Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin — who spoke at the “Stop the Steal” rally on the eve of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and served as a defense lawyer for multiple Jan. 6 defendants — reportedly announced Friday that he is opening a probe into whether there were leaks about Jan. 6 prosecutions to the media.
Reuters was first to report the development. Martin claims the alleged leaks “damaged” witnesses, defendants and law enforcement officers tied to Jan. 6 cases, according to an email obtained by the outlet.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment Friday.
Martin is a longtime and staunch supporter of President Donald Trump. On Jan. 5, 2021, he addressed Trump’s supporters during a speech near the Capitol, saying there were “no summer soldiers and springtime patriots here.”
As NBC News reported last June, Martin led a chant of “Stop the Steal” that night and remarked to those gathered: “We start today, go through tomorrow and every day till we have a last breath and go home to the Lord because we will stop the steal.”
On Jan. 6, Martin marched on the Capitol’s east flank and tweeted out messages of support, including “#DoNotCertify” and “#StopTheSteal.”
He has since repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was stolen, and has recently become a fierce defender of Trump darling Elon Musk. (Martin sent a letter to Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency in February, vowing to pursue “any and all legal action against anyone who impedes your work or threatens your people” after DOGE staffers barged into the U.S. Agency for International Development and started laying people off and denying staff access to data on federal systems.)
Martin was made the interim attorney for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. on Jan. 20. U.S. code states that he is only allowed in the job in an interim capacity for 120 days before he must be confirmed or replaced with another nominee by the president or the attorney general.
This week, over 100 former U.S. attorneys, including many who have worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., issued a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee calling Martin an “egregiously unqualified political hack” who should not be confirmed.
The group noted that Martin had zero experience prosecuting cases before Trump nominated him, and highlighted that he has made a series of increasingly partisan decisions since stepping into his role — including demoting several attorneys “whose only ‘fault’ was prosecuting Jan. 6 defendants,” they wrote.
The lawyers also highlighted Martin’s connections to a former Jan. 6 defendant, accused white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer Timothy Hale-Cusanelli.
In September 2024, Martin presented Hale-Cusanelli with an award at Trump’s club in New Jersey. Martin called the former Army reservist “an extraordinary man, an extraordinary leader” before hugging him.
“It’s one of the goals of many of us to make sure that the world — and especially America — hears more from Tim Hale because he’s extraordinary,” Martin said after the two men hugged.
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While Martin has been in his “tryout” phase, the letter continued, he has “butchered the position, effectively destroying it as a vehicle by which to pursue justice and turning it into a political arm of the administration.”
While congressional nomination hearings are not generally held for U.S. attorneys, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are now demanding one for Martin. In a letter to the committee’s chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Democrats said they wanted to ask Martin questions about why he shuttered a division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office handling Jan. 6 cases, his legal representation of Jan. 6 defendants and more.
