Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Federal Communications Commission Relating to ``Addressing the Homework Gap Through the E-Rate Program''
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the U.S. Department of Justice is a powerful Agency. The Attorney General heads it. Throughout the United States, there are over 90 U.S. attorneys who are the Federal prosecutors--a powerful position, a position that can make or break an individual or a corporation. Two of the most important and the most powerful are the Southern District of New York and the District of Columbia.
I come to the floor today to speak in opposition to the nomination of Ed Martin to be U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. I urge my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans: Closely examine this nominee's record.
Ed Martin's commentary and affiliations leave no doubt that he is unqualified to serve as the top Federal law enforcement individual for our Nation's Capital City. Nearly every day, new, disqualifying information surfaces.
Recently, ProPublica published a troubling report detailing Mr. Martin's conduct in multiple cases involving Eagle Forum, a conservative organization which has its roots in my home State of Illinois, formally led by well-known activist Phyllis Schlafly.
Within a year--within a year--of Mr. Martin becoming the head of the Eagle Forum, the board of directors of that organization fired him, in 2016, and they stated the reason: mismanagement and poor leadership.
A majority of the board also filed a lawsuit to bar him from any association with the organization. Instead of arguing his case in court, according to the ProPublica publication, Mr. Martin secretly orchestrated a social media campaign attacking the presiding Illinois judge.
Ironically, that judge, John Barberis from Madison County, IL-- directly across the river from St. Louis--was the only Republican judge sitting in that county at the time.
Mr. Martin went so far as to buy a laptop computer for a former colleague so that she could attack the judge on Facebook and ghostwrote posts for her.
Mr. Martin, who seeks to be the top Federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia, urged her to ``turn up the heat with others'' on the Facebook page of this judge and to ``[c]all what [the judge] did unfair and rigged over and over'' again--Mr. Martin's instruction to his colleague.
This outrageous effort to intimidate a judge is a clear violation of ethical norms and professional rules of conduct. It led to more than $600,000 in legal settlements or judgments against Mr. Martin or his employers.
In the Eagle Forum lawsuit, a judge held Mr. Martin in contempt of court, citing his ``willful disregard'' of a court order that barred him from interfering with the organization.
Remember, this is the President's choice to be the head U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and he is being held in contempt of court for willful disregard of a court order that barred him from interfering.
A jury found Mr. Martin liable for defamation of Phyllis Schlafly's daughter, Anne Schlafly Cori--a jury decision finding him liable for defamation--for, among other things--he shared a post on Facebook falsely claiming--listen to this--Mr. Martin shared a Facebook post falsely claiming that Anne Schlafly Cori should be charged with manslaughter in her mother's death.
Mr. Martin also has a disturbing history of downplaying the January 6 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol. He has made it a habit to attack the law enforcement officers who protected the Vice President, who sat before this Chamber, Members of the Senate, Members of the House, thousands of staffers, and visitors.
Those law enforcement individuals put their lives on the line for me and for all of us, but Mr. Martin doesn't see it that way.
He was at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 when he posted on social media, and I quote word for word what he said on January 6 about what was going on in this insurrection in the Capitol. Here is what he said:
Like Mardi Gras in DC today; love, faith, and joy. Ignore #FakeNews.
In August 2023, he excused violence by January 6 rioters, saying:
We have to have less judgment on somebody who hits a cop.
Ed Martin, seeking the U.S. attorney's post for the District of Columbia, said of the January 6 rioters:
We have to have less judgment on somebody who hits a cop.
He continued:
I've seen people hit a cop and that doesn't make it the end of the world.
Ed Martin, the top law enforcement officer in the District of Columbia--that is his quote.
He had the audacity to call Michael Fanone, a 20-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police Department who was nearly killed on January 6, ``a fake cop.''
``[A] fake cop.''
This disgusting and dangerous rhetoric puts at greater risk officers who already put their lives on the line every day to protect you and me and our families. This lack of respect for law enforcement is inconsistent with his goal to be the presiding U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
According to Mr. Martin, January 6 rioters who beat the cops are ``patriots''--his word; ``victims''--his word. He has also attacked prosecutors who were assigned to work on January 6 cases.
Incidentally, until he was selected for this position, he had never been a prosecutor. The top position in the U.S. Department of Justice in terms of U.S. attorneys--the District of Columbia--the man for the job never had any experience as a prosecutor.
He has also attacked the prosecutors who were assigned to work on January 6 cases. What does he call those prosecutors? ``Terrorists.'' His word. He said:
I shun them. I ostracize them. . . . These are despicable people.
Ed Martin.
Just as alarming, Mr. Martin has close ties to Timothy Hale- Cusanelli, a January 6 rioter and Nazi sympathizer.
Look at this picture. In 2024 alone, Mr. Martin interviewed Mr. Hale- Cusanelli at least five times. In one of these interviews, Mr. Martin said:
Tim Hale is an extraordinary guy. I have gotten to know him really well. I'd say we're friends.
Friends with a Nazi sympathizer. This is who the President believes should be the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
Ed Martin now claims that despite these five interviews that we know of, he was not aware of Mr. Hale-Cusanelli's anti-Semitic commentary or penchant for donning a Hitler mustache until after he had presented him personally with an award last July.
But Mr. Martin's own words demonstrate the opposite. Just weeks before this award ceremony, where Martin gives this man who dresses up as Hitler an award, Mr. Martin excused his dressing up as ``goofing around'' and claimed he is being ``smeared and slurred'' by allegations of anti-Semitism.
Documents filed in Mr. Hale-Cusanelli's criminal trial, he was a January 6 rioter, show that he has a long history of saying horrifying things. Let me give you one of Mr. Hale-Cusanelli's quotes, this man who was referred to as an ``extraordinary leader'' by Ed Martin.
Here is what he said:
Hitler should have finished the job.
Hale-Cusanelli. He also claimed that he ``would kill''--this is so disgusting. I hate to put it in the Record, but it has to be. He also claimed he ``would kill all the Jews and eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and he wouldn't need to season them because the salt from their tears would make it flavorful enough.''
This is the person that Ed Martin, the would-be prosecuting attorney for the District of Columbia, called ``an extraordinary man, an extraordinary leader.''
In a letter sent to the Judiciary Committee opposing Mr. Martin's nomination, 11 separate national Jewish organizations, representing more than 1 million people, wrote that Mr. Martin's associations are ``not only dangerous--they reveal a pattern of behavior incompatible with the responsibilities of a US Attorney, a role meant to uphold justice and [to] protect all communities, including Jewish Americans, from hate and extremism.''
On top of all of this, Mr. Ed Martin has failed to disclose to the Senate an unprecedented number of required requests for information. Of approximately 2,200 writings and remarks that he was required to submit to the Senate Judiciary Committee, he omitted at least 700--over 30 percent of his known record.
This includes his failure to disclose that he made nearly 150 appearances on networks funded and directed by the Russian Government, and interviews on Infowars--do you remember the term ``Infowars''?-- hosted by a man named Alex Jones, the rightwing conspiracy monger who falsely claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre of those little kids was false.
Just yesterday, my Judiciary Committee discovered more than 300 additional items that Mr. Martin failed to provide to the committee. This is the fifth time that Mr. Martin will be required to update his disclosures to the committee. This nominee is treating the Senate's constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent on his nomination with utter contempt.
Just to put this in context, omitting over 700 items, we discovered 300 more that he failed to disclose, in the previous history of the committee--all the staff have looked closely--when it comes to omissions, Mr. Martin wins the trophy permanently. Why? Because the most in any previous case before was fewer than 10, his is over 700 failures to disclose before the committee.
Mr. Ed Martin has his own history of making his own discriminatory comments. He baselessly called his fellow panelists on CNN ``black racists,'' and he later claimed, with no evidence, Mr. Martin said, ``[I] got fired because of the crazy Black ladies on CNN that demanded I be fired because I didn't take their nonsense.''
The fact that Ed Martin feels the need to note the race and gender of the people who cross him speaks volumes about his character. And in a speech that Martin did not disclose to the Judiciary Committee, we discovered he made the following statement:
You're not racist if you don't like Mexicans.
Just last year he said in an interview:
You show me a Jewish American--
Ed Martin said--
who feels good about the Democrat Administration, and I'll show you someone who is not really Jewish.''
How dare Ed Martin pass judgment on someone else's religious faith?
The serious concerns about Ed Martin's nomination have only been heightened by his conduct as an interim U.S. attorney. One of his first official acts after his appointment was to fire numerous prosecutors simply for handling the January 6 cases that were assigned to them.
He has also baselessly threatened to investigate numerous nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, lawmakers, and others simply because he disagrees with them politically.
The top prosecutor in the Nation's Capital should be focused on fighting violent crime and terrorism, not threatening our First Amendment rights.
Mr. Martin's record makes it clear that he does not have the temperament, the judgment, or the experience to be entrusted with the power and responsibility of being U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
I urge my Democratic and Republican colleagues to oppose his nomination.
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Mr. DURBIN. Cortez Masto), the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy), the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mrs. Shaheen), and the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Smith) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 50, nays 38, as follows: [Rollcall Vote No. 238 Leg.] YEAS--50 Banks Barrasso Blackburn Boozman Britt Budd Capito Cassidy Collins Cornyn Cotton Cramer Crapo Cruz Curtis Daines Ernst Fischer Graham Grassley Hagerty Hawley Hoeven Husted Hyde-Smith Johnson Justice Kennedy Lankford Lee Marshall McConnell McCormick Moody Moran Moreno Mullin Murkowski Paul Ricketts Rounds Schmitt Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Sheehy Sullivan Thune Tillis Tuberville Young NAYS--38 Alsobrooks Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Blunt Rochester Booker Cantwell Coons Durbin Gillibrand Hassan Heinrich Hickenlooper Hirono Kaine Kelly Kim King Lujan Markey Merkley Murray Ossoff Peters Reed Rosen Sanders Schatz Schiff Schumer Slotkin Van Hollen Warner Warnock Warren Welch Whitehouse Wyden NOT VOTING--12 Cortez Masto Duckworth Fetterman Gallego Klobuchar Lummis Murphy Padilla Risch Shaheen Smith Wicker
The joint resolution (S.J. Res. 7) was passed as follows: S.J. Res. 7
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to ``Addressing the Homework Gap Through the E-Rate Program'' (89 Fed. Reg. 67303 (August 20, 2024)), and such rule shall have no force or effect.
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