Washington The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, the federal prosecutor’s office that has been in charge of the hundreds of cases brought in the Capitol siege probe, has appointed a conservative activist who was on the board of an organization that supports the defendants in the Jan. 6 case.
Chad Gilmartin, a Trump Justice Department official, informed NBC News that Ed Martin will serve as the acting chief.
Martin was a well-known representative of the “Stop the Steal” campaign. On January 5, 2021, he addressed the Capitol and urged “die-hard true Americans” to work until their “last breath” in order to “stop the steal.”
When Martin tweeted on January 6 that he was “at the Capitol” and that the crowd was boisterous “but nothing out of hand,” he followed it up with the words, “Like Mardi Gras in DC today: love, faith, delight.” Martin’s tweet was sent after rioters had broken into the building and shot Ashli Babbitt; on the opposite side of the Capitol, during the bloody confrontation at the lower west tunnel, one of the Jan. 6 rioters would shortly drive a stun gun into an officer’s neck.
Martin served on the board of the Patriot Freedom Project, which supported the defendants in the Jan. 6 case and hosted fundraisers at Trump’s homes, including speeches by the president.
Martin was appointed deputy policy director of the Republican National Committee’s platform committee last year.