One of Trump’s Worst U.S. Attorneys Just Stepped on the Dumbest Possible Rake |
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It seems fair to assume that Donald Trump’s second presidency hasn’t turned out quite the way Ed Martin had hoped. The former interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia has faced a series of embarrassing setbacks over the past 14 months, tumbling down the Justice Department’s ladder, rung by rung, as fellow Republicans turned sharply against him. But the biggest blow so far arrived on Tuesday, when disciplinary counsel for the D.C. bar announced a formal complaint against Martin for professional misconduct. The charges accuse him of violating his oath to the Constitution, then interfering with the investigation into his alleged malfeasance. If found culpable, he could be suspended from the practice of law or disbarred in D.C.
What’s perhaps most remarkable about the case against Martin isn’t its allegations of unconstitutional behavior, which was already a matter of public record. It’s that upon receiving the initial complaint, Martin reportedly launched a pressure campaign against the D.C. Court of Appeals, lobbying the chief judge to dismiss the charges and suspend the lead investigator on his case. These actions would constitute egregious breaches of professional ethics—clearer-cut violations, in fact, than the conduct that triggered the accusations against him. It’s no wonder that Attorney General Pam Bondi is trying to award herself the power to shut down bar investigations into DOJ attorneys like Martin: D.C.’s disciplinary counsel appears to have him dead to rights.
Martin’s fall from grace has been swift but not particularly surprising. He rose to prominence helping plan and finance the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, then defended many of that day’s insurrectionists in court. Trump installed him as D.C.’s interim U.S. attorney on Inauguration Day, even though Martin had had no prosecutorial experience whatsoever. From this post, he implemented the president’s mass clemency for Jan. 6 defendants and purged the office of prosecutors who had helped convict them. He also investigated Democratic lawmakers on bogus charges of mortgage fraud.
When Senate Republicans refused to confirm Martin as permanent U.S. attorney, Trump gave him four new titles, including director of the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group. But Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche reportedly demoted him after he allegedly leaked grand jury material, which is a federal crime, then lied about it to department leaders. He claims to serve as “pardon attorney” but has been pushed out of DOJ headquarters and is soon expected to leave the agency altogether.
The D.C. bar’s complaint, though, has nothing to do with any of this. Instead, it stems from one of Martin’s side quests during his brief stint as interim U.S. attorney: his harassment of Georgetown University Law Center. In February 2025, Martin sent a letter to then-Dean William Treanor saying it was “unacceptable” that the school “continues to teach and promote DEI.” He ordered Treanor to “swiftly remove” DEI from all “courses” and “curriculum” and declared that his office would not hire Georgetown Law grads until the dean fell in line; he also wrote to Georgetown’s president to suggest that the school might lose federal funding if Treanor failed to comply. In a forceful response, Treanor stood on principle, asserting that the school had a First Amendment right to teach and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion as a Catholic value. Martin eventually backed down—an early, embarrassing defeat in the administration’s campaign to shake down higher education.
Many Georgetown Law graduates (myself included) were appalled by this brazen effort to punish a private Jesuit institution for teaching values opposed by the regime. One such alumnus was Phillip Argento, a retired California judge, who filed a complaint about the incident with Hamilton P. Fox, the D.C. bar’s disciplinary counsel. Fox opened an investigation and concluded that Martin had run afoul of a rule of professional conduct that forbids attorneys from violating their oath of office, which includes a vow to support the U.S. Constitution.
“Mr. Martin knew or should have known that, as a government official, his conduct violated the First and Fifth Amendments,” Fox wrote in the charges unveiled Tuesday. Martin violated freedom of speech, according to Fox, when he demanded “that Georgetown Law change what it teaches students and how it teaches them,” while using “coercion to punish or suppress a disfavored viewpoint.” And he violated due process by failing to “provide Georgetown Law fair notice of what is allegedly prohibited” because he didn’t define DEI or explain why he had the power to censor its advocacy.
Fox’s legal theory is not frivolous, but it is far from a slam dunk. There is little precedent establishing that a bar may sanction an attorney for wielding the powers of government unconstitutionally. Last year, the D.C. bar’s Board on Professional Responsibility did recommend disbarment for Jeffrey Bossert Clark, the DOJ official who tried to overturn the election at the end of Trump’s first term. (Its ruling is currently pending with the D.C. Court of Appeals.) That ruling held that lawyers may lose their license for egregious abuse of office. But it rested on Clark’s “false statements” and rank “dishonesty,” finding that he should have known he was pushing the DOJ to “tell a lie” that would lead to the unconstitutional reversal of an election.
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In his own complaint, Fox similarly argued that Martin “knew or should have known” that he was acting unconstitutionally, though he did not claim that he made factual misrepresentations in an official capacity. Martin’s letter was absurd and malicious. But was it so outrageous as to constitute a violation of his oath? He can, and presumably will, mount a plausible argument that the disciplinary counsel cannot sanction a public official based on its own subjective view of what crosses the constitutional line. There is a real chance that the Board on Professional Responsibility or the D.C. Court of Appeals will ultimately embrace this view.
But that would no longer let Martin off the hook—because, instead of contesting Fox’s first claim against him through the proper legal channels, he allegedly tried to quash it by committing a far more clear-cut ethical breach. According to the charges, Martin refused to respond to the complaint, and instead wrote directly to the chief judge and senior judges of the D.C. Court of Appeals. In the letter, he requested a “face-to-face meeting with all of you to discuss this matter and find a way forward.” And he copied Trump’s White House counsel “for informational purposes because of the importance of getting this issue addressed.”
The chief judge, Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, told Martin that he could not speak with her ex parte—outside the formal process and without Fox present—and would have to follow standard procedure. Rather than take her advice, Martin reportedly told the disciplinary counsel he was communicating with the chief judge and copied her on the email. She responded, again, that she could not talk with him ex parte. The disciplinary counsel then asked Martin to turn over his letter to the judges. Rather than comply, he apparently wrote to the chief judge a third time, insisting “that you not only suspend Mr. Fox immediately to investigate his conduct, but also to dismiss the case against me because of his prejudicial conduct.”
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Unfortunately for Martin, the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct expressly forbid lawyers from communicating with a judge “unless authorized to do so by law or court order,” which he was not. There appears to be no serious dispute that Martin communicated with Blackburne-Rigsby ex parte not once, not twice, but three separate times, all in an effort to evade discipline against him. If proven, this behavior is a textbook example of misconduct sanctionable by the bar. Fox therefore charged Martin with violating this rule, as well as another prohibiting conduct that “seriously interferes with the administration of justice.”
The erstwhile interim U.S. attorney, then, is in a pickle of his own making. Had he simply fought Fox’s complaint the right way, he may well have defeated the charges in short order. But because he allegedly tried to obstruct the investigation, he faces a separate set of charges on much firmer legal ground. Even if this conduct doesn’t merit disbarment, it could easily trigger a temporary suspension of his law license. Martin rose to infamy brandishing legal jeopardy against his foes. Now, thanks to his own overreach, he faces consequences he cannot threaten away.
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