President Trump’s pick to lead the prosecuting office in Washington, D.C., has apologized for past comments praising a Nazi sympathizer as congressional scrutiny over his nomination mounts.
Ed Martin, tapped to lead the U.S. Attorney's office for D.C., said in an exclusive interview with the Jewish magazine Forward published Thursday that he is "sorry" about past flattery for Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, a convicted and now-pardoned Jan. 6 rioter whom the Justice Department described as an "avowed white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer."
At an event last year at Trump's Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, Martin described him as an “extraordinary man” and an “extraordinary leader.”
“I denounce everything about what that guy said, everything about the way he talked and all, as I’ve now seen it,” Martin told Forward. “At the time, I didn’t know it.”
The interim U.S. attorney for D.C. acknowledged that he should have known better but said he "certainly didn’t know all the terrible things that he said and how he had acted."
"I think that’s terrible, and I denounced it completely," Martin added. "I hate it. I hate that it happened.”
The Justice Department announced Martin's appointment to serve as the top prosecutor of the nation's capital just days after Trump returned to the White House. The president first announced Martin as chief of staff at the Office of Management and Budget before shifting gears.
Since then, Martin has emerged as one of the president's most controversial nominations to lead a prosecuting office. The role marks his first stint as a prosecutor, making him the first person without that background to lead the office in more than 50 years.
He's claimed his role is to serve as one of the president's attorneys, flouting Justice Department credo to serve as the people's lawyers, overseeing the firings and reassignments of prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6, 2021, cases after having been a "Stop the Steal" speaker himself; and vowed in a letter to Elon Musk to go after those who "even acted simply unethically."
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Wednesday asked for an FBI investigation into Martin after he failed to disclose more than 150 appearances from social media in his confirmation disclosures. He appeared on two Russian media channels more than 150 times between 2016 and 2024 but did not detail those appearances in the paperwork used to vet nominees.
Lawmakers have requested three other probes of Martin, including remaining as the attorney of record for a Jan. 6 defendant while he moved to dismiss the charges in his new post.
Though nominees for U.S. attorney postings aren't typically subject to confirmation hearings, the swarm of controversy he's faced has escalated calls to make an exception.
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