Home Oversight Democrats have launched an investigation into the U.S. Lawyer for the District of Columbia after he publicized his personal efforts to probe threats to officers, an effort that has since focused two Democratic lawmakers.
The inquiry isn’t just centered on prosecutor Ed Martin’s current letters to Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Robert García (D-Calif.) accusing them of threatening Supreme Courtroom justices and Elon Musk, respectively.
It additionally focuses on a Monday tweet from Martin referring to prosecutors like himself “as President Trump’s lawyers.”
The eight-page letter from Oversight Committee rating member Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) to Martin recaps a sequence of actions taken by Martin in only a month on the job, together with two letters Martin posted on X pledging to go after anybody who interfered with Musk’s aids.
“The safety of federal employees and officials is self-evidently paramount and emphatically must remain an ironclad priority for the Department of Justice. Your recent public statements, however—which are directed exclusively at opponents of and express support for the Trump Administration, explicitly criticize the Biden Administration, publicize pending investigative activity by your office, and make assertions of fact for which there exists no evidence—raise serious concerns that your new initiative is a pretext for misusing your office for political ends, threatening and intimidating critics of the Administration, and chilling constitutionally protected speech,” Connolly wrote.
“Your post on X yesterday appears to confirm that these are in fact your aims.”
Martin despatched two letters to Schumer asking him to elucidate feedback from greater than 4 years in the past about Republicans being set to face a “whirlwind” of pushback over a then-Supreme Courtroom case that may restrict abortion. That remark seems to have impressed Martin’s title for the probe – Operation Whirlwind.
For Garcia, the letter from Martin got here after the lawmaker held up a photograph of Musk throughout a listening to and referred to as it a “d‑‑‑ pic,” — a reference to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) beforehand exhibiting a lewd picture of Hunter Biden.
“This sounds to some like a threat to Mr. Musk — an appointed representative of President Donald Trump who you called a ‘d‑‑‑’ — and government staff who work for him. Their concerns have led to this inquiry,” Martin wrote within the letter.
Martin additionally got here beneath criticism on Monday as his workplace launched an announcement knocking the Related Press after a court docket listening to of their problem to the White Home blocking their entry.
“As President Trump’s lawyers, we are proud to fight to protect his leadership as our president and we are vigilant in standing against entities like the AP that refuse to put America first,” he wrote.
The submit was instantly knocked for violating a key prosecutorial principal — that the Justice Division is the folks’s lawyer.
Connolly wrote that the remarks “reflect your deeply disturbing and grossly erroneous view that the office of United States Attorney exists to further the personal interests of Donald Trump, rather than those of the American people, and may be used to target elements of the media that scrutinize or are critical of his Administration—a view that is fundamentally antithetical to, and represents a direct threat to, the rule of law in this country.”
Martin’s workplace didn’t instantly reply to request for remark.
The letter asks for numerous affirmations from Martin, together with whether or not he believes criticism of Musk is protected free speech and whether or not the Justice Division would goal anybody primarily based on their political views.
