St. Louis’ Ed Martin recently lost his job as chair of the Justice Department’s Weaponization Working Group after three federal prosecutions against Trump enemies had faltered.
At almost the same time, two other Missourians emerged in the forefront of the president’s effort to relitigate the results of the 2020 election, which he lost. They are Deputy FBI Director Andrew Bailey, the former Missouri Attorney General, and Thomas Albus, the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. Albus signed the search warrant application for the extraordinary FBI raid in Fulton County last month and is reported to have been named to head investigations into election fraud nationally.
The raid in Fulton County was highly unusual for several reasons.
- It involved the 2020 election, long since certified. The statute of limitations on most possible relevant statutes have passed.
- The ballots in Fulton County were counted, recounted and hand counted and their accuracy certified by the Republican Secretary of State and governor.
- It is unusual for a U.S. Attorney in St. Louis to sign a search warrant for Atlanta.
- Bailey was present at the raid along with Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. Director of National Intelligence. Trump had reportedly instructed Gabbard to be present to guard “election security.”
- When Gabbard met with the FBI agents after the search, she dialed up Trump who talked briefly to her and the agents.
- The president followed up the raids by calling twice for nationalization of the elections and for the Republican Party to take actions to prevent fraud in blue states. Steve Bannon followed that up by saying ICE agents will be present at voting places.
A career of hyper-partisanship and fractured relationships
Martin has a track record of losing top jobs dating back to 2007 when Republican Gov. Matt Blunt forced him out as chief of staff for destroying emails that were public records. After becoming Phyllis Schlafly’s top aide at the Eagle Forum, Martin was at the center of divisions that fractured the group.
Trump, a few minutes after his inauguration, appointed Martin interim U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, an especially important post in any administration. In that job he quickly fired about 30 Justice Department lawyers who had prosecuted the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters. Martin had been a leader of those “Stop the Steal” protesters, speaking to the assembling pro-Trump group the night of Jan. 5, 2021.
After rioters were charged, he defended them and sought pardons, which Trump provided shortly after he was inaugurated. Martin, as interim U.S. attorney quickly disbanded the Capitol siege office that had conducted the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history. Instead he ordered the investigation investigated.
Martin also instigated a First Amendment run-in with Dean William M. Treanor of Georgetown University law school. He wrote to Treanor, who has since retired, that the government had reliable information that “Georgetown Law School continues to teach and promote DEI,” adding, “This is unacceptable.” He demanded that the law school tell him by the end of February 2025 if DEI “has been removed from the curriculum.” Martin went on to say his office wouldn’t hire graduates of Georgetown if the school did not remove DEI from its curriculum.
Dean Treanor replied March 6, 2025 that Martin’s letter “challenges Georgetown’s ability to define our mission as an educational institution. He wrote that the “First Amendment guarantees that the government cannot direct what Georgetown or its faculty teach and how to teach it.”
Because the First Amendment does not allow the government to interfere with the university’s curriculum, Martin’s threat not to hire its graduates because of that curriculum is also a violation of the First Amendment, Treanor said.
Moreover, it was “an attack on the university’s mission as a Jesuit and Catholic institution,” he wrote. ” He said Martin had violated the Catholic principle that “serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical and spiritual understanding.”
Martin is a devout Catholic, graduate of Saint Louis University Law School and once was once director of the Human Rights office at the St. Louis Archdiocese. He also attended Holy Cross and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
Failed to fully disclose his interviews on the Russian propaganda arm
Last year, Martin lost support for the U.S. attorney position from Sen. Thom Tilles, R-N.C., after he failed to disclose that he had frequently been a guest on Russia Today, a propaganda arm for Russia. One of the most important jobs of the U.S. Attorney in D.C. is to prosecute intelligence cases, which often involve Russian espionage.
After withdrawing Martin’s U.S. Attorney nomination, Trump named him to head the Weaponization Working Group that Attorney General Pam Bondi had created.
The name of the working group was meant as a criticism of the Biden administration for investigating Trump and his allies. Trump himself quickly made it clear that he wanted Bondi to prosecute his political enemies.
The president accidentally posted to Truth Social a message he had meant to send privately to Bondi.
“What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia???” he wrote, referring to former FBI Director James Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” he claimed, adding, “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.
“They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” his post concluded.
The job of the working group also included investigations of alleged abuse of prosecutorial discretion by former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election and the New York criminal and civil cases against Trump and his company.
During the investigation of Attorney General James, Martin was photographed in front of James’ Clinton Hill brownstone in a beige trench coat, a look that critics called a “Columbo-esque” stunt. DOJ charges against Comey and James fell apart after the department hurriedly appointed a prosecutor with weak qualifications and mishandled the grand jury process.
CNN reported this week that Martin was removed as chair of the task force not because of excesses but because he had failed to deliver. “The fact is that Ed was given all the opportunities to lead this group and deliver on its mission, but he did nothing,” a person familiar with the efforts of the working group told CNN. “Others across the Department have since been making great progress and doing the work that should have been happening under Ed’s leadership.” CNN also reported that the working group has begun meeting every day to deliver.
CNN also reported that one of the reasons for Martin’s apparent demotion was that a Justice Department review found he had improperly handled grand jury materials that were part of the department’s mortgage fraud inquiry into Schiff and James. Martin allegedly shared the grand jury information with people not authorized to receive it, the sources told CNN.
Missourians involvement in Fulton County search
The unusual search in Atlanta is connected to Trump’s continuing claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him in Georgia and it appears to be laying the ground for the president’s plans to exert control over the 2026 midterms and other future elections.
Albus, Trump’s interim U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis, was the top assistant to former Attorney General Eric Schmitt at the time Schmitt joined with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to file a Hail Mary challenge to the 2020 election. The appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court challenged the results of presidential races in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The suit not only was widely viewed by lawyers as lacking legal merit, but it also would have removed the votes of millions of Black voters in big cities such as Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The Supreme Court turned down the case without hearing arguments. The failed effort was pulled together by D. John Sauer, then Missouri Solicitor General and now Trump’s Solicitor General.
Albus has not publicly commented on why he signed for the warrant instead of the U.S. Attorney in Atlanta. But the unusual procedure resulted in raised eyebrows.
Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and former U.S. Attorney, wrote in Bloomberg: “The appointment of Albus raises concerns not only about the potential for manufactured crimes but also about the risk of undermining the integrity of elections in 2026 and 2028.
“Even more troubling,” McQuade added, “is that Albus has also received a special appointment from Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate election fraud cases nationwide.”
St. Louis lawyers say privately that Albus is sharp and ambitious.
Bailey an election denier
Bailey, who succeeded Schmitt as Missouri Attorney General before Trump appointed him deputy director of the FBI, also was present at the Fulton County raid. The deputy director of the FBI isn’t often on the scene of this kind of action.
Bailey is an election denier as well. In a debate for Missouri attorney general before the 2024 election, Bailey said the 2020 presidential election was “absolutely stolen. The left stole that election by changing the rules of the game at the 11th hour. They’re going to try to steal this one (2024) by silencing our voices on big tech social media platforms, by stifling us in the mainstream media and by packing the polling places with criminal illegal aliens that shouldn’t be here in the first place.”
Gabbard’s presence at the Fulton County search was more surprising because of her international security portfolio.
Asked by Democrats in Congress why she was there, Gabbard wrote in a letter that Trump had specifically requested she attend the search “under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security.”
Gabbard said she had called Trump from Fulton County and he had spoken to agents who conducted the raid.
Last July Gabbard claimed there was “overwhelming evidence” that former President Barack Obama and others in his administration manipulated intelligence to “lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump” — a claim fact checked as misleading.
Trump and 18 co-defendants were charged in 2023 with violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute, which would have had a penalty of 5–20 years in prison.
Trump had famously told Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.” Raffensperger refused because of the multiple counts of the ballots.
(Last November a special prosecutor dropped the charges against Trump because he was president and a trial could not occur until 2029 and even then would face presidential immunity issues.)
Several courts have found that the Trump team’s election claims in Georgia were false and defamatory. Rudy Giuliani — himself a former associate attorney general—blamed two Georgia poll workers for stuffing the ballot boxes in Fulton County, subjecting the women to a wave of social media attacks. Giuliani eventually admitted his statements were defamatory and paid to settle. Fox also had to pay almost a billion dollars to settle a defamation case related to claims that the Georgia race was stolen and the Gateway Pundit in St. Louis had to settle with the Georgia poll workers.
President Trump, just before midnight on Feb. 5, posted a video of false fraud claims about the 2020 election. The last few seconds of the post showed the Obamas as apes, a frequent racist trope. The White House accused Democrats of “fake outrage” about the depiction.
Trump wants to nationalize elections in blue states
In the days after the Fulton County search, Trump advocated nationalizing the elections. During an appearance on a podcast by Dan Bongino, a right-wing influencer who was deputy FBI director before Bailey, Trump put it this way:
“The Republicans should say: ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least 15 places.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
Steve Bannon, during his influential War Room show, expanded on Trump’s comment.
“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November,” “We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”
Bannon echoed Trump and Bailey’s lie that undocumented immigrants corrupt the polls, claiming that only about 20% of real voters select Democrats. This lie about undocumented immigrants voting has been part of the Republicans’ campaign pitch since 1994, the year after Democrats under President Bill Clinton passed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the so-called Motor Voter Act, which made it easier to register voters. In 1994, Republicans accused Democrats of winning elections by turning to “illegal,” immigrant voters.
Martin, in addition to heading the Weaponization Working Group, took over as the Justice Department’s pardon attorney last spring. He remains pardon attorney, but there are reports he may soon leave that post as well.
Jeremy Kohler, former investigative reporter for the Post-Dispatch, reported last November in a ProPublica investigation, that “the beneficiaries of President Donald Trump’s mercy in his second term have mostly been people with access to the president or his inner circle. Those who have followed the rules set out by the Department of Justice, meanwhile, are still waiting. Trump has granted clemency to allies, donors and culture-war figures — as well as felons who, like him, were convicted of financial wrongdoing.”
Kohler added: “Martin’s dual role was a sign that pardons had become more overt political weapons. He pledged to scrutinize Biden-era pardons and review what he described as a ‘weaponized’ justice system. After Trump pardoned Scott Jenkins, a sheriff in Virginia and a longtime supporter convicted of taking bribes for political favors, Martin posted on X, ‘No MAGA left behind.’”
William H. Freivogel is publisher of GJR. While deputy bureau chief of the Post-Dispatch’s Washington Bureau, he wrote about the Supreme Court and the Justice Department, including Giuliani’s role as President Reagan’s associate attorney general. Later, as deputy editorial editor, Freivogel interacted frequently with Martin.
