The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 8 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Suddenly, President Donald Trump is on the verge of losing a big one. Ed Martin, his hand-picked nominee for U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., a major MAGA loyalist and insurrectionist sympathizer, is in trouble after a key GOP senator announced his opposition. Remarkably, this comes as Trump erupted on Truth Social this week, demanding that GOP senators confirm Martin. And that also comes as Trump has reportedly done privately calling GOP senators to demand their support. Lost in this whole saga has been the basic question of why we don’t want a MAGA-brained January Sixer to be U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., in the first place; it’s kind of an important job when it comes to maintaining the rule of law. So we’re talking about all this with someone who knows the Justice Department: former federal prosecutor Kristy Parker, now counsel at Protect Democracy. Kristy, thanks for coming on.
Kristy Parker: Thanks for having me.
Sargent: This week, Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina announced his opposition to Ed Martin, who’s currently interim U.S. attorney and is hoping for Senate confirmation. Tillis’s main objection is that Martin is a 2020 election denier who was at the Capitol during Trump’s January 6 insurrection. Martin has also suggested the people who attacked cops that day were part of a false flag operation. And Tillis specifically criticized Martin for siding with Trump on the pardon of some of the worst January 6 attackers. Kristy, how often do we hear Republicans do what Tillis just did, and why is it so important?
Parker: Well, I certainly think it is not unprecedented for members of the United States Senate who are from the same party as the president to exercise their independent advice and consent roles. So from that point of view, this is just run-of-the-mill Senate doing its constitutional job, which no one should really be that surprised by. However, this is a highly political time that we live in with a president who demands loyalty from the rest of the party. So in that sense, it can be seen as somewhat remarkable for this moment.
Sargent: It’s being treated as a massive story that a Republican is breaking with Trump on this. I would go further and say Trump demands absolute fealty from the Republican Party’s most important players. He essentially subjugates them, no matter how high their stature is in the party. And so it seems to me we’re seeing something remarkable here.
Parker: Well, again, I think my rejoinder to that would be simply is that it really shouldn’t be remarkable. What we should be focused on is that we have three branches of government. They each have a job to do. The president is the head of one of those branches of government. He is not the king. So when we see things like we’ve seen for the last two months—courts saying, X thing is unlawful. You cannot do this thing—or now seeing a member of the Senate who has a constitutional duty to provide advice and consent doing that, that really shouldn’t be remarkable. That should be something that we’re all happy to see, that every member of our government should celebrate—because that is the system that our founders put in place so that we would have a democratic republic and not a monarchy.
Sargent: Well, I’m certainly celebrating it. I hope it lasts. We should clarify that right now, the opposition from Tillis, who’s a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, means Ed Martin’s nomination can’t get out of the committee for the time being. And other GOP senators are suggesting it might not be able to happen at all. While that could always change, for now he looks like he’s in real trouble. But Kristy, let’s step back. Can you tell us more broadly a little bit about the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington, D.C., what its role is, and why it matters so much for the rule of law?
Parker: Sure. So there are 93 or maybe 94 U.S. attorney’s offices in the country that are arms of the Department of Justice, but they are very individually important everywhere. They are federal law enforcements in their individual jurisdictions, and they are primarily responsible for executing the laws and enforcing the criminal laws in their jurisdictions. While all of them are important, some of them have more prominence than others. And certainly, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia is a very important one because it is the one that is in the seat of our government. Lots of cases are going to come through that office: national security related cases, cases relating to operations of the federal government, complex criminal cases that you wouldn’t necessarily see on a day-to-day basis in some of the other offices. So it has always performed an outsized role in the constellation of U.S. attorney’s offices and is considered one of the most prominent presidentially appointed positions outside of Main Justice.
Sargent: Which I think really gets at the nub of the story. Beyond Martin’s insurrectionism, he’s also used this very powerful office—which again, he’s interim—to threaten Trump’s enemies. He threatened an investigation of Chuck Schumer, though he subsequently backed off of that. He also threatened to investigate the law firm Covington & Burling for giving legal advice to Jack Smith. Kristy, can you explain why that’s appalling public conduct in the U.S. attorney?
Parker: Well, it’s really important for a U.S. attorney to observe the rules of the Department of Justice—and the Department of Justice has some pretty clear rules about making public comments on potential investigations or, certainly, active investigations. And those are all under the umbrella of the Constitution itself and of the importance of protecting due process and the integrity of cases. So it’s very important for people who occupy those positions to be very careful in the way in which they conduct themselves so that they don’t prejudice cases that might be very legitimate cases, and also so that they don’t abuse the very significant law enforcement powers of the Justice Department.
When we see things that have been reported about Mr. Martin making these [comments]—we’ve seen them be published in the press—those are things that don’t comport with the department’s policies on remaining circumspect and being fair when it comes to initiating investigations. Like the things that, for instance, James Comey was criticized for—what seems so many years ago now—making public statements about a person who had not yet been charged with a crime, you know, this all falls within that ambit. And these are things that are not just necessarily damaging to the individuals who are named but, again, also potentially things that could destroy the conduct of legitimate cases. So you really want people in those positions who are going to be very careful in making sure that all of the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed.
Sargent: I want to bear down a particular thing that Martin did toward Covington & Burling. The news emerged again that this law firm had given legal advice to Jack Smith, and Martin tweeted something like “Save your receipts,” which is really a menacing thing to do. And I want to try to get at why that, as public conduct in a prosecutor, is not acceptable. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Parker: Well, first and foremost, that is the sort of thing that does not comport with the department’s policies about making public statements about anything they are even considering doing with a person who has not been charged with a crime. But another reason that those policies exist besides simply protecting the cases themselves is it’s important not to create a chilling effect on people who are exercising their constitutional rights or who are doing things that are perfectly lawful. So for instance, there is nothing wrong with a law firm—and this has come up repeatedly in the cases that have been filed with respect to the executive orders that the president has issued, and federal judges have repeatedly now reiterated this—representing a client simply because that client is seen as politically opposed to the people in charge of the U.S. government. We have a First Amendment, and that is pretty core conduct that strikes at the heart of the First Amendment.
So those sorts of things can be very chilling not just to the people who are the subjects of whatever it is the person says but also to other people—and cause them to make decisions like, Well, I’m not going to represent any of these folks who the administration has targeted for firing, or, I’m not going to hire any of the people who were part of the January 6 prosecutions because I might make myself a target of this sort of thing. So that’s what’s really problematic about that behavior and why, in the many years leading up to this moment, it has really been very much verboten within the Department of Justice to do those sorts of things.
Sargent: And I think it’s worth pointing out that it really strikes at the foundations of the rule of law in a big sense to be essentially saying—this is Ed Martin; I’m paraphrasing—I know that it will ingratiate me with Trump if I go after this law firm because that law firm represented Jack Smith, who Trump hates. So he’s essentially saying, I will use prosecutorial power to chill legal representation for anybody who Trump has designated as an enemy. That’s a direct assault on the rule of law.
Parker: It’s an assault on the rule of law. And it’s really an assault on a fundamental feature of self-government. The country is supposed to be governed by the people through our elected representatives. And the Bill of Rights protects all of our rights to criticize the government, to petition the government for redress of grievances. And it also creates rights for people to have counsel in those situations when we the people may be adversarial to the government. So when you attack lawyers, law firms for people who they represent because the president may disfavor those people, that really is fundamentally an attack on self-government.
Sargent: I like the way you keep going back to basic principles, which is essential at a time like this. So this week, Trump erupted over Martin’s difficulties with Republican senators. On Truth Social, Trump said this, “We are going to take our Country BACK, and FAST. Ed Martin will be a big player in doing so and, I hope, that the Republican Senators will make a commitment to his approval, which is now before them. Ed is coming up on the deadline for Voting and, if approved, HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN.” There were lots of all caps there. Trump is mad about this. And CNN reports that Trump’s been privately calling senators as well.
Kristy, it seems to me if Trump does lose here, it’s not a small thing. I get your point about how if the system were functioning normally, it would be a typical thing for a Republican senator to oppose a nominee like this—but we’re not in normal times. What we need to see is Republican senators going out on a limb occasionally and not doing what the president wants and putting the brakes on the president when he’s flagrantly trying to wreck the rule of law. So if Tillis can do this and not self-immolate on the spot, maybe that sends a message to other Republicans that they can do this as well from time to time. What do you think?
Parker: Well, yeah. I think it’s extremely important for members of Congress to act like a Congress and for senators to perform their role. And I don’t know Senator Tillis; I’m not going to presume to put thoughts in his head. But I would imagine that he and some of the folks who raised concerns about other of the president’s nominees like Pete Hegseth or others are not trying to do any harm to political conservatism. They are conservatives. They’re not trying to do harm to the Republican Party. They are Republicans.
They are exercising their role and doing what they think is best: to put the right people in those positions, and really—I imagine it will be hard for the president to see it this way—are probably trying to do him a favor by aiming him in the direction of appointing people who are not going to undo the mandate of their jobs by creating all sorts of side scandalous behavior and various things. We’ve already seen that with the secretary of defense. It’s not promotive of the government efficiency that they like to talk about when people who are put in these positions can’t focus on doing the job and instead are constantly wrapped up in ways in which they may have violated rules or committed misconduct. So again, the Senate plays a huge role in that. And yes, it’s something we should all welcome and hope to see and provide encouragement to them when they step up and act like Article 1 truly is equal to the other two branches of government.
Sargent: I really like your suggestion that these Republicans think they’re doing Trump a favor by steering him away from picking somebody like Martin. The basic problem that you’re putting your finger on is that Trump simply does not understand this in that sense at all. For Trump—and for Martin, I think, as well—the only thing that’s important is Trump, right? Martin fundamentally puts Trump before the law and his own duty to the public and to public service. It’s been reported that Martin threatened to target Trump’s enemies specifically in order to ingratiate himself with Trump. At some point, not everything should be about making Trump happy. Other things matter too. I just don’t see someone here who feels any evident sense of duty to the people. He’s not someone who thinks he works for the people. He thinks he works for Trump first. Does someone like that have any business in an important post like this?
Parker: Well, I’ll go back again to basic principles. Every person who takes a position with the federal government—whether they are politically appointed or whether they were a career civil servant like I was—take[s] the same oath. And that oath is not to the individual who is the president of the U.S. It is an oath to the U.S., to uphold the laws and the Constitution of the U.S. So the job is not about serving a particular individual and advancing that person’s political interests. The job is about faithfully executing the laws on behalf of the American people. So no. Anyone who says things like, I’m the president’s lawyer, when they are actually a U.S. attorney or a political appointee in the Justice Department—that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the proper nature of the job.
Sargent: I think that that principle is what Trump is trying to wreck when it really comes down to it. This basic idea that all these people who work for the executive branch aren’t servants of the president the man; this is the thing that Trump is trying to destroy. And when someone like Ed Martin goes out of his way to ingratiate himself with Trump by feeding that mania, by essentially saying, Mr. President, I will go after your enemies. Mr. President, I’m your servant first. I work for you, not for the people—that’s why it’s so important for these types of things to fail.
Parker: And so important for the rest of us to keep the focus on where it belongs and who we are as a nation and what it means to have a democratic republic. In many ways, Mr. Trump’s time on the national stage has been a long, very vituperative argument with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton—all of the people who came together and pledged their lives and their sacred honor to create a system that would give us something that was specifically not a king and about loyalty to an individual; it was about we the people of the U.S. So the more people can remember that and remember that the president is our employee who was elected to do a job in a particular branch of government, the better off we’re all going to be. And when U.S. senators step up and do their part in that, the better off we’re all going to be.
Sargent: Just to close on an optimistic note, I got the sense at the outset of this conversation that you think we’re seeing some signs of civic health in the fact that various branches of the government and various constitutional actors are showing some independence. What’s your overall assessment right now? Are you optimistic, pessimistic? Is it all hanging in the balance? How do you see everything and where it’s going?
Parker: Well, I’m a lifelong civics addict, career civil servant. I believe in the American project, the thing that I just outlined. I believe in we the people. I believe in the Constitution. I believe in the three branches of government. And anytime I see people—even in the face of someone who is quite bullying and who has shown himself to be serious about a lot of the very threatening things that he has said—every day continuing to stand up and when I see people in the other branches of government saying, I am going to do my job and, in this particular case, my job requires me to tell the executive branch that they are wrong and that they can’t do a thing, then that is a reason for all of us to have hope. And it just has to continue.
It takes a village. Everybody has to do it. Senators have a job. People have a job. So again, when senators stand up and do the right thing, the rest of us need to back them up on that in all of the ways that we can. And the same with the courts.
Sargent: I think it’s really important that right now there’s really a robust movement out there in the streets letting judges, letting senators, letting other independent actors in the system know that the people have their backs.
Parker: Yes. Things like last week on Law Day when lots of lawyers came out and retook their own oaths as members of their bars. I think just pledging our loyalty to our profession is something lawyers can do, and there are lots of things other people can do. But yes, again, watch what the people who comprise the three branches of government are doing when they step up and they do their constitutional duty. Give them positive reinforcement. Show them that you will support them. And we’re almost to our 250th anniversary. Let’s make it clear that we’re going to continue perfecting the project that was started in 1789, and that we’re not going to scrap it because one guy wants to.
Sargent: Exactly. We’re not going to let this lunatic blow it all up. Kristy Parker, thank you so much for coming on. Great to talk to you.
Parker: Same to you, thanks Greg.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.
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