President Trump’s nominee for D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin — who recently announced the creation of a special unit devoted to investigating Trump’s greatest grievance, the integrity of the country’s election system — has his own history of election denialism.
And his history goes deeper than his efforts to Stop the Steal in 2020. Martin first began boosting unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud back in 2010, when he ran and lost a race for a House seat representing a district in Missouri.
On Monday, in a company-wide email, Martin announced the formation of this new unit, known as the “Special Unit: Election Accountability,” that will be devoted to supposedly upholding election integrity, according to Bloomberg Law, which was first to obtain the email.
“Nearly 20 years later, Americans do not have confidence in our election systems,” Martin said in his email. “One of the best ways to restore that confidence is to protect our systems and demand accountability.”
The unit is, of course, just one of many efforts underway within the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office and the DOJ overall to carry out Trump’s retribution agenda as Trump takes a sledgehammer to the independence that typically exists between the Justice Department and the White House. It also may be designed to give a layer of credibility to Republicans’ decades-long attempts to fear monger about supposedly widespread voter fraud when they lose elections. The integrity of the election system as a whole in the U.S. only came under increased attack in recent years when people like Trump, Martin and other faces of the “Stop the Steal” movement spread myths about it.
In 2010, after narrowly losing the election to represent Missouri’s 3rd Congressional district, Martin, who ran as a Republican, refused to concede, and instead demanded an investigation into what he claimed was a possible case of voter fraud. Martin was reportedly concerned over a late surge of votes —a now-familiar 2020 election denial talking point.
Martin ended up conceding a week later to the Democratic incumbent Russ Carnahan, only after election officials found no evidence of voter fraud.
The same election denial mindset carried over to the 2020 election too, as Martin quickly joined the 2020 “Stop the Steal” bandwagon.
Martin has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the 2020 election was “rigged” and that Trump in fact won the election.
He also spoke at the “Stop the Steal” rally, one day before the January 6 Capitol riot, where he told the crowd: “What they’re stealing is not just an election. It’s our future and it’s our republic.” In that same speech, Martin also called on those he described as “die-hard True Americans” to “stop the steal.”
On January 6, Martin attended Trump’s rally near the White House and posted on X from the event. “I’m at the Capitol right now. Abd [sic] I was at the POTUS speech earlier. Rowdy crowd but nothing out of hand. Ignore the #fakenews.”
He has also personally represented a January 6 defendant and aided in the dismissal of cases following Trump’s pardon for those charged or convicted in January 6 related activity.
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Funny how with white supremacists they are always the most obviously genetically inferior of white people.
Of ten white supremacists in a room of 100 white people they will be the obviously the least of them.
I have worked for my local (Queens, NY) Board of Elections for some time now, and I can categorically assure you that we take extra care to make sure all ballots are accounted for and counted. Accusations of electoral fraud have almost always proven bogus; for the GQP, it’s “rigged” if their candidate obtains fewer votes than their opponent. That’s not how this works…
Victimhood is in their DNA.
The old (new) “late surge of votes”. Perhaps if votes weren’t counted until after every precinct closed throughout the U. S. and all overseas ballots were accounted for and provisional ballots, the same idiots would be screaming.
God told them they would win. God tells them a lot of stuff they want to hear.