Ed Martin Pledges To Use DOJ To Harass People He Can’t Actually Prosecute

The good news is that Ed Martin will not be the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. In the end, even Republicans in the Senate had too many misgivings to hand one of the most powerful roles within the Department of Justice to a January 6 wingnut. The bad news is that the same administration that invented DOGE so they could install an idiot man-child over the entire executive branch has already worked out how to invest power in their unconfirmable stooges and shunted Martin off to the — on paper — more humble role as head of the DOJ’s “Weaponization Working Group.”

Much like the Musk situation, Martin might well prove more damaging in this role.

For those who have always wondered: “What if we turned the Justice Department over to a 4Chan troll?” Martin delivers, having gone on record that, when he can’t prosecute the president’s political enemies — because they’ve actually committed no crimes — he intends to use the Department of Justice to shame critics.

Or “blackmail” if you want to be more technical about it.

You know you suck as an interim U.S. Attorney when Judge Janine replaces you and people think, “FINALLY, some professionalism!” Martin’s tenure as interim U.S. Attorney offered daily professional faceplants on the part of the wildly out of his depth activist. He pushed out the competent career prosecutors in the office, dismissed charges against a defendant he previously represented, and racked up a misconduct complaint all within a matter of weeks.

But he also used his short tenure to fire off letters to political critics, random academic institutions, and Wikipedia of all places, making an array of vague threats.

He wrote a medical journal called “CHEST” demanding to know how they select all their articles and whether or not they give equal time to competing political viewpoints over science. This is an actual CHEST article, “Clinical Efficacy of Serum Antiglycopeptidolipid Core IgA Antibody Test for Screening Nontuberculous Mycobacterial Pulmonary Disease in Bronchiectasis.” Antiglycopeptidolipid… sounds woke to me!

All of these letters were designed more for public consumption than conveying any legal weight. None of it amounted to anything… because it could not. It was all performative. Intimidation as a weapon.

He seems to be carrying that energy into his new job. From the New York Times:

“If they can be charged, we’ll charge them,” Mr. Martin told reporters before stepping down as interim U.S. attorney in Washington. “But if they can’t be charged, we will name them. And we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed.”

Martin’s epic flameout in the interim role merely offered a sneak peek at his new pledge as America’s Shaming General. He threatened criminal probes against Democratic officials and pledged the force of law to support Elon Musk’s most glaring Bad Legal Takes before and now he’ll do it from the Fox News chyron-optimized “Weaponization Working Group.” Which is technically supposed to be an “ending” weaponization initiative, but it has opted for ironic accuracy by ditching the qualifier.

Also, apparently Martin calls himself the “captain” of this working group. In case you needed more indication that this is not a serious entity. But at least he’s no longer pretending to have a job he doesn’t.

How are you going to shame the City of Chicago? They have a Pope. They’re completely insufferable right now.

Like Martin’s earlier forays into chasing public figures, the DOJ doesn’t have much of a case against any of these people. But the goal is to gin up some thinly legally shielded slander to get people frothing at the mouth about “corruption” and “treason” until a celebrity decides it’s not worth talking about politics. It’s all about chilling speech.

As the Times notes:

He added, “That’s the way things work.”

That is not the way things have worked. The cardinal rule of prosecutors is to speak only through evidence and court filings. The department is supposed to abide by the dictum of charging crimes, not people. Naming and shaming is antithetical to its mission of pursuing justice impartially. And Mr. Martin’s statement appears to violate the department’s ethical and procedural rule book, which mandates “fair, evenhanded” investigations to safeguard “the privacy and reputation interests of uncharged” investigative targets.

Of course it’s not the way things work. There’s not an episode of Law & Order where they realize they don’t have a case and decide to just issue threats or dabble in defamation to silence their target. Or maybe there is, that show’s been on a long time. But there shouldn’t be. Prosecutors have ethical obligations to stick within the justice system. We have juries and judges and parties represented by independent counsel to check prosecutorial excess, but that only works because we all agree the prosecutors have to stay in that lane.

If prosecutors become unmoored from the limitations of statutes and courts, it gets real ugly out there.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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