices in your respective courts as the chief federal prosecutor and the principal litigator for the United States in the nation’s capital. By virtue of his position, Martin is also the top supervising attorney for other federal prosecutors in the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Also, the federal statute governing U.S. Attorney vacancies, 28 U.S.C. 546, states that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia shall choose Martin’s replacement if his nomination is not confirmed by the U.S. Senate within 120 days of his interim appointment, i.e., on or about May 20, 2025. For these reasons, and their enormous implications for the American people, it is crucial for you to be aware of the serious allegations of ethical violations by Martin that are outlined in formal complaints pending with the D.C. Bar and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). These complaints are attached, and the concerns they raise are briefly described in this letter.
To our knowledge, the publicly-disclosed formal ethics complaints filed against Martin include the following:
● A letter to the D.C. Bar’s Office of the Disciplinary Counsel submitted on February 6, 2025 by The 65 Project, a nonprofit organization.1
1 Attached as Exhibit A: Bar Complaint Against Edward Martin, The 65 Project (Feb. 6, 2025), https://the65project.com/bar-complaint-against-edward-martin/.
● A letter to the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility submitted on February 8, 2025 by ethics experts.2
● A letter to the U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General submitted on February 12, 2025 by Members of Congress who are also former DOJ employees.3
● A letter to the D.C. Bar’s Office of the Disciplinary Counsel submitted on March 6, 2025 by U.S. Senators.4
● A letter to the U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General submitted on March 12, 2025 submitted by Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee.5
As these formal complaints explain in detail, Martin, who refers to his office as “President Trumps’ lawyers” [sic], has repeatedly threatened to investigate and prosecute his political opponents for exercising their First Amendment rights to criticize and protest President Trump and Elon Musk — even in the absence of any evidence of criminal violations and even against those whose statements are additionally protected by the U.S. Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause. The ethics complaints further argue that Martin has frequently done so while mistaking basic facts at issue and botching the legal basics that any attorney serving in such an important public position should minimally know.
Martin’s personal and professional conflicts of interest, as well as his willful disregard for the rules of professional conduct specifically for prosecutors, further cast his official actions as a U.S. Attorney in a deeply troubling light. According to the formal complaint letters, Martin’s actions that warrant investigation by disciplinary authorities include his often incendiary public comments about matters under investigation or outside his purview; allegations of retaliation against career prosecutors under his supervision for doing their jobs against President Trump’s political wishes; reports that at least one prosecutor he formerly supervised resigned in protest rather than obey what she alleges were improper orders to pursue a baseless criminal investigation; and his official act as a U.S. Attorney in dismissing a criminal case in which he represented the defendant.
2 Attached as Exhibit B: Richard W. Painter, Norman Eisen, Virginia Canter, and Cassandra Burke Robertson, Letter to DOJ OPR Re: Acting U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin’s Possible Conflicts of Interest (Feb. 8, 2025), https://statedemocracydefenders.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/letter-to-doj-020625.pdf. 3 Attached as Exhibit C: Rep. Dan Goldman et. al, Letter To DOJ Inspector General Horowitz From Members of Congress (Feb. 12, 2025), https://goldman.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/goldman.house.gov/files/evo-media document/2.12.25_Letter%20from%20from%20Rep.%20Goldman%2C%20et%20al.%2C%20to%20DOJ%20IG%2 0Horowitz.pdf.
4 Attached as Exhibit D: Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Request for Disciplinary Investigation of Edward Robert Martin, Jr. (Mar. 6, 2025), https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2025-03- 06%20SJC%20Bar%20Complaint%20re%20Martin.pdf.
5 Attached as Exhibit E: House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, Letter To DOJ Inspector General Horowitz Requesting Investigation (Mar. 12, 2025), https://democrats
judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2025-03-12_raskin_to_horowitz_doj-oig_re_martin.pdf.
In addition, legal ethics scholars,6former prosecutors,7current and former government officials,8 and commentators across the ideological spectrum9have publicly voiced their serious concerns about Martin’s conduct as the interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. Their strong criticisms include not
just questions raised about his adherence to the ethical and professional obligations binding all attorneys, but also his prosecutorial acts and decisions potentially compromising the efficacy and integrity of the federal government’s litigation proceedings.
More recently, news reporting indicated that Martin is considering rewriting rules for the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C. to withhold police misconduct information from defense attorneys and judges before police officers testify. However, as a prosecutor in Martin’s office observed, “no one is going to risk losing their bar license for not handing over evidence about a witness, which the [D.C.] Court of Appeals has instructed us to do in this jurisdiction for decades,” while a legal scholar flagged that “what Ed Martin is setting up is not only a violation of disclosure rules and law, but he is all but begging for cases to be dismissed or reversed once that
6 See, e.g., Brad Heath, Sarah N. Lynch, and Andrew Goudsward, Top Trump prosecutor in DC dropped federal case against Capitol rioter he represented, Reuters (Feb. 5, 2025), https://www.reuters.com/world/us/top-trump prosecutor-dc-who-was-present-capitol-riot-dropped-us-case-against-2025-02-05/ (quoting Prof. Stephen Gillers stating “I find it alarming that a lawyer who represented a client in private practice and who is now a public official
would be using the powers of the new office for the benefit of his former private client”). 7 See, e.g., Keith L. Alexander and Spencer S. Hsu, U.S. attorney in D.C. considers withholding police misconduct information, Wash. Post (Mar. 25, 2025), https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/03/25/martin-trump prosecutors-misconduct-violations/ (quoting former assistant U.S. attorney Glenn Kirschner stating “You can’t tell me to be unethical and put my bar license on the line and follow your unethical directives”); Brendan Ballou, U.S. Attorney Ed Martin May Have Already Messed Up Trump’s Retribution Tour, Slate (Feb. 20, 2025), https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/ed-martin-musk-trump-revenge-prosecutions-fail.html (noting Martin’s behavior “risks having any subsequent conviction dismissed” and his “unethical or illegal schemes”); Elie Honig, America’s Most Dangerous (and Ridiculous) Prosecutor, New York Magazine (Feb. 27, 2025), https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ed-martin-trumps-dangerous-and-ridiculous-pet-prosecutor.html; Ashley Oliver, Ed Martin’s unusual activity jeopardizes nomination to lead DC office, Wash. Examiner (Feb. 25, 2025), https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/3329027/ed-martin-unusual-activity-jeopardizes-nomination lead-d-c-office/ (quoting former U.S. Attorney John Fishwick stating Martin is “scrolling X, scrolling and looking for things that he thinks has crossed the line, and he’s firing off a letter, when a real investigation is not done that way”; former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade stating that some of Martin’s activity has been “highly irregular and highly inappropriate” while noting it is “the policy of the Department of Justice to neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation”; and former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou commenting on Martin’s statements that “If you add more information … you risk the defense being able to argue that they were selectively prosecuted or that a jury pool was tainted and can’t render a fair verdict”).
8 See, e.g., Ashley Oliver, Ed Martin’s unusual activity jeopardizes nomination to lead DC office, Wash. Examiner (Feb. 25, 2025), https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/3329027/ed-martin-unusual-activity jeopardizes-nomination-lead-d-c-office/ (quoting Republican Sen. Thom Tillis responding to Martin’s actions by stating “I want people to go into the FBI and the DOJ and not be guilty of the very thing that they’ve criticized their predecessors for” and Republican former Arizona county recorder Stephen Richer stating “I guess this is the non politicization of the law enforcement?”).
9 See, e.g., Joe Lancaster, Trump Is Weaponizing the DOJ Just Like He Accused Democrats of Doing, Reason (Mar. 7, 2025), https://reason.com/2025/03/07/trump-is-weaponizing-the-doj-just-like-he-accused-democrats-of-doing/ (“Martin has busied himself with other abuses of his considerable power” and “less than two months back in office, Trump's appointees have used the levers of federal power for his benefit in a manner that seems every bit as corrupt as the process Trump criticized on the campaign trail”); Dan Friedman and Amanda Moore, Ed Martin Is Trampling the Rule of Law. And He Won’t Shut Up About It., Mother Jones (Mar. 24, 2025),
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/03/ed-martin-washingting-dc-us-attorney-january-6-trump/.
information is later disclosed.”10 The news report also quotes a “D.C.-based judge, speaking on the condition of anonymity” who states that “Martin ‘is obviously not familiar with how judges in the District of Columbia work. But he is about to find out. We follow case law.’” Furthermore, because Martin is the top supervisor in the D.C. Office of the U.S. Attorney, one prosecutor warned that “every prosecutor within the office is going to be facing ethical dilemmas and whether to quit — every day.”11
As an earlier letter12 signed by former Assistant United States Attorneys who served in Republican and Democratic administrations described Martin:
The nominee has already shown us what he will do. He has “acted” as United States Attorney for many weeks now. In his “tryout” phase, he has butchered the position, effectively destroying it as a vehicle by which to pursue justice and turning it into a
political arm of the current administration. He has done these things in ways that typify authoritarian and indeed totalitarian regimes of the most notorious sort.
These serious allegations surrounding Martin’s tenure warrant your attention because he will be pursuing in his official capacity a wide variety of criminal and civil proceedings in your respective courts, with potentially profound consequences for people’s constitutional rights and civil liberties and the American public’s trust in our judicial system. However, Martin has already shown his contempt for what the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia itself explains is the solemn duty of that office-holder in the nation’s capital13:
The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor -- indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.
10 Keith L. Alexander and Spencer S. Hsu, U.S. attorney in D.C. considers withholding police misconduct information, Wash. Post (Mar. 25, 2025), https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/03/25/martin-trump prosecutors-misconduct-violations/.
11 Id.
12 Former Assistant United States Attorneys, A Statement of Conscience and Principle By Those Who Have Served as Assistant United States Attorneys For the District of Columbia Over the Past Fifty Years Statement (accessed April 1, 2025), https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/2ffee413-488d-49cc-9eac-93676f80aa19.pdf. 13 Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, About Us (accessed Feb. 11, 2025) (quoting Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88 (1935)), https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/about-us.
If and when Martin’s conduct as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia comes into question before your respective courts, we ask you to keep his alarming pattern of behavior in mind and to take appropriate action using your authority to impose judicial sanctions,14 including and up to disbarment.
Thank you for your attention to these important matters, and please let us know if we can provide any further information.
Sincerely,
Accountable.US/Accountable.NOW
Demand Progress
Equality California
Fourth Branch Action
Freedom of the Press Foundation
National Press Photographers Association
People Power United
Radio Television Digital News Association
RootsAction
The Media and Democracy Project
The Workers Circle
Whistleblower & Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts
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