Imperiled Trump appointee further endangers his own license: report

Mark Joseph Stern tells Slate that former interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin had to look hard, but somehow, he managed to find the “dumbest possible rake” to step on. Now the former Trump appointee is in even more trouble than he was.

“On Tuesday, the disciplinary counsel for the D.C. bar announced a formal complaint against Martin for professional misconduct,” said Stern. “The charges accuse him of violating his oath to the Constitution, then interfering with the investigation into his alleged malfeasance. If found culpable, he could be suspended from the practice of law or disbarred in D.C.”

Martin’s allegations of unconstitutional behavior are already a matter of public record, said Stern. But it’s what he did after receiving notice of the complaint that sets Martin’s arrogance apart from all others. Upon receiving the initial complaint, Stern said Martin “launched a pressure campaign against the D.C. Court of Appeals … to suspend the lead investigator on his case.”

This, it turns out, was a much more egregious violation of court process than what the D.C. bar was initially investigating him for. The initial complaint was all about Martin’s harassment of Georgetown University Law Center, when he sent a letter to then-Dean William Treanor warning the school to remove all traces of DEI or the Trump administration would not hire Georgetown Law grads. He even threatened that the school might lose federal funding.

But while Martin’s letter was “absurd and malicious,” Stern said it might not constitute a violation of his oath. There was even a chance that the Board on Professional Responsibility or the D.C. Court of Appeals would agree.

But instead of contesting the claim against him through the proper legal channels, Martin allegedly tried to quash the complaint by committing “a far more clear-cut ethical breach,” said Stern. “According to the charges, Martin refused to respond to the complaint, and instead wrote directly to the chief judge and senior judges of the D.C. Court of Appeals. In his letter, he requested a “face-to-face meeting with all of you to discuss this matter and find a way forward.”

The chief judge, Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, told Martin to go pound sand and follow standard procedure. But rather than take her advice, Martin reportedly told the disciplinary counsel that he was essentially “calling their manager” — and he copied Blackburne-Rigsby on the email.

Furious, the disciplinary counsel demanded Martin turn over his letter to the judges. But rather than comply, he wrote to the chief judge again, insisting “that you not only suspend Mr. Fox immediately to investigate his conduct, but also to dismiss the case against me because of his prejudicial conduct.”

“Unfortunately for Martin, the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct expressly forbid lawyers from communicating with a judge ‘unless authorized to do so by law or court order,’ which he was not,” said Stern. “There appears to be no serious dispute that Martin communicated with Blackburne-Rigsby ex parte not once, not twice, but three separate times, all in an effort to evade discipline against him.”

If proven, Stern said this behavior “is a textbook example of misconduct sanctionable by the bar. So, of course the D.C. bar’s disciplinary counsel charged Martin with violating that rule, as well as another prohibiting conduct that ‘seriously interferes with the administration of justice.’”

“The erstwhile interim U.S. attorney, then, is in a pickle of his own making,” said Stern. “Had he simply fought Fox’s complaint the right way, he may well have defeated the charges in short order. But because he allegedly tried to obstruct the investigation, he faces a separate set of charges on much firmer legal ground.”

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