Trump Withdraws U.S. Attorney Nominee, Whose Extremism Tested Limits for G.O.P. Senators

[milestogo]

Source: New York Times

Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, was breezing toward the office elevator in his signature trench coat in February when he passed a group of about 10 young prosecutors preparing to leave, framed diplomas and keepsakes in hand.

“Whoa, what’s going on here?” Mr. Martin asked with a chuckle, seemingly oblivious to who they were and where they were going, according to people with knowledge of the exchange. The lawyers were too stunned to speak. They had just been fired — part of a purge, overseen by Mr. Martin, of about two dozen prosecutors detailed during the Biden administration to prosecute the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

President Trump nominated Mr. Martin, a conservative Republican political operative from Missouri, to permanently run the U.S. attorney’s office in part because he has emerged as one of the most passionate defenders of Jan. 6 rioters, a small but vocal far-right group that wields outsize influence. Mr. Martin has, in turn, used his authority to help carry out Mr. Trump’s retribution campaign, threatening to investigate Democrats, academic institutions and critics of Elon Musk even while seeking to dismantle and delegitimize the Jan. 6 inquiry.

On Thursday, after an internal debate in the West Wing, Mr. Trump pulled his nomination, telling reporters at the White House, “We have somebody else that will be great.” Mr. Martin’s fate was sealed on Tuesday when Senator Thom Tillis, a key Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said he would not support the nomination because of Mr. Martin’s work on behalf of the rioters. That dealt a fatal blow to his path to confirmation, leaving the committee deadlocked at 11 to 11, with all 10 Democrats on the panel opposing Mr. Martin. Republican leaders have said they would not take procedural steps to force a vote on the floor.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/us/politics/ed-martin-justice-department-republicans.html

[Ocelot II]

1. Don't worry, he'll find another equally (or worse) unqualified partisan asshole.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. GOOD.

But I think the next nominee will be just as bad.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Maddow Blog-Trump says he's dropping Ed Martin's nomination amid bipartisan opposition

As a rule, Senate Republicans have rubber-stamped Donald Trump's worst nominees. As Ed Martin helped prove, there are rare exceptions.

Ed Martin's U.S. attorney nomination was cartoonishly ridiculous — and now it's dead.

Trump invested some real political capital into this absurdity, and in a sign of his growing weakness, this fiasco ends with nothing but embarrassment for him. www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-05-08T16:12:05.652Z

Ed Martin's U.S. attorney nomination was cartoonishly ridiculous — and now it's dead.

Trump invested some real political capital into this absurdity, and in a sign of his growing weakness, this fiasco ends with nothing but embarrassment for him.

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-ed-martin-nomination-us-attorney-jan-6-rcna205197

Since Donald Trump’s second inauguration, the president has sent some truly outlandish nominees to the Senate for confirmation. In a handful of instances — Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, et al. — there were a smattering of GOP “no” votes, but in nearly every instance, the Republican-led institution ended up confirming Trump’s choice, following the White House’s demands.

Ed Martin, however, proved to be a bridge too far......

That’s not what happened. The president announced Thursday afternoon that Martin's nomination is ending, and he'll choose a new nominee in the coming days.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:aunpu65mdrhwfie7ynymlzeh/post/3loobfqwzwk2a

Link to tweet

.....What Trump might not have fully appreciated was just how ridiculous Martin’s record had become. Indeed, his “greatest hits” package featured misguided and unnecessary fights with the dean of Georgetown University’s law school, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, former President Joe Biden, and Democratic Reps. Robert Garcia of California and Eugene Vindman of Virginia — and that’s before one adds Wikipedia and prominent medical journals to his increasingly bizarre list of targets. During his brief tenure, Martin also:

demoted multiple senior officials involved in Jan. 6 insurrection cases;

compared one of the criminal charges used against Jan. 6 defendants to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II;

falsely described himself as one of the president’s lawyers;

made dubious denials about his earlier praise for a Nazi sympathizer;

made more than 150 appearances on Russian propaganda outlets between August 2016 to April 2024;

weighed in on a civil case involving the White House, which had literally nothing to do with his office;

intervened in a dubious Environmental Protection Agency investigation;

made a dubious decision in a case involving Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida;

launched the wildly unnecessary “Operation Whirlwind”;

also launched the wildly unnecessary “Project 1512” initiative;

also launched a wildly unnecessary “election accountability” unit;

made a creepy public vow to wield his prosecutorial powers against those who get in Elon Musk’s way;

engaged in brazen conflict of interest in a Jan. 6 case, in which he effectively took both sides of a criminal case;

and kicked off a radically unnecessary investigation into Jack Smith and a law firm that gave the former special counsel pro bono legal services.

In a piece for New York magazine, Elie Honig recently described the lawyer as Trump’s “dangerous and ridiculous prosecutor.” Martin went out of his way to prove his many critics right, and it derailed his nomination.

As the dust settles on the White House’s latest personnel fiasco, it’s worth appreciating the scope of the president’s failure. Not only did the president nominate a spectacularly unqualified radical to lead one of the nation’s most important prosecutorial offices, and not only did he spend political capital that's suddenly in short supply, but Team Trump also appears to have failed to thoroughly vet Martin in advance — a familiar problem in this administration.

I am glad that this asshole was rejected

[wolfie001]

4. Stupid, tRUMP inbred was attacking Wikipedia and The New England Journal of Medicine!!!

For christ's sakes! What a major POS!