A senior Trump administration official is facing the ire of the Washington, D.C., Bar for his role in President Donald Trump’s push to end diversity, equity and inclusion practices in U.S. universities.
The DC Bar filed disciplinary charges against Ed Martin, formerly the acting U.S. Attorney for Washington, stating that he threatened to withhold funding from Georgetown University’s Law Center and barred his staff from hiring its students in a bid to punish the institution for its DEI practices — a violation of the First Amendment, the DC Bar said.
“Acting in his official capacity and speaking on behalf of the government, he used coercion to punish or suppress a disfavored viewpoint, the teaching and promotion of ‘DEI,’” Hamilton Fox, disciplinary counsel for the DC Bar, wrote in a filing made public on Tuesday.
Martin is now the pardon attorney for the Department of Justice, after failing to attain enough support from Senate Republicans to land a full-time appointment to the U.S. attorney post last year. He was replaced by former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who previously served as district attorney of Westchester County.
Trump appointed Martin in May to lead the DOJ's "Weaponization Working Group" to look into officials who investigated Trump and Jan. 6 rioters, but the initiative failed to produce meaningful results. Martin has since lost sway in the Trump administration, which relocated his office from the DOJ headquarters to a government building in a different neighborhood of D.C. in recent months.
His lawyer, Harry MacDougald, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Mr. Martin knew or should have known that, as a government official, his conduct violated the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States,” Fox wrote.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche panned the DC Bar’s stand against Martin in a post on X Tuesday.
“The DC Bar is such a blatantly Democrat-run political organization,” Blanche said. “Thank God I’m not a member, and trust me, I never will be.”
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