The interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia may have his sights set on taking some form of legal action against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) over widely criticized remarks he made about a pair of U.S. Supreme Court justices that sounded to many like a threat.
On Friday, Edward R. Martin, Jr. dismissed roughly 30 federal prosecutors who had been working on Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot cases over the past four years. The move is part of a broader effort to overhaul Washington’s top prosecutor’s office while preparing to expand its investigations to include leading Democratic figures and former Justice Department officials, sources close to the interim U.S. attorney told the Washington Post.
He also appeared determined to scrutinize the nation’s leading Democrat by sending what he called a “letter of inquiry” to Schumer regarding his eventually retracted remarks at a March 2020 rally, in which he claimed that two of Trump’s recently appointed Supreme Court justices, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, would “pay the price” if they ruled against Roe v. Wade.
“We take threats against public officials very seriously. I look forward to your cooperation,” Martin wrote Schumer in a Jan. 21 letter obtained by The Post.
Documents from Martin and acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove—emailed around 5 p.m. and viewed by The Washington Post—reveal that the former federal prosecutors were placed on probationary status after being shifted from temporary to full-time roles following Election Day, a situation now under investigation by the Trump administration.
In his first 11 days in office, the 54-year-old Martin has rapidly steered the office to align with President Donald Trump’s vision, a move that has attracted significant criticism mostly from inside the Beltway.
Since his appointment on January 20, Martin has ordered senior supervisors to probe their colleagues’ handling of the Capitol riot prosecutions following Trump’s mass pardons and has threatened subordinates who disclose or criticize his actions, The Post noted further.
According to four sources and documents viewed by The Post, notifications were sent out on Friday to those being terminated from the office’s now-disbanded Capitol siege prosecution unit. The cuts affect about 8 percent of the office’s prosecutors. In combination with a recently announced freeze on hiring and promotions, these changes will impact divisions across the office—including civil, appellate, Superior Court, and violent crime—where some prosecutors had already been reassigned.
In a Friday memorandum, Bove ordered the dismissal of the prosecutors, describing their hiring as a “subversive” move by the Biden administration that obstructed Martin’s efforts to properly staff the office and “to faithfully implement” Trump’s agenda.
“I will not tolerate subversive personnel actions by the previous Administration at any U.S. attorney’s office,” Bove said.
An email sent by Martin informed recipients to keep all documents pertaining to “personnel decisions regarding attorneys hired to support casework” in regards to the Capitol riot, which the memo said is now being looked at in accordance with Trump’s executive order targeting the “weaponization” of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Martin’s actions come after the acting head of the Justice Department fired more than a dozen officials and career attorneys who worked with former special counsel Jack Smith.
Fox News Digital first reported that Acting Attorney General James McHenry wrote letters to the prosecutors stating that he was letting them go because they could not be trusted to ” faithfully implement the president’s agenda. “
A DOJ official told Fox that McHenry transmitted a letter via email to each of the individuals.
Regarding the trust issue, one network legal analyst said during a show segment on Tuesday that every prosecutor who works with a special counsel does so on a voluntary basis—no one is assigned the task.
“Today, Acting Attorney General James McHenry terminated the employment of a number of DOJ officials who played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump,” a DOJ official told Fox News. “In light of their actions, the Acting Attorney General does not trust these officials to assist in faithfully implementing the President’s agenda.”
