Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., speaks to reporters as he leaves the Senate floor in the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, March 13, 2025.
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A key Republican senator on Tuesday said he would not support the controversial nomination of Ed Martin, President Donald Trump’s pick to be the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, dealing a potentially fatal blow to Martin’s chances of winning Senate confirmation.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said, “I’ve indicated to the White House I wouldn’t support his nomination.”
Tillis cited Martin’s support for criminal defendants in Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot cases.
That riot began after Trump urged a crowd of his supporters to march to the Capitol that day and oppose the confirmation of Joe Biden’s election as president.
The Jan. 6 cases were prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. before Trump issued blanket pardons to defendants in the cases on his first day back in the White House in January.
Tillis’ decision is likely to doom Martin’s hope of his nomination even being reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Tillis is a member.
With Tillis as a “no” vote, the best that Martin could hope for from that committee is a tie vote of 11-11, with Republicans and Democrats evenly split. A tie vote would fail to report Martin out of the committee and onward to a confirmation vote in the full Senate.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on Monday night did not add Martin’s nomination to the panel’s business meeting agenda, which signaled his chance of being approved was in peril.
“I want to put people on the agenda that I can help the president be successful in his nominees and that’s all I can say at this point,” Grassley told reporters Tuesday.
“I want the president’s nominees to be successful, and that means we put on people that have the votes.” Grassley said.
Martin currently is serving as interim U.S. attorney for D.C., but his term will expire on May 20.
Tillis told reporters that he met with Martin on Monday evening and that it went well.
“But let me be very clear,” Tillis said,
“Mr. Martin did a good job of explaining the one area that I think he’s probably right, that there were some people that were over-prosecuted, but there were some [200 to 300 of them] that should have never gotten a pardon,” Tillis said.
“If Mr. Martin were being put forth as a U.S. attorney for any district except the district where Jan. 6 happened, the protest happened, I’d probably support him, but not in this district.”
Tillis said that he believed that any member of the crowd on Jan. 6 outside the Capitol who breached the perimeter should have been in prison for some period of time.
“Whether it’s 30 days or three years is debatable, but I have no tolerance for anybody who entered the building on January the sixth, and that’s probably where most of the friction was,” he said.
