Washington – former federal prosecutors and external organizations held alarms this week for the nomination of Ed Martin, the United States interim prosecutor for the Columbia district, to assume the position of the main federal prosecutors in Washington permanently.
Martin, who supported Donald Trump’s false statements that the 2020 elections were stolen and lawyers for the defendants in the cases of disturbances of the Capitol of January 6, had no prosecuting experience before Trump made him the interim prosecutor of the United States on the day of the inauguration. And he has taken a series of very unusual and political actions since he assumed the position temporarily.
On Wednesday, the Democrats in the Judicial Committee of the Senate requested a hearing on the nomination of Martin, which would break the standard practice for the nominees for law posts in the United States. Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, announced this week that he will seize Martin’s nomination, which could delay a vote on his nomination.
In a letter sent to the Senate Judicial Committee this week and obtained by NBC News, more than 100 former American assistant prosecutors who worked in the United States Prosecutor’s Office for the Columbia district signed a “declaration of consciousness and principle” to see Martin as not suitable.
“We are determined that the values and norms that were born during the mandate of John Thomson Mason and his successors, a commitment to the rule of law, the absence of partisanship in the search for justice, the presence of civility, decency and equity, continue without facilitating now and hereinafter,” the declaration reads, calling Martin “imposing the position.”
Daniel Toomey, a former federal prosecutor who served in the office from 1968 to 1971, told NBC News that the letter emerged from a regular zoom call that began about four years ago involving the former students of the Washington federal prosecutor’s office, many of whom worked there in the late sixties and early seventies.
“When we start learning about Ed Martin, we, a man and, regardless of our policy, we were horrified,” Toomey told NBC News. “We’ve never seen anything like that in the United States prosecutor’s office.”
Toomey said that the list of signatories leans towards those who have retired from practicing the law and that they believe that the list would be in the “hundreds” if it were not for those in private practice that may be worried about reprisals by the Trump administration.
“I can’t tell you the number of people who would call, and my friends would call, who said: ‘I totally agree with you, but I can’t sign this,” Toomey said.
Toomey said some signatories of the letter plan to meet with the Senate staff next week to express their concerns.
The letter is made through a series of Martin shares in office, including the termination of some federal prosecutors who worked on January 6; his publications in social networks on active research; And the unusual letters he has sent to the Democratic members of Congress suggesting that he is investigating his speech.
“In its ‘proof’ phase, it has mattered the position, effectively destroying it as a vehicle to pursue justice and turn it into a political arm of the current administration,” reads the statement of former American law assistant.
Representative Jamie Raskin, D-Md., The member of the Judicial Committee’s classification, said Trump had “nominated for Ed Martin precisely because he is confident that Mr. Martin will place his blind and unlimited loyalty to Trump over his duty to enforce the law impartially.”
Martin did not respond to a message in search of comments.
Martin recently presented documents to the Senate Judicial Committee in relation to his nomination, which indicates that he never litigated a trial and shows that most of the legal experience that identifies as their most important affairs had to do so with January 6, including the representation of three defendants.
Among its 10 “most significant litigation issues,” according to the documents it presented, which obtained NBC News, there were four issues in which it has been involved as an interim lawyer of the United States, including the insurance of the cases affected by Trump’s forgives, including participants on January 6 and the protesters of anti -abortion rights “,” said according to the decision of President Donald J. Powers under article II of the United States. “
Martin has an extensive fingerprint, but the Senate questionnaire surpasses some of the most notable moments of his career. His speech at the United States Capitol on January 5, 2021, in which he encouraged the “true true Americans” to fight until his “last breath” to “stop the robbery”, is not on the list. Its list of publications does not include “this Covfefe cannot succeed: Top Trump Tweets”, a coloring book that nods a typographic error that Trump performs on social networks in 2017. And episodes of Martin’s old podcasts, which makes listed in the form, is now “temporarily insecure” in ITSUnes.
