Miranda Devine: Trump’s ultra-MAGA man who oversaw prez’s ‘year of mercy’
Ed Martin is finishing up as pardon attorney next week. Under his guidance, President Trump has pardoned hundreds of victims of the Biden administration’s weaponization of the justice system against Trump and anyone who supported him. The devout Catholic restored their reputations and their dignity in his short 15-month tenure that he calls “Trump’s year of mercy.”
Read more Ted Cruz teases possible 2028 clash with JD Vance: ‘I want to be president’
His critics sneer at him while quaking in their boots because Martin is a happy warrior who has achieved an awful lot in a short time.
He also served for four months as interim DC US attorney, during which time he managed to oversee the dismissal of all J6 prosecutions after Trump’s mass pardons and commutations, fire the overzealous prosecutors who weaponized the law against the innocent and put Sen. Chuck Schumer on notice over his threats to Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh outside the Supreme Court at an abortion-rights rally in March 2020.
He was also named special attorney for mortgage fraud at DOJ, where he oversaw investigations of New York AG Letitia James, Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook and Democrat Sen. Adam Schiff, the Russiagate plotter.
He wore another hat at the DOJ where he was associate deputy AG running the Weaponization Working Group, launching investigations into the Biden DOJ’s targeting of Catholics, school board parents and pro-life activists. He said these partisan witch hunts were run by Lisa Monaco, deputy AG under Merrick Garland.
It rankles Martin that she has been rewarded handsomely for her conduct with a prestigious high-paying job at Microsoft as president of global affairs.
“Lisa Monaco should not be received in polite society,” he says. “Instead she is paid tens of millions by Microsoft. When people do something wrong . . . they should be named and shamed and in a culture that values shame.”
Martin’s critics sneer at his small-town Missouri cheerfulness and the Columbo-style trenchcoat that has become his trademark, but they fear a rare man in Washington who knows right from wrong and never flinches from the fight.
Conservatives have had no better warrior since his mentor Phyllis Schlafly died in 2016, two months before Donald Trump won the presidential election in which she threw the might of the most influential social conservative movement in the country behind the showy real estate developer from Queens.
The Missouri powerhouse activist’s early support for Trump split her movement and bogged her down in lawsuits from a rogue group of Never Trumpers inside her own Eagle Forum which continue to this day.
No MAGA left behind
Martin was her protégé co-authoring the New York Times bestseller “The Conservative Case for Trump” that was published the day after her death and gave the green light to conservatives to vote for the uncontrollable Fifth Avenue billionaire. He saw firsthand how the law can be weaponized against conservatives and, most importantly, how Schlafly, by then in her 90s, remained cheerfully undeterred.
In an hour-long meeting in the Oval Office with the president last week, half the conversation was about Schlafly, and Trump’s gratitude to her and Martin.
“She never wavered,” Trump told Martin.
Neither has Martin, and Trump knows it.
“Ed Martin has been with me from the very beginning, and done an incredible job,” Trump posted on Truth Social after their meeting.
“Ed is now leaving to go outside to fight Legal Battles for the upcoming Midterm Election, and the Presidential Election of 2028. I know he will do an outstanding job, ensure Free, Fair, and Honest Elections, and strongly advance our Constitutional Rights.”
Martin sees the president as “the greatest fruit of the Norman Vincent Peale American movement.”
He said Trump embraced the themes of Peale’s famous book “The Power of Positive Thinking,” and he also internalized “the Horatio Alger myth of America” popularized by Peale, which holds that “every American can pull himself up by his bootstraps . . . In the 1940s [as the] GI Bill kicked in and the greatest shift of working-class Americans into the middle and upper class happened, it was the Horatio Alger story that became the American myth.
“Trump lived that from his own family and those around him that’s what he’s trying to get America to be again.”
Read more Sparks’ Cameron Brink blasts Enes Kanter Freedom over trans athletes: ‘Stupid piece of s—t’
In a way, Schlafly and Martin forged the origin story of MAGA.
“No MAGA left behind” was Martin’s motto as pardon attorney.
Thus Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former lawyer, Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, election lawyers John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and Christina Bobb, and Tina Peters, a Colorado clerk caught up in another election witch-hunt, were all pardoned.
Every week, Post columnist Miranda Devine sits down for exclusive and candid conversations with the most influential disruptors in Washington on ‘Pod Force One.’ Subscribe here!
So was Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner who was targeted by the same Biden DOJ that was protecting the then-president’s son. Where there was injustice, abuse of the system and unequal treatment, Martin set about putting things right.
He said as soon as the Democrats lost in 2016, they embarked on a decade-long operation to take down Trump and his world. Once in power under Biden, they weaponized the DOJ to attack Trump and protect Joe Biden.
“When the system is lacking in transparency and the rules change depending on who you are, this is not just unfair but a problem of the administration of justice,” he said.
The system is working against the citizen.
Ready to ‘fight’
“Reagan used to say ‘trust but verify’ about Soviet communism. My experience after all of this, when it comes to the government in this era of lawfare, is ‘distrust and rectify.’ ”
Of course, Martin is attacked daily by Deep State exiles like disgraced former FBI Deputy Director and Russiagate plotter Andrew McCabe and Liz Oyer, Joe Biden’s pardon attorney.
Oyer criticizes Martin on lefty podcasts over pardons of conservative Trump allies, despite the fact that on her watch, Biden pardoned his son. Not to mention the autopen.
Oyer calls Martin “one of the most dangerous people in the Justice Department,” a criticism he wears like a badge of honor, although his boss, AG Todd Blanche, was discomfited by his cowboy ways.
But Martin appears to hold no ill will and is focused on his next task: energizing a moribund MAGA base to get out and vote at the midterms.
His prime vehicle is also his favorite cause: defending the Second Amendment. One of his last acts as pardon attorney was to oversee the new Federal Firearm Rights Restoration rule, which allows non-violent felons to request clemency “so that they can once again protect themselves, their families and businesses, and know again the joys of gun collecting, target range practice and hunting.”
“The Second Amendment is so important that it trumps a felony conviction,” he said. It “is the stabilizer for our American nation.”
He said 30 million Americans, including felons, have lost their Second Amendment rights in a concerted encroachment over more than 30 years.
He said he won’t be trying to speak to swing voters or soccer moms but to MAGA people, to get them to understand what Trump has achieved.
“I want to fight, fight, fight for the midterm elections. Get out the vote of conservatives and Second Amendment supporters.
“Midterm elections are always tough, but we have a great argument to make about what we’ve done.”
Read more Amish threaten mass exodus from New York over vaccine fight —which is heading to the Supreme Court
