David’s view
Back in November, when DC started processing the fact that Donald Trump would return to the presidency, I heard one note of optimism from some liberals. They said it very quietly, and without much confidence. But they figured that Trump, at least, would appoint a US attorney who prosecuted more criminal cases than Matthew Graves. Crime was falling when his term ended, but the low conviction rate in his first years was a disaster for the city’s life and politics. When Republicans took the House, they cited the city’s car-jacking wave to blow up a criminal code reform that took years to write.
DC did not get an Eliot Ness prosecutor. It got Ed Martin, a conservative movement lawyer and activist whose 120-day appointment will end this month, because he didn’t have the Republican support to get confirmed. Other reporters have told the Martin story, but a quick summary: He represented Jan. 6 defendants before getting the job, punished and demoted their prosecutors when he got it, and launched a series of ideological investigations (wokeness in medical journals, a five-year old Chuck Schumer gaffe) that went nowhere.
It took too long for MAGA to realize that Martin might not get confirmed to a full term. Martin tapped a “sherpa,” a strategist who might help him through the nominating process, just three weeks ago. This was after a heap of reporting on Martin’s pro-Trump commentary — much of it not disclosed to the Senate — and some elementary mistakes he’d made that threatened cases. Before Thursday afternoon, when Trump pulled the nomination, his supporters tried to reframe the confirmation as a fight for DC’s safety. “It ought to be the best place to visit in our country,” Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley told Steve Bannon on Tuesday.
DC’s anti-Trump citizens (hard to find another kind) don’t disagree with that. Martin arrived in a city that was winding back some of the reforms of the post-Ferguson, post-George Floyd era, from the light touch on juvenile car-jacking and gun crimes to the decriminalization of fare evasion. A less political DA wouldn’t have converted the electorate into MAGA voters. But that’s what DC gets; Trump’s replacement for Martin will be former New York judge and district attorney Jeanine Pirro, who has far more relevant experience, but got the job because she defends the president on Fox News.
If criminal justice reformers like Larry Krasner are right, the post-2020 crime spike in cities was due to COVID and closures of public spaces, not prosecutorial discretion. That would set up Trump and his justice system for four years of success, as Martin was ready to do. Instead, he acted for a national audience of MAGA conservatives who wanted Jan. 6 prosecutors punished and liberals humiliated, while not restoring $1 billion of DC funding that was basically cut by accident. It’s a good way to anger people who hate Trump, but a strange way to prove that they were wrong about him.
Notable
- The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which has picked its fights with Trump, praised Sen. Thom Tillis for sinking Martin: “Mr. Trump pledged to end the weaponization of the Justice Department. What was Mr. Martin doing by all but threatening to prosecute the Senate Minority Leader over a speech a half-decade ago?”
- In Mother Jones, Dan Friedman sees Martin’s failure as a big loss for Trump. “The rejection of Martin’s nomination is also a sign of the limits of Trump’s effort to rewrite the history of January 6 and the lies that led to it.”