President Donald Trump has withdrawn his nomination of Ed Martin to serve as the U.S. attorney for Washington.
The withdrawal of Martin, who has served as the interim U.S. attorney, follows pushback from Republican senators. North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis announced Tuesday that he would not support Martin’s nomination because he supporters rioters involved in the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
“We have somebody else that will be great,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. “I just want to say, Ed is unbelievable, and hopefully we can bring him into, whether it’s DOJ or whatever, in some capacity.”
He added: “To me, it was disappointing. I’ll be honest. I have to be straight. I was disappointed, a lot of people were disappointed, but that’s the way it works sometimes … We felt ... it would be hard, and we have somebody else we’ll be announcing over the next two days who’s gonna be great.”
Martin has used his authority to get revenge on Trump’s opponents as he has threatened to investigate Democrats, academic institutions, and some critics of billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk. He has also worked to pick apart the January 6 investigation.
Tillis, an important Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, blocked Martin’s path to confirmation. All 10 Democrats on the committee also opposed Martin’s nomination.
“Most of my concerns are related to January 6,” Tillis said on Tuesday.
Martin is a conservative attorney who backed Trump’s 2020 Stop the Steal movement, pushed for less and shorter sentencing of January 6 defendants, and has appeared on Russian state media on several occasions.
California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff criticized Martin on X as someone who has “abused his position as interim U.S. Attorney to advance a dangerous agenda that places the president’s personal interests above those of the public, tramples the rule of law, and puts our democracy at risk.”
Martin will be relatively easy to replace with someone with similar, but less extreme, priorities, Republican aides told The New York Times.
The announcement from Tillis prompted aggressive pushback from rightwing influencers who Trump likes to appease, and there were people in the West Wing who wanted him to fight for Martin, according to the newspaper. People in Trump’s inner circle have considered a range of other positions for Martin in the last few days, such as another position in the Department of Justice.
Early on Thursday, Martin still appeared to be trying to hold on to the post, writing “fight, fight, fight” on social media.
Martin’s interim appointment is set to end on May 20. If no successor has been named by that point, Washington’s Federal District Court judges will name a new U.S. attorney.
Tillis has noted that the White House could choose an acting U.S. attorney in order to extend the time to select a new permanent person for the role.
The insurrection may have been the biggest issue for the North Carolina senator, but it was Martin’s connection to a January 6 defendant who prompted many to oppose his nomination.
On a number of occasions in the last few years, Martin has hosted Timothy Hale-Cusanelli on his podcast The Pro America Report. Hale-Cusanelli has dressed up like Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, with court filings stating that he has drawn cartoons “depicting Jewish people as pigs,” and once said that he would “kill all the Jews and eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
In a recent submission to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Martin insisted he did not have a close connection to Hale-Cusanelli and didn’t know anything about his views.
Allies of Trump in the Senate, such as South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, have pushed the president to nominate someone else.
Trump has started to contact possible successors, two people who are aware of the situation told The Times.
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