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Trump’s appointee as interim US attorney for the District of Columbia and nominee to hold the position permanently, Ed Martin, has repeatedly made derogatory and racist comments in past social media posts and columns.
Martin’s rhetoric includes falsely claiming Kamala Harris is “self-identified” as Black and calling her the new Rachel Dolezal, claiming Planned Parenthood targets Black communities for abortions, claiming that the supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor made racist comments to white males about her own identity and invoking false claims about Dr Martin Luther King Jr to affirm support for the Republican party and the Tea Party movement.
Trump appointed Martin to be interim US Attorney in January 2025 Last week, Martin wrote a letter to the dean of Georgetown law school, telling the school to end any diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, claiming his office would not hire anyone associated with a university with DEI programs.
In recent weeks, he has also tried to initiate a grand jury investigation into the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, over 2020 comments about supreme court justices and wrote letters threatening to prosecute Schumer and Congressman Robert Garcia over their criticism of billionaire Elon Musk and the so-called “department of government efficiency”.
He has also referred to himself and other US attorneys as “President Trump’s lawyers” rather than an independent, law-abiding officer sworn to uphold the US constitution. Senate Democrats have asked the DC bar association to investigate Martin for using the office to threaten political opponents and pardon past clients, January 6 defendants.
The US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia declined to comment. “President Trump was given a resounding mandate by the American people to restore law and order. His nomination of Ed Martin underscores his commitment to making America safe again, starting with our nation’s capital,” said Liz Huston, assistant White House press secretary.
Leading up to the 2024 presidential election, Martin repeatedly referred to Harris as a “self-identified” Black woman and as “the DEI candidate.” “Hillary Clinton must be kicking herself that she didn’t do it,” he wrote on social media in August 2024.
“Move over Rachel Dolezal. Why Kamala Harris can never be Black,” he wrote twice in July 2024, linking to an unrelated NPR article about Dolezal.
The Guardian obtained copies of columns Martin wrote for the Evening Whirl, a non-digital, crime tabloid in St Louis, Missouri, as he was a leader in the local Tea Party that emerged and grew in response to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election win.
In a 2010 column entitled “What would MLK Say?”, Martin, criticized a Martin Luther King Jr event at Harris Stowe State University, a historical Black university in St. Louis, because he said the attendees and speakers didn’t criticize “racist tendencies” of the Democratic party.
He argued “the truth that few will say out loud”, is entitlements, invoking King to perpetuate racist stereotypes of welfare recipients, and ignoring how King advocated for guaranteed income to address poverty.
“America has – for over 40 years now – engaged in a ‘war on poverty’ that has created an underclass of men and women who have too little education and too little family structure to ever make it out of poverty. Most are black and brown,” Martin wrote, falsely, as most Americans under the poverty line are white.
“Welfare and other entitlements encouraged young men to leave their kids, your women to never marry but have many kids, and both men and women to not work (and collect payments),” Martin added.
He lamented in a later column, claiming King and the Tea Party movement were aligned. Even recently, Martin falsely claimed King was a registered Republican.
“I wonder what Martin Luther King Jr might think of the Tea Party movement. I can’t help but think he would appreciate their desire to rally, strive for change, and peaceably force the folks in power to listen,” Martin wrote.
In a 2009 column titled “If Sotomayor was a white man,” Martin claimed her supreme court nomination would be over, claiming a comment she made about her experiences as a Latina woman was racist against white men.
“In 2001, she said this: ‘I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.’ Wow. Imagine if a white male nominee had said ‘a white guy like me will make better decisions that some Puerto Rican woman.’”
Martin’s columns were written in the wake of his resignation as chief of staff to the Republican governor of Missouri in 2007, following a scandal in which a staff attorney was fired by Martin for trying to enforce public email records laws.
Also before his resignation, Hispanic groups called on the Missouri governor to fire Martin after he said during an August 2007 Missouri housing development commission meeting that in a work force where there are “Mexican-looking people they are likely illegal”. The governor of Missouri Matt Blunt dismissed the calls, claiming the comments were taken out of context.
He became a leader among the Tea Party in Missouri in 2008, attempted to get elected to Congress and then the state attorney general’s office in 2012. He was elected chair of the Missouri Republican party in 2013 to 2015.
At a 2016 Tea Party rally, Martin told the crowd: “You’re not racist if you don’t like Mexicans. They’re from a nation. If you don’t think Muslims are vetted enough, because they blow things up, that’s not racist.”
In 2018, he was fired as a CNN contributor after audio revealed him calling panelists on CNN he appeared with “black racists” and “rabid feminists”.
He spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally in 2021, echoed false claims about the 2020 election being stolen from Trump, and has represented some January 6 defendants in court. He has repeatedly used the QAnon conspiracy theory slogan in support of the election fraud claims.
“What they’re stealing is not just an election. It’s our future and it’s our republic,” Martin said at a rally in Washington DC on 5 January 2021.
In 2021, Martin appeared on the VDare book club podcast hosted by James Kirkpatrick, an alias of white nationalist blogger Kevin DeAnna. Martin hosted VDare’s founder Peter Brimelow, a leading activist in white nationalist movements, several times on his podcast in 2018 and 2019.
He served on the 2024 Republican national convention platform committee.
His rhetoric throughout his columns was often insidious toward crime, Democrats, abortion and teachers’ unions.
In a column about public safety in December 2008, Martin suggested “send in the National Guard” or “hire Blackwater to clear the streets,” in reference to the private military contractor that incited international outcry in 2007 when contractors with the firm killed unarmed civilians in Iraq.
Martin frequently falsely claimed tax dollars were being used to fund abortions. He had previously worked at an anti-abortion group and has recently supported a national ban on abortions without exceptions and entertained the possibility of jailing women who get abortions and doctors who perform them.
He has also repeatedly pushed a false claim that Planned Parenthood targets Black communities for abortions.
“Since Planned Parenthood has successfully positioned their abortion services targeting Black Americans, when is it okay to call them white supremacists?” he wrote on X in February 2023. In July 2024, he posted a cartoon comparing slavery to abortion.
In criticizing teachers’ unions, Martin claimed they were “fiddling while Rome burns and too many of our children end up ignorant or dead”, in a December 2008 column.
“Drill everywhere and for all we got,” Martin wrote in a 2010 column, adding the Arctic Wildlife Refuge should be opened up for oil drilling. “We are told as Americans we cannot drill there because we will disturb ‘nature’ and impact the caribou. I say choose our kids’ future over caribou and drill.”
In a January 2009 column on Obama’s inauguration, Martin claimed Joe Biden had “obvious plastic surgery” and “looks like Joan Rivers in a dark suit”. He claimed on X in 2024 that Obama and Biden are both racists.
In a 2008 column, Martin criticized pushbacks over the derogatory use of Obama’s middle name.
“They want to make Hussein off-limits and they want to attack people who say the name. This is the worst kind of imposition of speech regulation and it is plainly un-American,” Martin said. “This silliness should stop; after all, it may soon be President Barack Hussein Obama leading our country.”
