Rep. Gerry Connolly, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, plans to investigate Washington’s top prosecutor for making threats against the Trump administration’s political adversaries — including one of his own members.
In a letter shared first with POLITICO, Connolly, a Virginia lawmaker, announced he was leading the minority party in a probe against Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Connolly is requesting materials related to Martin’s inquiries into Democratic officials, arguing that Martin is moving to suppress political expression.
One of Martin’s targets is Rep. Robert Garcia, a California Democrat who recently said on CNN that Americans want “us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for Democracy.” The remarks were in the context of President Donald Trump’s effort to transform the federal bureaucracy with Elon Musk. Martin responded by investigating Garcia, noting the comments sounded like a threat against a public official.
“The safety of federal employees and officials is self-evidently paramount and emphatically must remain an ironclad priority for the Department of Justice,” wrote Connolly to Martin. “Your recent public statements, however … raise serious concerns that your new initiative is a pretext for misusing your office for political ends, threatening and intimidating critics of the Administration, and chilling constitutionally protected speech.”
Ultimately, Connolly’s powers are limited in a Republican majority — he does not have subpoena power or the authority to schedule hearings or otherwise drive a committee agenda. But his decision to make a political statement underscores the boiling anger from Democrats toward Martin, who has yet to be confirmed by the full Senate to take on this role in a permanent capacity.
Martin has bucked precedent that U.S. attorneys generally act independently of White House politics, suggesting that his confirmation battle could be one of the next flash-point personnel fights across the Capitol.
He has also launched an effort dubbed “Operation Whirlwind” to prosecute individuals who threaten public officials — and broken with recent norms by publicly disclosing his office’s investigations. Connolly argued in his letter that Martin’s “politically selective approach to law enforcement violates DOJ policies, breaches your ethical obligations, and constitutes a misuse of your office.”
