At today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) slammed Ed Martin, nominee to be U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., and EPA Admin. Lee Zeldin, accusing them of making "knowingly false accusations of fraud."
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NewsTranscript
00:00Mr. Chairman, could I add a brief comment on the matter that the chairman just the ranking member just raised because I'm the ranking member in EPW and there's a matter in which Ed Martin is involved that relates to EPW as well as to this committee it's both and I just want to put this recent news article into the record that details the efforts both at EPA and at the Department of Justice to
00:29engage in what I considered be wrongful and willful abuse of the criminal justice system this is the matter I've mentioned before where Martin was told by his senior staff including the criminal division chief that he had no case to proceed with so he fired the criminal division chief no other prosecutor in this large DC office would sign the pleading for the same reasons there was no case there so he went ahead all by himself he went ahead all by himself and got shot down by the magistrate
00:59judge who said no there's no case then they went ahead to try to find other offices to join in after they'd been shot down in the meantime EPA and the Department of Justice were pursuing the same matter same allegations of supposed fraud in federal court related to the freeze and in that case they were they've now been twice told by the federal court you've made no case you have no evidence and both
01:28Martin the US attorney and Zeldin the EPA administrator have been making I would contend knowingly false accusations of fraud contrary to what they were told by their own career staff which rejected the allegations contrary to what they were told by the magistrate judge who rejected Martin's application and contrary to what they've been told twice by the federal court looking at the same matter that's pretty serious because when you're engaging in
01:57derogatory and defamatory statements from an official position you put the government at risk for liability and you are abusing your official powers so I'll leave it at that but I think that's kind of the that's the concern that I have about this nominee and why I think he needs a good vigorous public hearing