Ed Martin isn’t coming clean about his ties to an alleged Nazi sympathizer

Ed Martin, the far-right activist–turned–acting US attorney for DC, apologized this week for praising an alleged Nazi sympathizer at an event last year.

But Martin’s ties to Timothy Hale-Cusanelli—who is known for wearing a Hitler-style mustache and who once allegedly told a co-worker that the Nazis “should have finished the job”—are far more extensive than just that one meeting.

Martin told the Forward this week that he was “sorry” for bestowing an award on Hale-Cusanelli during an August 2024 event at Donald Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

“I denounce everything about what that guy said, everything about the way he talked, and all as I’ve now seen it,” Martin said. “At the time, I didn’t know it.”

Martin was not specific in the portions of interview quoted by the Forward, but he seemed to suggest that he previously had known only of a photo in which Hale-Cusanelli wore a Hitler-style mustache, not “the full scope of his repulsive behavior.” Martin reportedly said he now understands Hale-Cusanelli’s behavior was “clearly far more serious than a singular act that, by itself, might look like a mistake.” Martin’s office did not respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones.

Martin’s tenure as acting US attorney is set to expire May 20. His apology appears aimed at softening opposition from lawmakers in both parties as he seeks Senate confirmation to hold the post permanently. It is a notable exception to his general refusal to respond to the overwhelmingly negative press generated by his efforts to help Trump use the Justice Department as a partisan weapon. It appears that Martin believes his past praise for an alleged antisemite could be particularly damaging to his nomination.

But Martin’s suggestion that he was not familiar with the broader scope of Hale-Cusanelli’s alleged bigotry when he gave him an award is implausible. The prior month, in July 2024, Martin asked Hale-Cusanelli about his alleged extremism during an interview on a podcast hosted by Martin. Martin asserted on the program that the allegations, which emerged in court filings following Hale-Cusanelli’s indictment for entering the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were “leaked” by federal prosecutors in an effort to push the narrative that “MAGA people are antisemitic.”

“I’ve gotten to know him really well,” Martin said of Hale-Cusanelli during the show. “I’d say we’re friends.”

The two men know each other because Martin, a former “Stop the Steal” activist and lawyer for January 6 defendants, had served on the board of the Patriot Freedom Project, a nonprofit launched in 2021 by Cynthia Hughes, a New Jersey activist who refers to herself as Hale-Cusanelli’s “adoptive aunt.” Martin reported on a Senate financial disclosure form that he was paid $30,000 last year to serve on the board. Hughes, who did not respond to a request for comment, previously said she launched the group as a result of Hale-Cusanelli’s arrest and “incredibly unfair” treatment.

That treatment included court filings in which prosecutors called Hale-Cusanelli an “avowed white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer” and cited a litany of antisemitic and racist statements his former colleagues said they had heard him make. In a sentencing memo filed in September 2022, prosecutors also quoted a conversation secretly recorded by an unidentified person, in which Hale-Cusanelli said, “I really fucking wish there’d be a civil war.” In the same conversation, according to prosecutors, Hale-Cusanelli stated that he would like to give Jews and Democrats “24 hours to leave the country” and to have many of them arrested.

Prosecutors also noted a picture of Hale-Cusanelli sporting a Hitler-like mustache and hair style, an image that drew substantial media coverage.

Cusanelli was convicted on all counts at a jury trial this year. The judge — a Trump appointee, who has been skeptical of some J6 cases — panned Cusanelli’s testimony on the witness stand, where he claimed he didn’t know Congress met at the Capitol. /4 https://t.co/S4nkmnyBoA

— Marshall Cohen (@MarshallCohen) September 3, 2022

Hale-Cusanelli—who has said he has Jewish and Puerto Rican ancestry—testified during his trial that he is not antisemitic or racist. He said the statements prosecutors cited were meant to be “ironic” and “self-deprecating humor” intended to gain attention. Hale-Cusanelli did not respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones.

While imposing a 48-month prison sentence, Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, said Hale-Cusanelli’s “statements and actions” make Jews “less safe and less confident they can participate as equal members of our society.”

Martin sounded conversant on the details of the government’s accusations during a more than hourlong interview on July 2, 2024, on Martin’s podcast, video of which remains available on Rumble.

“They used your phone and…leaked the photo to say, ‘Look, these people, these MAGA people are antisemitic,’” Martin said. “And the photo was of you…you had, like, a mustache shaped in such a way that you looked vaguely like Hitler.”

The interview also covered same secretly recorded conversation in which Hale-Cusanelli and a confidential informant talked about Jews and civil war. Hale-Cusanelli told Martin that he was drunk when he made the statements later cited by prosecutors.

Martin repeatedly defended Hale-Cusanelli, arguing that prosecutors had improperly “leaked” the photo and other material from Hale-Cusanelli’s phone. (Hale-Cusanelli acknowledged that material, in fact, appeared in publicly filed court documents related to his detention.)

“I really think that your story is now sort of the quintessential example,” Martin said later.

That interview came amid multiple appearances that Hale-Cusanelli made at events with Martin last year. Those include a June event at Bedminster and the August 14 event at the club during which Martin gave Hale-Cusanelli an award for promoting “God, family, and country.”

Hale-Cusanelli’s presence at the Bedminster events gained attention when NPR reported on them in September. And Martin’s role attracted notice after he began serving as an acting US attorney in January. Martin’s ties to an alleged Nazi sympathizer were noted in a February bar complaint against him and in a March speech by Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering Martin’s nomination.

Still, weeks later, Martin appeared alongside Hale-Cusanelli at a March 24 fundraiser in Naples, Florida, for an organization that Martin previously ran.

As I reported with Amanda Moore, Martin was the keynote speaker at the event, which was attended by various January 6 defendants, including two who were convicted of seditious conspiracy and whose appeals Martin’s office is still opposing—an apparent conflict of interest. (Moore reports additional details on Martin’s ties to Hale-Cusanelli here.)

Martin did not address this event in his comments printed by the Forward. But at that fundraiser, there was no evidence of distance between Martin and Hale-Cusanelli.

In a speech at the event, Hale-Cusanelli called January 6 “a psy-op led by three-letter agencies.” And he said he had an ally in Martin, who has fired, demoted, and investigated former January 6 prosecutors, even as he has promoted, while acting as US attorney, a conspiracy theory that the FBI had a hand in the attack.

“Led by the current US attorney,” Hale-Cusanelli said, “we’re starting to see a vast restoration of the truth, which is that January 6 defendants were not criminals, they were in fact the victims…And we will expose these nefarious actors who set us up in the first place.”

In his own remarks, Martin did not denounce those claims.