US Attorney Ed Martin Undermines DOJ Defense While Cosplaying As President’s Personal Counsel

Last Friday brought two seemingly unrelated stories: the Associated Press suing White House officials over retaliatory press access restrictions, and Trump's interim DC US Attorney Ed Martin launching what appears to be a personal intimidation campaign against Trump/Musk political rivals - precisely the kind of unconstitutional lawfare" that Trump and Musk themselves have previously denounced.

On Monday, those two stories converged. Martin put out a bizarre tweet:

If you're unable to read the image embedded in the tweet, it reads:

As President Trumps' lawyers, we are proud to fight to protect his leadership as our President and we are vigilant in standing against entities like the AP that refuse to put America first.

There are so many problems in so few words. First of all, there's the grammatical error. Saying that he's President Trumps' lawyers" suggests there are multiple President Trumps that he works for.

But the more alarming issue is Martin's fundamental misunderstanding - or deliberate misrepresentation - of his role. As US Attorney, he serves not as the President's personal counsel, but as a representative of the American people, bound by oath to defend the Constitution rather than any individual officeholder. This is so obvious and so blatant, that even Community Notes dinged Martin for this:

His tweet isn't just grammatically incorrect - it's constitutionally incoherent. By explicitly threatening the AP for refusing to put America first," Martin has essentially provided written confirmation that the Justice Department intends to use its power to punish protected speech. Even while his office defends White House officials in this case, their mandate remains defending the Constitution - not protecting the leadership" or targeting news organizations for their editorial choices.

And while a judge refused to grant an immediate temporary restraining order against the Trump administration here, the judge did make it pretty clear that this appears to violate the First Amendment, and that the administration should reconsider its position:

McFadden said the AP had not proven harm requiring an immediate restraining order. But he cautioned the White House that the law wasn't on its side in barring AP over continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico, not simply the Gulf of America" as Trump decreed in an executive order.

It seems pretty clearly viewpoint discrimination," McFadden told Brian Hudak, a government attorney.

And, in case you're wondering, Judge McFadden is a Trump appointee. And he seems to recognize how clearly this violates the First Amendment:

Later, though, in an exchange with Hudak, he said The White House has accepted the correspondents' association to be the referee here, and has just discriminated against one organization. That does seem problematic."

Martin's reckless tweets have now effectively sandbagged his own Justice Department colleagues defending the case. But perhaps that hardly matters when Trump himself continues to broadcast the retaliatory nature of his actions, declaring that We're going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it's the Gulf of America" and dismissing the AP as radical left lunatics."

The irony here is impossible to ignore. While self-proclaimed free speech warriors spent months breathlessly parsing the Twitter Files" and amplifying unproven claims about Biden administration censorship," we now have senior government officials openly declaring - on social media, no less - their intent to punish a news organization for its editorial choices. The same voices that detected shadowy government censorship in every content moderation decision have fallen conspicuously silent when faced with explicit, documented proof of First Amendment violations. It seems their concerns about government overreach were somewhat... selective.

Perhaps this shouldn't surprise us. When your primary concern is scoring partisan points rather than protecting constitutional principles, it's easy to overlook even the most blatant First Amendment violations - as long as they're coming from your team. But the Constitution doesn't care about partisan affiliations, and neither should those who claim to defend it.