Ed Martin, the outgoing Washington, D.C., U.S. attorney who will soon start his role as DOJ’s pardon attorney and chief of the so-called “Weaponization Working Group,” said he plans to review and scrutinize the last-minute pardons issued by former President Joe Biden.
Martin’s appointment to several powerful positions at the Justice Department — following his rejected confirmation by the U.S. Senate — appears to have emboldened him to more aggressively pursue political targets of President Donald Trump, according to a series of recent interviews with right-wing media outlets and his Tuesday press conference.
“I do think that the Biden pardons need some scrutiny. And they need scrutiny because we want pardons to matter and to be accepted and to be something that’s used correctly. So I do think we’re going to take a hard look at how they went and what they did,” Martin told ABC News during the press conference.
“If they’re null and void, I’m not sure how that operates, but I can tell you we’ve had already, I’ve had in my current position, or my position as US Attorney, we had been taking a look at some of the conduct surrounding the pardons and the Biden White House,” he said.
Martin, however, did say that he doesn’t think Biden’s use of “auto-pen” is necessarily a problem, even though Trump suggested that’s what he believes makes them invalid.
Ed Martin speaks at an event hosted by Rep. Matt Gaetz, at the Capitol in Washington, June 13, 2023.
Amanda Andrade-rhoades/AP
Martin also suggested that officials whom he’s unable to charge should be publicly shamed, despite DOJ policy that clearly states that prosecutors should avoid any public comments about uncharged people.
“There are some really bad actors, some people that did some really bad things to the American people. And if they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them, and we will name them. And in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are shamed. And that’s a fact. That’s the way things work, and so that’s how I believe the job operates,” Martin said.
On his final day in office, Biden issued several last-minute pardons to family members, including his brother, James Biden and his wife, Sara, his sister, Valerie, and her husband, John Owens, his brother, Francis. The former president had also pardoned his son, Hunter, for tax and gun crimes a month prior.
Biden pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, who worked under the Biden administration to coordinate the nation’s COVID-19 response and faced public scrutiny from President Donald Trump.
The former president also pardoned retired Gen. Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who scrutinized Trump’s role in the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection.
Similarly, Biden pardoned Jan. 6 Committee members who investigated Trump over the insurrection.
