President Donald Trump‘s nominee for U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., expressed remorse over past praise of a Nazi sympathizer, saying he was not aware of his history.
Interim U.S. attorney for D.C. Ed Martin expressed his regret in an interview last week with Forward, a Jewish media organization. Martin had deemed Timothy Hale-Cusanelli as “extraordinary” when emceeing an awards ceremony at President Donald Trump’s golf club last year. Hale-Cusanelli is described by the Department of Justice as a white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer.
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“I denounce everything about what that guy said, everything about the way he talked, and all as I’ve now seen it,” Martin said in the interview. “At the time, I didn’t know it.”
The attorney said he should have known better than to not look into his past.
“But,” he said, “I 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. I hate it. I hate that it happened.”
Martin is currently serving as the interim U.S. attorney in D.C., but his nomination was already in jeopardy over different controversies. Nomination hearings are not common for U.S. attorneys, but many calls for investigations have been made during his tenure.
This comes after Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) sent a letter to Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel demanding an investigation into Martin for not detailing that he appeared in RT, formerly Russia Today, and Sputnik more than 150 times between 2016 and 2024 in required paperwork for the Senate Judiciary Committee asking for detailed breakdown of media commentary used in vetting his nomination, the Washington Post reported last week.
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Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee called on Republicans to hold a hearing to allow time to question Martin on his past. Ranking member Dick Durbin (D-IL) also filed a professional misconduct complaint for Martin, citing abuses of power.
“When a government lawyer, particularly one entrusted with a leadership role in the nation’s foremost law enforcement agency, commits serious violations of professional conduct, it undermines the integrity of our justice system and erodes public confidence in it,” Durbin wrote in a press release. “Public confidence would be further eroded if such serious misconduct is met with no consequences.”