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On March 10, the Senate Judiciary Committee received president Donald Trump’s nomination of Edward Martin Jr. to be the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, one of the most important federal prosecutorial jobs in the country. Martin currently has a temporary appointment for that job, and in that capacity he has proved himself manifestly unqualified.
Martin’s nomination tests how much (if any) life is left in the Senate’s important constitutional role in ensuring adherence to the rule of law through its confirmation process. U.S. attorney nominees typically do not get hearings; they are typically considered and advanced by the Senate Judiciary Committee by voice vote. But some nominations fail because the Judiciary Committee does not advance them.
Martin even in his temporary role has proven to be the most openly politicizing and weaponizing figure in the most politicized and weaponizing department in our history. If the Senate confirms him, it will be directly responsible for his foreseeably abusive actions as U.S. attorney.
The Senate’s Check
The framers saw Senate confirmation as a check on the president appointing unfit characters to judicial or executive office. James Madison, speaking of judicial nominations, stated that presidential appointments followed by Senate confirmations would “unite the advantage of responsibility in the Executive, with the security afforded in the second branch against any incautious or corrupt nomination.”
Alexander Hamilton concurred. He argued that the “necessity of [Senate] concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation” and “would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters.” The possibility of Senate rejection, he thought, would deter a president from nominating candidates who possessed “insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments” of the president’s pleasure. He added that the Senate check “would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration.”
Bondi’s Justice Department
Hamilton’s prediction about the Senate’s impact has not been working out so well in Trump 2.0. The president has been nominating, and the Senate has been confirming, one pliant and obsequious instrument of the president’s pleasure after another. This is nowhere more true than in appointments to the Department of Justice. To understand Martin’s danger, it is important to understand how the department in which he would serve as a confirmed official has been operating in Trump 2.0.
At Attorney General Pam Bondi’s swearing-in ceremony, she pledged to “not let [Trump] down” and to “make [him] proud.” In her introduction of President Trump before his speech in the Great Hall at the Justice Department, she called Trump “the greatest president in the history of our country” and proclaimed that the department was “so proud to work at [his] directive” and would “never stop fighting for” Trump. She has portrayed Justice Department attorneys as the president’s lawyers.
Bondi signaled fierce loyalty to Trump at her confirmation hearing but nonetheless pledged that, “If confirmed, I will fight every day to restore confidence and integrity to the Department of Justice and each of its components. The partisanship, the weaponization, will be gone. America will have one tier of justice for all.”
In office Bondi has done precisely the opposite—aggressively so. She has engaged in a range of politicizing actions, including dropping the Eric Adams prosecution, withdrawing charges against and pulling back from investigations of other Trump-allied current or former officials, halting prosecution of a Trump family crypto partner, and firing or demoting career attorneys who worked on cases involving the president.
She established a “Weaponization Working Group” that is going after the president’s perceived enemies and must report on its progress to the White House quarterly. (Martin is a member of the group.) The weaponization group is implementing the president’s core philosophy: “If they screw you, screw them back ten times as hard.” The goal may be to eliminate future weaponization against Trump interests; but the tactics are weaponization on a scale never before imagined.
At the same time, Bondi, the chief legal officer of the executive branch after Trump, is stewarding the rule of law in a disastrous fashion. She has facilitated the elimination of DOJ independence from the White House, despite pledges to the contrary. Her lawyers have been unprepared in court and shown courts unprecedented disrespect. They have sought to defend the president’s plainly lawless extortionate actions against law firms, among other lawless executive actions.
Bondi and her lawyers are not restoring confidence and integrity in the department—they are weakening them. Bondi had signaled a pro-Trump agenda during her confirmation process, but now we know the scale on which she is using the department to do the president’s political and personal bidding. The Senate’s enabling of these actions in confirming Bondi is the proper background to assess Martin’s nomination.
Martin’s Record
Martin had a long career in Missouri politics but has no prior prosecutorial experience. He popped up on the D.C. radar screen when he tweeted at 2:53 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, that he was “at the Capitol right now” and added that there was a “[r]owdy crowd but nothing out of hand.”
Martin later represented Jan. 6 defendants. Yet after his appointment as interim U.S. attorney on Jan. 20, 2025, he dismissed charges against his own client, thus serving simultaneously as prosecutor and defense counsel in probable violation of his ethical duties.
Martin’s other abusive activities as acting U.S. attorney are well known. Here is a partial list:
He fired career prosecutors involved in Jan. 6 cases.
He threatened to “chase … to the end of the Earth” not just people who had acted unlawfully, but “simply unethically”—a threat that is beyond his authority to make and is itself unethical.
He has made “a practice of sending threatening letters announcing vague ‘inquiries’ into figures he feels have crossed Trump in some way, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.).”
He is groundlessly using his office to question whether president Biden issued lawful pardons in his final days in office.
He threatened Georgetown Law School over its DEI program without citing any legal principles.
He conceives of his role as U.S. attorney primarily as one of “Trump’s lawyers” fighting to “protect his leadership,” as he made clear in connection with the case brought against the government by the Associated Press.
He has engaged in other conduct unbecoming of a federal prosecutor on social media.
It is unclear whether Martin acted in these instances with pure political goals; or whether he does not understand the role of a U.S. attorney; or whether he simply cannot meet basic professional standards. Any of these explanations is disqualifying; all three could be true.
The Jackson Standard
Robert Jackson’s speech on the power and danger of the federal prosecutor is overused, but I cannot resist citing it here because it is so apt in Martin’s case.
The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous. He can have citizens investigated and, if he is that kind of person, he can have this done to the tune of public statements and veiled or unveiled intimations. Or the prosecutor may choose a more subtle course and simply have a citizen's friends interviewed. The prosecutor can order arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret session, and on the basis of his one-sided presentation of the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for trial. He may dismiss the case before trial, in which case the defense never has a chance to be heard. Or he may go on with a public trial. If he obtains a conviction, the prosecutor can still make recommendations as to sentence, as to whether the prisoner should get probation or a suspended sentence, and after he is put away, as to whether he is a fit subject for parole. While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.
I cannot think of any U.S. attorney nominee in my lifetime who embodies these worries more, and who is more likely to abuse federal prosecutorial power, than Edward Martin. And this wolf comes as a wolf. Martin has wielded prosecutorial power recklessly and openly while serving in a temporary role, during his Senate audition period; his actions will surely grow much more menacing if he is confirmed.
Justice Jackson emphasized the importance of Senate consent for federal prosecutors.
Because of this immense power to strike at citizens, not with mere individual strength, but with all the force of government itself, the post of federal district attorney from the very beginning has been safeguarded by presidential appointment, requiring confirmation of the senate of the United States. You are thus required to win an expression of confidence in your character by both the legislative and the executive branches of the government before assuming the responsibilities of a federal prosecutor.
The Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have asked for Martin to testify. This is an unusual but in context reasonable request. The committee has already indicated it will decline. Martin would not do well answering basic questions about law and the proper role of a U.S. attorney, much less in defending his behavior to date. Any hearing for Martin, in other words, would put additional pressure on Republicans to reject the nomination or expose their fecklessness if they do not.
And yet if the Senate Judiciary Committee approves the nomination without a hearing, and the full Senate confirms Martin, the Senate would be “expressi[ng] … confidence in [Martin’s] character” even though he has proven himself wholly unsuited to the U.S. attorney role. Every senator who votes for Martin will be on the hook for his clearly predictable abuses of federal prosecutorial power.
And don’t get me started on what a Martin confirmation would imply about Judiciary Committee “oversight” of the Department of Justice over the next four years.