In mid-February, Donald Trump’s interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, emailed his staff to tell them he was “impressed by the great work in the office and with our awesome team,” before sharing some “great news”: He has been authorized to hire 20 new assistant U.S. attorneys.
“We are on it and hard — to get job postings up so that we can fill those positions asap!” he wrote in an email reviewed by Rolling Stone. He added that — amid Trump and Elon Musk’s hiring freeze and mass ongoing purge — the office would likely be approved to hire more support staff, too.
Despite being supposedly “impressed” by his “awesome team,” Martin soon demoted seven top prosecutors in his office to low-level jobs. Some had been involved with cases related to the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Sources who know Martin say he is aware that his office is full of staff who really do not like him and leak on him regularly. As The New York Times has reported, members of his staff refer to Martin as “keyboard warrior” for his many email missives.
Ever since Trump returned to power in late January, the twice-impeached president and his lieutenants have gone into overdrive to purge the federal government — including the Justice Department and FBI — of suspected anti-Trump subversives and stack the so-called “Deep State” with MAGA loyalists and enforcers who don’t flinch at Trump’s increasingly autocratic demands. Trump, according to sources who’ve spoken to him about the Department of Justice in recent weeks, views Martin as a vital cog in that machine.
Martin — whom Trump nominated last month to remain in the role permanently — has made his loyalties and priorities clear. As an attorney who not only promoted Trump’s anti-democratic lies about the 2020 election but also defended Jan. 6 rioters, Martin is at the forefront of the second Trump administration’s efforts to rewrite the history of the Capitol attack. He is also one of Team Trump’s primary blunt instruments in their openly corrupt mission to wield the powers of the state to bully and investigate their political enemies for completely bogus, frivolous reasons.
Since taking control of the office, Martin has publicly cozied up to Elon Musk, who’s leading Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In emails reviewed by Rolling Stone, Martin has pledged to “protect DOGE” and described his team of prosecutors as “President Trumps’ lawyers.”
He has also publicly threatened to investigate Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) over a speech he gave in 2020, as the Supreme Court was considering an abortion rights case. Schumer warned conservative justices that they had “released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Martin has chosen to interpret those words as “threats” in need of investigation.
He’s done the same with Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who had said that voters want Democrats “to bring actual weapons to this bar fight” and more forcefully respond to the efforts by Musk and DOGE to purge the federal workforce and block funds to government projects that he and Trump don’t like. Martin claimed in a letter to Garcia that these words could be interpreted as a “threat to Mr. Musk,” and also complained that Garcia had called Musk “a dick.”
According to The New York Times, Martin has sought to present evidence against Schumer to a grand jury regarding his comments, but has been rebuffed to this point by the Justice Department.
Martin has notably failed to express concern about Musk repeatedly “joking” during the 2024 campaign about someone assassinating then-Vice President Kamala Harris or President Joe Biden. Martin’s office also conspicuously refused to sign off on an arrest warrant for Florida Rep. Cory Mills, a staunch Trump ally, after the U.S. congressman was accused of assaulting a 27-year-old woman.
Martin does not want to target Trump’s enemies and critics alone. For weeks, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation, Martin’s allies have sifted through resumes and shortlists of sufficiently MAGAfied candidates and attorneys to fill the roles that Martin announced in his office email, and to fill the positions that will inevitably be vacated through firing or resignation. Several of the names on these lists the source mentioned are mainstays in the right-wing legal universe, and have made Trump-adulating appearances on conservative media, including Fox News and Fox Business.
Two sources familiar with the matter say that some staff and lawyers in Martin’s office — ones who aren’t enthralled by the Trump personality cult, as well as some who were demoted — are already beginning to flee or are strongly considering doing so soon, as they do not think they can have any meaningfully moderating influence and do not want to be part of a Trumpist project of vengeance and intimidation. Some staff believe they’re likely to be purged anyway.
One of the two sources describes Martin’s office as in the process of suffering a “drain” of personnel who aren’t on the Trump train.
“The thought process is, ‘Why should I stick around to pervert the system to punish a Democratic elected [official] who says something mean about Elon or Trump?’” the source says.
