Trump’s DC prosecutor pick blocked by a Senate saboteur

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) is actively sabotaging President Donald Trump’s pick for Washington, D.C.’s top prosecutor, derailing the hard work to restore safety, law, and order to the capital city — and also threatening to upend the president’s ultimate (and more important) legislative agenda.

Ed Martin currently serves as acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and has been nominated to keep the job permanently. In just a few months, he’s begun dismantling the political weaponization of the office that flourished under his predecessor, Matthew Graves.

This fight is bigger than Ed Martin. If not handled correctly, it all threatens to bleed over into the far more important budget reconciliation battle.

Graves spent four years refusing to prosecute 67% of arrests in Washington, D.C. Even felony arrests rarely led to charges. If police arrested you for a serious crime, your odds of walking free were better than your chances of facing trial. When Graves did take action, he often downgraded charges — reducing assaults on police officers to simple misdemeanors. Meanwhile, he directed his office’s full attention toward prosecuting rioters, trespassers, and innocent bystanders caught up in the Jan. 6 chaos.

Under his leadership, D.C. became one of the most violent and lawless major cities in America.

Republicans barely put up a fight when Graves was nominated. The Judiciary Committee approved him by voice vote. The Senate confirmed him the same way.

Now compare that to Martin.

In his first three and a half months, Martin flipped those numbers, prosecuting 65% of all arrests in the D.C. His efforts didn’t stop at charging criminals. He also demoted and fired the partisan loyalists who turned the office into a political operation over the past four years. CNN and the New York Times have responded with their standard meltdowns — a reliable sign that he's doing something right.

Tillis doesn’t see it that way. He especially opposes Martin’s reforms related to Jan. 6 prosecutions and has made it his mission to stop the nomination.

This showdown didn’t happen by accident. Martin can serve as acting U.S. attorney for only 120 days. To avoid a lapse, the Senate Judiciary Committee needed to advance his nomination by Monday. Trump made calls and publicly reaffirmed his support. But the committee still didn’t move.

Why?

Because Tillis — no stranger to obstructing conservative priorities — vowed to oppose Martin. And he didn’t stop there. The Beltway Brief has learned that Tillis has been actively whipping fellow Republicans to sink the nomination. He’s likely targeting senators such as Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, John Curtis of Utah, and Todd Young of Indiana.

Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a conservative but also a Senate institutionalist, wants to avoid a messy intraparty fight — even behind closed doors.

This nomination battle has become a litmus test.

On one side stand Trump and his base, who’ve rallied behind Martin. On the other side are Tillis and the Republicans, who’d rather side with Beltway politics than back the president. The moment reveals who’s really prepared to obstruct the White House’s agenda over the next four years — and who’s just pretending to govern.

“This is far from over,” Oversight Project founder and Martin ally Mike Howell promised Tuesday morning.

The fight has put the White House in a brutal bind. The president backs Martin, and making D.C. a clean and safe city once again is one of his top priorities, but Martin’s confirmation is far from the most important objective his administration is working to achieve.

The administration’s number-one goal is passing the budget, which would fund and power Trump’s agenda and the U.S. economy through tax cuts, deportations, border enforcement, new energy policies, etc. The last thing his Office of Legislative Affairs needs is a battle with Republican senators — even the squishy ones more eager to fight conservatives than Democrats.

Tillis is apparently counting on this reality. He knows the White House needs his vote on the budget, so he feels empowered here, as well. His goal for his own political future is less clear. He was already censured by his state GOP two years ago and faces party voters in a primary contest a short 10 months from now. Even if he’s expecting his state, which Trump carried by three points in 2024, to shift purple in the coming years, Tillis needs to survive a primary. Though, by all insider accounts, his dislike of Martin runs more on personal animus than calculated politics.

If Tillis refuses to budge even under White House pressure, he’ll leave the president with just three real options.

Option 1 is surrender to Tillis, drop Martin, and nominate some Federalist Society-approved Republican who won’t cause any trouble. This is an ugly path and essentially admits that Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) run the committee with Republican help. More: It wouldn’t contribute remotely as much to cleaning up Washington.

Option 2 would be to nominate a placeholder and let Martin run the show from behind the scenes. This is still an ugly option, but it has its merits.

Option 3 is for Trump to say he’ll let Tillis block the nomination and say he’ll allow anti-Trump Judge James Boasberg to appoint the next U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, then see if Tillis has the guts to take it that far. This sort of brinksmanship comes with obvious risks for Trump, the capital, and Tillis himself.

This fight is bigger than Ed Martin. The base is activated, the talk-show hosts and writers are cranking away, and, if not handled correctly, it all threatens to bleed over into the far more important budget reconciliation battle.

But this fight can be useful, too. It’s best to know your opponents early and engage them if necessary. They’re not planning on fading away on their own.

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