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Top Justice Department officials have stripped Ed Martin of the bulk of his expansive responsibilities, leaving the staunch ally of President Donald Trump on the sidelines of many of the controversial investigations he has championed, according to two people familiar with the personnel move.
As a result of the changes, Martin will no longer chair the department's Weaponization Working Group, which was tasked with reviewing special counsel Jack Smith's prosecutions of Trump and other perceived examples of "prosecutorial abuse," according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel move that has not been made public.
Martin will continue to serve as the Justice Department's pardon attorney but will no longer work at Justice Department headquarters. Instead, his office will be located in another DOJ building in Northeast Washington, pulling him away from the attorney general and the most powerful figures in the department, according to a person familiar with the move. The pardon office is in that Northeast Washington building.
"President Trump appointed Ed Martin as pardon attorney, and Ed continues to do a great job in that role," a Justice Department spokesperson said.
Martin is a longtime antiabortion activist who helped plan and finance the rally that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump first named Martin to serve as the U.S. attorney for D.C.
Martin, who had no previous trial or prosecutorial experience, served in that role for 15 weeks on an interim basis, with his tenure marked by his threats to investigate Trump's perceived political adversaries and firings and demotions of career prosecutors who handled cases involving the president and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump pulled the nomination because Martin did not have enough Senate support and instead gave him a senior Justice Department role, which did not require Senate confirmation.
As leader of the Weaponization Working Group, Martin has played an important role in the largely unsuccessful prosecutions of Trump's political foes, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI director James B. Comey and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California).
In November, The Washington Post reported that federal prosecutors appeared to be questioning a witness in the Schiff mortgage fraud investigation about her contact with Martin and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte.
The questioning suggested that investigators were looking at whether Martin and Pulte used inappropriate tactics to launch probes of Schiff and others, questioning whether the two Trump officials divulged information about the Schiff investigation to people who were not authorized to be a part of it.
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