Ed Martin Clowns Himself Into Bonus Ethics Charges

A lot has happened. Here are some of the things. This is the TPM Morning Memo.

It’s not the crime, it’s the clown

Acting DCUS attorney Ed Martin was already in a lot of trouble, of his own making, when the DC Bar’s disciplinary counsel began looking into his extortion threat against Georgetown University last year. But good old Ed, with his characteristic aplomb, managed to make things worse for himself.

In a new two-count disciplinary case against Martin in Washington, D.C., half of the complaint is devoted to his unconstitutional pressure campaign against the Jesuit University and the other half to Martin’s clumsy efforts to block the investigation into threatening the bar’s disciplinary council and going over his head to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals while the investigation was still underway.

In short, Martin was able to obtain a second count against himself while he unsuccessfully fought the first count. Well done, sir, well done.

Morning Memo covered the details of Martin’s anti-DEI threat against Georgetown Law School Dean William M. Treanor last March. (He then upped the ante by also threatening Georgetown’s president and board of trustees, according to the bar’s complaint.) So let me focus on Count II, where the real comedy is.

Martin went nuclear from the start with the disciplinary board, according to the complaint:

That letter earned Martin a reprimand from the chief justice, who told him in a follow-up letter that the justices could not meet with him. ex parte — that is, without the presence of a disciplinary lawyer — and that he had to follow the normal disciplinary process of the bar.

A week later, Martin emailed the Chief Justice to the Disciplinary Advisor, earning him another warning from the Chief Justice:

A month later, after allegedly failing to respond to communications from the disciplinary board, Martin sent another letter to the chief justice, now aimed at the disciplinary board itself:

This earned Martin a third reprimand from the chief justice.

For his efforts, Martin was hit with count two in the bar complaint accusing him of (i) inappropriately communicating ex parte with a judge during a proceeding; and (ii) engaging in conduct that seriously obstructs the administration of justice.

Again, Martin was the acting U.S. attorney in Washington DC while all of this was happening. He remains the US attorney in charge of pardons. He has worn many other hats over the past year, including director of Trump’s DOJ weapons task force, special prosecutor for mortgage fraud and deputy attorney general. Apologies if I have left out any other titles.

Trump’s DOJ came to Martin’s defense after the bar complaint was filed. You will recall that the Trump administration is promulgating a new rule that purports to subordinate the State Bar’s investigations of DOJ lawyers to the attorney general’s own investigation. Stay tuned.

A new vindictive legal action

The parent company of Smartmatic — the voting machine company falsely vilified by MAGA conspirators after the 2020 election and which filed defamation lawsuits against Fox News and Trump’s right-wing allies — is raising a compelling new claim of vindictive prosecution in a corporate corruption case where it was added as a defendant last fall by Trump’s DOJ.

Three things that set Smartmatic’s vindictive lawsuit apart, as the company asserts in its new filing seeking dismissal of the indictment in Miami federal court:

• Smartmatic cooperated in the investigation of its executives in the Philippines, where the alleged 2016 scheme took place, and was not charged when the Biden administration initially filed charges in 2024. Smartmatic was added to the case in a superseding indictment last fall.
• The Trump administration has famously abandoned enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act in cases like this, but it made a notable exception for Smartmatic, the first company charged under the federal law in 15 years.
• Fox News, which is still fighting a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, allegedly used the criminal charges to try to exert influence in the civil suit.

Among the other defendants in the Smartmatic defamation lawsuits: Newsmax, DCUS attorney Jeanine Pirro, a former Fox personality, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Mike Lindell.

January 6 Never Ends: Arizona edition

In a highly unusual development, Homeland Security Investigations is conducting its own investigation into the 2020 election results in Arizona, The Atlantic reports. This is in addition to the conspiracy-fueled fake DOJ investigation that led to a grand jury subpoena of the state Senate’s records regarding its “audit” of the 2020 election in Maricopa County. Here is the key paragraph from The Atlantic in its entirety:

Arizona Acting Special Agent in Charge of HSI Matthew Murphy told the state attorney general’s office. [last month] that his office was now investigating the 2020 election in Arizona, according to a person familiar with the details of the meeting. A state investigator questioned why the government was reviewing the findings, given that they had already been the subject of a lawsuit and investigation. Murphy made it clear he was acting under “orders from DC,” the person told us, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The HSI investigation in Arizona, which has not yet been reported, comes as the FBI has embarked on a separate election investigation in the state. “This is not a joint investigation” with HSI, a person familiar with the FBI investigation told us. HSI Headquarters and the Justice Department’s Office of the Assistant Attorney General are coordinating the investigation, which is focused on identifying suspected voter fraud activity and associated potential enforcement actions, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Monitoring mass deportations

• WaPo: White House tells GOP to avoid talk of mass deportations ahead of midterm elections
• CBS News: DOJ’s Alex Pretti shooting investigation excludes prosecutors who specialize in civil rights cases, sources say
• Politico: Judges say ICE and DOJ leaders put rank-and-file lawyers in ‘impossible position’

Pam Bondi moves to a military base

Attorney General Pam Bondi joins the growing list of Trump II officials who have moved to military housing in the Washington, DC area because of threats against them, the New York Times reports.

You don’t say it?

TPM’s Josh Kovesnky has reported extensively on Trump’s DOJ’s use of Kyle Shideler of Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy as an expert witness in the Texas “antifa” case. Now, The Intercept reports that during cross-examination during the trial, Shideler admitted to “providing language used by prosecutors” in the indictment of the first-ever domestic terrorism case against an alleged antifa cell. “I told them what I thought was a precise definition of antifa, and they used it,” Shideler said.

“You go to war with the army you have”

• ProPublica: The United States has developed a plan to avoid civilian war casualties. Trump officials abandoned him.
• Politico: Hegseth emptied offices that should have investigated Iran school strike
• MSNow: DOJ Loses Experienced Counterterrorism Minds at Critical Time
• CNN: How Trump and Musk’s spending cuts are hampering US government preparedness for the Iran war

Wow if that’s true

The Social Security Administration’s inspector general is investigating whether a then-DOGE employee took possession of two highly sensitive databases (and kept one on a thumb drive) and planned to use them in his new job with a federal contractor, WaPo reports.

The allegations against the anonymous DOGE brother came from an anonymous whistleblower who later spoke to WaPo, which also reviewed the whistleblower’s written complaint, which was filed with the inspector general in January:

According to the complaint, he told the whistleblower that he needed help transferring data from a USB drive “to his personal computer so that he could ‘sanitize’ the data before using it at some point.” [the company.]The engineer told co-workers that once he removed personal information from the data, he wanted to upload it into the company’s systems. He told another co-worker, who refused to help him upload the data for legal reasons, that he hoped to obtain a presidential pardon if his actions were deemed illegal, according to the complaint.

Before the inspector general began investigating these allegations, the Social Security Administration itself dismissed them as “false, based on evidence and investigations by everyone involved.”

When GOP senators actually try

Enough opposition emerged among Senate Republicans, led by Sen. John Curtis (R-UT), to defeat the nomination of political commentator Jeremy Carl for assistant secretary of state for international organizational affairs. Carl wrote a 2024 book titled “The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart” and claimed that it was white people who faced persistent discrimination and were “erased” from American history, Politico reports. Carl withdrew his nomination while lamenting the lack of unanimous support from Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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