President Trump’s nominee for D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, and Donald Trump’s Department of Justice more broadly, are taking cues from right-wing influencers — allowing some of the loudest media figures on the right to influence significant decisions, including who gets fired from the DOJ and who and what gets investigated.
It’s the latest way in which Trump’s DOJ has shirked its duty to uphold even the appearance of independence from the White House, and from Trump’s allies and friends in the right-wing social media sphere who have their own political agendas.
“It’s unprecedented for government officials to take direction or suggestions from highly polarized people and act on it within our government, especially when we’re talking about the DOJ,” Wendy Via, president and co-founder of The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said in an interview with TPM. “It eradicates all the DOJ is supposed to be — independent, for justice.”
Most recently, Martin — who has been serving in the role to which he was nominated in an acting capacity since January — targeted a former DOJ prosecutor who was a part of Special Counsel Robert Muller’s team, Aaron Zelinsky, with a letter alleging Zelinsky had somehow intentionally “sent an innocent man to jail.” The most striking part of the letter, though, was that a section of it was pulled directly, without attribution, from an old article on a website run by investigative journalist-turned-MAGA-aligned conspiracy theorist John Solomon.
As Mother Jones points out in a recent report on the letter of inquiry to Zelinsky, Martin’s letter includes a portion that appears to be fully lifted from a 2020 article from “Just the News,” a right-wing outlet started by Solomon.
Solomon started Just the News in 2020 after publishing a series of articles for The Hill highlighting claims by Trump allies who, at the time, were attempting to conjure up allegations of a corruption scheme involving Joe Biden and Ukraine — an effort that eventually led to Trump’s first impeachment in the House during his previous administration.
The April 14 letter accuses Zelinksky of making “false statements” that aided in sending “an innocent man to jail in an attempt to advance the false narrative that the campaign of a serving President had colluded with Russia to win the presidency,” according to Mother Jones‘ reporting. This is a reference to right-wing conspiracy theories that emerged around Trump ally George Papadopoulos’s prosecution.
Just The News did not respond to TPM’s request for comment.
Then in March, the White House appears to have taken a cue from right-wing political activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, firing a career federal prosecutor in Los Angeles without reason.
The prosecutor, Adam Schleifer, had been working on a case against the founder of Fatburger, Andrew Wiederhorn, who, according to the New York Times, was a donor to political action committees that have supported Trump.
Right before Schleifer’s dismissal, though, Loomer posted on X, sharing screenshots of old posts where Schleifer had been critical of Trump. “Why is Biden holdover @AdamSchleiferNY Adam Schleifer still working for the US Attorney’s office under the new Trump administration? He is a Trump hater who has been working at the US Attorney’s office since 2021,” she wrote. “Fire him. He supported the impeachment of President Trump and said he wanted to repeal Trump’s tax plan.”
And in February of this year, Denise Cheung, who was in charge of the criminal division of the Washington, D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, resigned from her post after refusing to comply with an order from Martin to open a grand jury investigation into Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency grants. The only known evidence that Martin had to support this order for both an investigation and a potential asset freeze was a 5-minute video clip from a right-wing conspiracy theory website, Project Veritas.
The Project Veritas video clip purported to show a former Biden-era EPA employee talking about distributing climate specific funding to non-profit organizations ahead of the start of the Trump administration.
“When I explained that the quantum of evidence did not support that action, you stated that you believed that there was sufficient evidence,” wrote Cheung in her resignation letter to Martin. “As I shared with you, at this juncture, based upon the evidence I have reviewed, I still do not believe that there is sufficient evidence to issue the letter you described, including sufficient evidence to tell the bank that there is probable cause to seize the particular accounts identified.”
Via, from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, called the DOJ’s reliance on right-wing influencers and conspiracy theorists “incredibly bizarre.”
“Of all of our agencies, the DOJ, and then of course under that the FBI, are supposed to be the most independent, the least affected by politics,” she added. “When I say it’s unprecedented, I don’t even know what other words to use, because it is so antithetical to who America is.”
You don’t have to be a lawyer to be a Supreme Court Justice. You don’t have to be a member of the House of Representatives to be Speaker of the House. You apparently don’t have to be employed by the Department of Justice to make decisions there. Give them their due: this is truly the land of opportunity under Trump. Anyone can be anything they want to be, if their politics align with those of the maladministration.
Taking cues from?!? Might I suggest an edited headline: “Trump’s DOJ consists of MAGA influencers and conspiracy theorists”’
There, FIFY
It is almost as if I’m watching a slow-motion coup take over my republic. It was sure nice while it lasted.
RWNJ’s fantasies not withstanding, the convicted felon will not be in office forever. Eventually there will be a D Congress (sooner then the Orange man thinks) and a D President. Those influencers could be influencing themselves to be prosecuted in a few years for breaking Federal Law.
I’m loving Josh’s creation of a DOJ-in-Exile that will be ready start prosecutions once/if things get back to “normal.”