In his first full week as the Justice Department’s pardon attorney, Ed Martin personally reviewed a pardon application for Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.
Peter Ticktin, a lawyer and former classmate of President Donald Trump’s at New York Military Academy, hand delivered a collection of 11 pardon applications to Martin at the Justice Department on Thursday, including one for Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 18 years in prison in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
“I know Ed Martin and I felt it was important to bring these particular applications to his attention,” Ticktin told POLITICO.
The effort to submit new pardon applications to Martin was arranged by Ticktin and pardoned Jan. 6 rioter Treniss Evans, both now in leadership positions with a conservative nonprofit, American Rights Alliance. Martin shared a photo of the May 22 meeting on X over the weekend, but the names of the 11 pardon applicants have not been previously reported.
Proud Boys members Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola are also among those who submitted new applications since Martin’s appointment, according to Ticktin and Evans.
While Trump pardoned or dismissed cases for nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 rioters on his first day back in office, certain prominent participants convicted of seditious conspiracy had their sentences commuted to time served — a lesser form of clemency than outright pardons. Some have continued to lobby publicly for their commutations to be converted into pardons.
While Martin made no assurances that Trump would grant pardons to the 11 applicants, Ticktin said, he did pledge to advance the applications to White House pardon czar Alice Johnson for review. Johnson, who Trump pardoned during his first term, serves in a newly created position at the White House advising the president on candidates for pardons. Martin was most recently serving as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, but his nomination to be confirmed to the position failed because of his ties to Jan. 6 rioters.
“I really appreciated the way he looked at everything carefully and wanted to make sure that he was doing his job,” Ticktin said.
The Justice Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. An attorney for Rhodes did not respond to requests for comment.
Dozens of Proud Boys, a far-right fraternal organization known for engaging in political violence, were convicted on obstruction or assault charges for their actions during the Jan. 6 riot. At least 20 members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia group were convicted on similar charges.
An attorney for Biggs urged Trump to grant his client’s latest pardon application, citing Biggs’ Army service.
“He earned a Purple Heart placing his life at risk and becoming seriously injured on behalf of the United States,” attorney Norm Pattis said. “A commutation is wonderful, but a pardon gets him his pension back.”
Martin has a long history of advocating for people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection. The Missouri lawyer has spent the last four years raising money for Jan. 6 legal defense funds and personally representing defendants in court. Martin was on Capitol Hill during the riot and posted on social media that afternoon comparing the event to “Mardi Gras.” During his interim stint as the chief federal prosecutor in Washington, Martin fired dozens of prosecutors who oversaw Jan. 6 cases.
Now, fresh off his failed nomination to serve in that job full time, Martin takes control of the pardon office as the first political appointee in modern history to do so and will also serve as the director of the Justice Department’s weaponization working group and associate deputy attorney general under Trump’s former personal lawyer Todd Blanche.
“It’s unprecedented to have a political appointee in the position of pardon attorney, and it suggests that this administration intends to wield the clemency power differently than presidents prior have,” said Liz Oyer, the previous pardon attorney who was fired by Blanche in March.
Led by career Justice Department officials, the office of the pardon attorney reviews applications for clemency and makes recommendations to the president for candidates who have met various criteria.
Presidents of both parties have gone around the pardon attorney for politically sensitive pardons — Trump granted clemency to his political advisers Paul Manafort and Roger Stone in the final days of his first term and President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter and other family members before leaving office.
But Martin has already demonstrated a willingness to evaluate controversial pardon applications through the office, based on the early applications on his desk.
At the top of the pile submitted to Martin last week was a pardon application for Jonathan Woods, a former Arkansas state senator indicted in early 2017 on federal bribery charges who was ultimately convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison. The case against Woods was prosecuted in part by the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section (PIN) which was led by former special counsel Jack Smith from 2010 to 2015. Smith’s deputy at the special counsel’s office and his successor as the chief of PIN, Ray Hulser, signed the indictment against Woods.
“It’s my firm belief that any case that Jack Smith prosecuted should be looked at,” Evans said. “We don’t break the law to quote unquote uphold the law, and that’s what happened in many of these cases, which is why pardons are justified.”
Reviewing cases related to Smith’s former unit could fall within Martin’s other remit as the weaponization working group director. A February memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi calls for the working group to examine “weaponization by special counsel Jack Smith and his staff.”
“He is running an entire weaponization investigation out of the deputy attorney general’s office and no one is there to tell him no,” said a former Justice Department official granted anonymity to speak candidly about private conversations with colleagues still in the department.
Martin has already pledged to investigate pardons Biden granted to his family members and members of the Jan. 6 select committee, calling the preemptive pardons “something we’ve never seen in history.”
Martin’s many roles have raised concerns among former department officials, who worry he may seek out politically expedient pardon candidates to please the president while simultaneously using investigations to target Trump’s political opponents, even if there are no prosecutable crimes. Martin himself said at a press conference earlier this month if some people "can't be charged, we will name them" and certain people should be "shamed."
“The fact that Martin also has this other portfolio … certainly suggests that his role is going to be one that is highly political and that he will be coming to the pardon attorney role with a political agenda,” Oyer said. “And that is very concerning.”
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