May 14, 2025

Ed Martin, the extremist whack job who is so crazy, even Trump couldn't get him confirmed as D.C.'s U.S. Attorney, has instead been named as the head of the Justice Department's "Weaponization Working Group." He says he plans to "name" and "shame" individuals the department determines it can't indict. Via NBC News:

“There are some really bad actors, some people that did some really bad things to the American people. And if they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them," Martin said. "And we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed. And that’s a fact. That’s the way things work. And so that’s, that’s how I believe the job operates.”

During Trump's first tenure, the justification given for Trump's firing of former FBI Director James Comey was that Comey had given a press conference in which he released "derogatory information" about then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016.

"Derogatory information sometimes is disclosed in the course of criminal investigations and prosecutions, but we never release it gratuitously," then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wrote in a memo, adding that he believed Comey had given a "textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do."

Trump announced last week that he was naming Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. attorney following Martin's 120-day tenure, instead making Martin the pardon attorney, associate deputy attorney general, and director of the "Weaponization Working Group" that Attorney General Pam Bondi established at the Justice Department in response to one of Trump's executive orders.

Oh, the pardon attorney! That should be lucrative.

Ed Martin as Pardon Attorney is going to be one of the most wildly inappropriate things ever. I bet he gets Trump to pardon every civil rights prosecution of any LEO ever.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social) 2025-05-13T00:41:03.183Z

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