Legal Ethics and Bar Discipline

Former acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin, a Trump ally later made a pardon attorney, has filed a notice in D.C. federal court to remove his ongoing D.C. Bar disciplinary case, arguing he is entitled to a federal forum to adjudicate his constitutional defenses. The bar is pursuing charges that Martin abused his office in 2025 by pressuring Georgetown Law over its diversity, equity and inclusion practices—threatening to blacklist its students from his office—and that he later interfered with the disciplinary process by contacting top D.C. judges directly to attack bar counsel and seek his suspension. Disciplinary counsel Hamilton Fox alleges Martin, acting as a government official, "knew or should have known" his conduct violated the First and Fifth Amendments, and that his ex parte outreach to judges seriously interfered with the administration of justice. Martin’s defense claims the bar lacks jurisdiction because he was acting under Trump’s presidential authority to enforce the Constitution and frames the bar action as retaliation for his own supposed investigation of Fox. The move to federal court, coming ahead of an April 20 prehearing conference, echoes a prior failed attempt by former Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark to get bar charges into federal court and is drawing attention among legal-ethics watchers who see it as part of a broader effort by Trump-aligned lawyers to test the limits of professional accountability.