Trump's ‘Weaponization' Lawyer Raised Cash for Violent Jan. 6 Militia Members

Yahoo

16-05-2025

The lawyer whom Donald Trump has empowered to investigate the Jan. 6 prosecutors previously helped run a nonprofit that raised money for dozens of people who were charged with the most serious offenses, including sedition, conspiracy, and assaulting police officers at the U.S. Capitol.
Serving as Trump's interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, the jurisdiction that oversaw the Jan. 6 cases, Ed Martin fired many of the Jan. 6 prosecutors upon taking office. In an even more Orwellian twist, he has now been named the director of the Justice Department's 'Weaponization Working Group,' which is expected to investigate what it calls the 'unethical prosecutions' of Jan. 6 defendants. In other words, one of the chief advocates for Jan. 6 criminals will now be in a position to exact retribution on their prosecutors.
Martin, who's also now the Justice Department's pardon attorney, helped lead the Patriot Freedom Project, a controversial nonprofit that supports Jan. 6 defendants and their families. A majority of the defendants that Patriot Freedom Project supported were convicted of assaulting police officers or more serious offenses, according to a Rolling Stone analysis of the group's website and other online sources.
Trump previously appointed Martin as the interim D.C. U.S. Attorney, despite his having zero prosecutorial experience. His nomination to that role on a permanent basis fell apart amid scrutiny of Martin's connections to a Hitler-impersonating Jan. 6 defendant, Timothy Hale-Cusanelli.
Rolling Stone has uncovered additional evidence linking Martin and Hale (we are observing what appears to be his preferred last name). That includes the program from a 2023 Patriot Freedom Project event, attended by Martin, at a Trump property where Hale's story was featured across three pages.
A high-profile religious conservative attorney who emerged from Missouri politics, Martin has served as the state Republican Party chair and as a chief of staff to a GOP governor, and also ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Congress and state attorney general. Martin is connected to the old-guard GOP — he was a protege of Phyllis Schlafly, the anti-feminist doyenne of the Reagan era — but eagerly embraced the party's MAGA makeover, co-authoring with Schlafly a 2016 book titled The Conservative Case for Trump.
For the past decade, Martin was the president of Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, an ultra-conservative nonprofit that co-sponsored the Jan. 6 rally on the ellipse and subsequent March for Trump that culminated in the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. Evangelicals and Christian nationalists were critical factions that day and in the preceding weeks.
The Schlafly Eagles were deeply involved in an important precursor to Jan. 6 — the evangelical Jericho March in D.C. on Dec.12, 2020, as both a co-sponsor and the fiscal sponsor for the lead organizers. Featured speakers listed on the archived event website included faith leaders, right-wing extremists, and advocates like Martin. (A devout Catholic, Ed Martin has written that 'it's okay to be a Christian nationalist.') One unlisted speaker was the founder of the Oath Keepers militia, Stewart Rhodes, who called on then-President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to call up veterans and militias to help him remain in power, warning of a 'much more desperate [and] much more bloody war' if Trump did not do so.
Rolling Stone has exclusive reporting detailing how Martin aided right-wing extremists, through his work as a member of the three-person board for the Trump-endorsed Patriot Freedom Project.
Our reporters conducted a comprehensive review of the organization's website, including archived, public, and hidden pages going back to July 2021, and other online sources including X, Substack, and Rumble. We were able to identify roughly 100 Jan. 6 defendants affiliated with the group, who received various levels of support. Direct support includes any resources, whether legal or financial, provided by the Patriot Freedom Project to the defendant or their family, while indirect support indicates that the organization promoted the crowdfunding account of the defendant to help them raise money. There are likely other unknown defendants who received support.
Martin co-authored a column in December 2024 with Patriot Freedom Project founder Cynthia Hughes, arguing that violent J6ers were not the norm: 'While it's true that some individuals crossed the line on January 6, they do not represent the majority. Violence against law enforcement cannot be tolerated, but it's equally important to recognize that the actions of a few have unfairly stigmatized an entire group.'
However, the Patriot Freedom Project supported, either directly or indirectly, more than 50 defendants who were convicted of assaulting police officers on Jan. 6, according to Rolling Stone's review.
Martin, himself, was the defense attorney for three dangerous Jan. 6 offenders affiliated with the group — including two men convicted of assaulting police officers, and a Proud Boy who threatened an officer's life with an axe handle.
Whether or not Martin was compensated for this work is unclear. He has claimed it was pro bono. Martin listed a $30,000 board stipend from the Patriot Freedom Project in his financial disclosure to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Rolling Stone reached out to Martin, Hughes, and the Patriot Freedom Project for this story and did not receive responses.
Rolling Stone confirmed that some of the most violent Jan. 6 offenders received funding directly from Patriot Freedom Project: Oath Keepers militia lieutenants Jessica Watkins and Kenneth Harrelson, and a top Proud Boy, Zach Rehl; decorated Army vet Robert Morss, who used his military training to coordinate rioters; and Albuquerque Head and Kyle Young, two members of the mob that viciously beat, tazed, and robbed Officer Michael Fanone.
Key defendants with crowdfunding accounts that were promoted on the Patriot Freedom Project website included top Proud Boys Rehl and Dominic Pezzola; and Oath Keepers leaders Kelly Meggs, Joseph Hackett, Watkins, and Harrelson. In 2021, Martin himself expressed solidarity with the militia group, tweeting: 'Oath Keepers are all of us.'
Meggs, a top lieutenant to Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes, led the militia's Florida chapter. Both men were convicted of seditious conspiracy and received a terrorism enhancement to their sentences. In May 2023, Meggs was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison. Joseph Hackett, who participated in the military stack formation under Meggs, was also convicted of seditious conspiracy, and received 3.5 years.
Another convicted seditionist is Rehl, a member of the Proud Boys' 'Ministry of Self Defense,' which helped lead the violent assault on the Capitol, breaking through barricades, fencing, and windows. Rehl also 'sprayed an officer in the face,' according to the Justice Department. He received a 15-year sentence. Rehl's colleague Dominic Pezzola used a stolen police shield to break the first window at the Capitol; he was acquitted of sedition, but received a 10-year sentence.
Oath Keepers and Army veterans Watkins and Harrelson helped to coordinate weapons and combat training ahead of and during Jan. 6 with national leaders, but escaped seditious conspiracy convictions with 8.5- and four-year sentences. In a support letter published on the website, Watkins thanked the Patriot Freedom Project for helping her to ditch her public defender and secure a 'wonderful' new attorney.
All of these militia members received commutations from Trump during his Day One clemency spree for J6ers. The Oath Keepers' probation barring travel to the Capitol was terminated by none other than former Patriot Freedom Project board member and interim D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin.
It wasn't just Martin's advocacy for insurrectionists that tanked his confirmation, but also his easily disproven testimony to the Senate about the nature of his relationship with Tim Hale — the now-pardoned Jan. 6 felon infamous for a self-portrait sporting a Hitler-like stache — whom Martin honored with a Phyllis Schlafly Eagles award at Trump's club in Bedminster in 2024. (Martin later tweeted at Hale about the event: 'Proud to be with you, Tim.')
In testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Martin insisted, 'I am not close' with Hale and 'do not have close, consistent interactions with him.'
According to Sen. Dick Durbin (D. Ill.), the ranking member on the committee: 'Mr. Martin told me that he hadn't seen photos of Mr. Hale with a Hitler mustache prior to that award ceremony.' And Martin told The Forward that he'd been ignorant of Hale's inflammatory rhetoric. 'I denounce everything about what that guy said,' adding that at the time he praised Hale at Bedminster, 'I didn't know it.'
But in an hour-long interview, taped prior to that awards ceremony, Martin talks to Hale in detail about the photo, 'where you resemble Hitler, or whatever,' as Martin put it. Martin suggested, in the discussion, that Hale was 'goofing around' by posing for Führer photos.
Patriot Freedom Project was founded by Hale's 'adoptive aunt,' Cynthia Hughes, in response to his incarceration.
At the time of his participation in the insurrection, Hale was an enlisted Army Reservist and held a 'secret' security clearance. In Sept. 2022, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia (the office Martin had hoped to lead permanently) obtained a felony conviction against Hale, who was sentenced to federal prison for 48 months — including an enhancement for obstructing justice during the trial. Justice Department documents describe how Hale 'joined a mob of rioters that illegally breached a police line' and 'commanded others in the mob to 'advance' on the Capitol, a command he continued once inside.' Hale threatened law enforcement with an impending 'revolution' while later telling a friend that the 'tree of liberty must be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants.'
According to court records, dozens of Hale's coworkers described him as an extremist who made 'abhorrent' statements, including that 'Hitler should have finished the job'; that 'Jews, women, and Blacks were on the bottom of the totem pole'; and that babies with disabilities should be shot. Prosecutors characterized Hale as a ''white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer.''
In Sept. 2023, Martin hosted a fundraising dinner celebrating the work of Patriot Freedom Project during his group's annual Schlafly Eagles Council in St. Louis. Hughes thanked him for 'being such a great mentor and friend, and listening to me at 7 a.m. or 2 a.m.' before launching into the story of Tim Hale. Being born 'on the spectrum' to a dysfunctional mother led to his being 'rough around the edges' and having an affinity for 'insensitive' jokes that caused the judge to punish him 'for doing nothing,' in Hughes' telling. ('Sometimes I call him a real jackass to be quite honest with you,' she added, before insisting 'he's got a heart of gold.')
A reporter for this story was in the audience that night and obtained a copy of the dinner program, which Patriot Freedom Project reused from an event the previous month at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, attended by Martin and Donald Trump. In the 18-page glossy booklet, which has not previously been reported, the Patriot Freedom Project devoted three pages to Hale, who was incarcerated at the time.
On the first of the three pages, a note from Hughes alludes to Hale's controversial rhetoric: 'it has not been easy to defend Tim and his bombastic and large personality.' Her note is paired with a photo of Hale sporting military fatigues and a hairstyle known as the 'undercut' that is popular with the alt-right. Whether or not it was intentional, the unusual lighting on his face casts a high-contrast shadow on his upper lip that looks similar to a Hitler mustache.
The following page features a further Nazi parallel — a prison manifesto written by Hale entitled 'My Gamble,' in which he talks of 'reclaim[ing] the American dream for a thousand years' and asserts, 'These are the new hinge years, like it or not.' Of course, Hitler infamously wrote his own prison manifesto, 'My Struggle' or 'Mein Kampf,' and championed the idea of the 'Thousand-Year Reich.'
'Hinge years' refer to critical turning points of history. The period of Hitler's rise to power from 1929 to 1933 has been cited in this context. (Law enforcement found copies of 'Mein Kampf' and other white nationalist literature in Hale's home.)
Hale did not respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone via his attorney. On his social media feed on X, Hale continues to insist his impersonation of Hitler was a bit. His handle on X reads 'Tim Hale — Criminally Funny J6er.' Hale recently tweeted at a critic: 'I'm a satirist, not a neo-Nazi, moron.'
The program also includes an email from Hale to Trump from 2022. It refers to Hale's well-publicized extremism: 'A lot has been said about me by our lying government and press. Many ugly things. Many things attributed to me that have been taken out of context.' He continued: 'Would you believe that a former comedian, in a supposedly free country, used foul language and took offensive pictures for shock value?' Hale asked Trump to 'stand by' Jan. 6 prisoners and their families 'in the face of this storm of slander and abuse,' and he addressed it to 'the president of all presidents.'
Both Hughes' remarks and the dinner program from the Sept. 2023 event further underscore the implausibility of Martin's denials to the Senate about his familiarity with Hale. A Rolling Stone review of Martin's X feed finds that he has tagged or retweeted Hale in nearly two dozen posts, including several in which Martin uses the conspiratorial hashtags '#January6thTruth' and '#Fedsurrection,' referring to the conspiracy theory that Jan. 6 was orchestrated by federal government agencies including the FBI and Department of Defense.
Meanwhile, Hale has trumpeted his proximity to Martin and the president. In the early days of Trump's second term, Hale posted photos of his invitation to the president's inauguration. He also posted social photos with Martin at an inaugural ball and in a home.
The now-pardoned felon posted that he was working with the then-interim U.S. Attorney to free Jan. 6 rioters and implied that he was a conduit to Martin for firing their prosecutors.
One of Hale's associates, Jan. 6 defendant Will Pope, affirmed Patriot Freedom Project's role. He posted on X that Cynthia Hughes had given a defendant list to Ed Martin and the Trump transition team. 'They were actively pushing for pardons and trying to ensure that it wasn't just for nonviolent defendants,' Pope wrote.
Last week, Trump pulled Martin's sinking nomination, but not before he'd done significant damage. More than 100 former Assistant U.S. Attorneys from the D.C. office had opposed Martin's confirmation, accusing him of malpractice in an open letter to the Senate. In his acting role, they wrote, Martin had 'butchered the position, effectively destroying it as a vehicle by which to pursue justice and turning it into a political arm of the current administration.'
But Martin wasn't sunk — within hours, Trump named him the Justice Department's pardon attorney and the director of its Weaponization Working Group. Hale, for his part, responded to the news of Martin's new gig on X with delight, writing: '*ahem* AHAHAHAHAH!!!'
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