Latest news with #MakeD.C
Axios
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Trump yanks Ed Martin's U.S. Attorney pick after backlash to Jan. 6 comments
President Trump said Thursday he will pull the nomination of U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ed Martin, whose leniency toward Jan. 6 Capitol rioters lost him key Republican support in the Senate. Why it matters: It's a rare setback for Trump, losing a MAGA true believer who relished national culture war battles and pushed a "Make D.C. Safe Again" initiative. "He wasn't getting the support," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "I'm very disappointed in that. ... Hopefully we can bring him into, whether it's DOJ or whatever, in some capacity." The final blow came from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Tuesday: "I have no tolerance for anybody who entered the building on Jan. 6," he told reporters on Tuesday. A fire breathing conservative podcaster, Martin was already on thin ice with the Senate Judiciary Committee for failing to originally disclose appearances on Russian state media. The big picture: Martin served as Trump's attack dog during a controversial interim appointment, demoting prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases, pursuing critics of Elon Musk's DOGE, and threatening Wikipedia over what he called biased "propaganda." The U.S. Attorney for D.C. is a big office that prosecutes both white collar and national security investigations in D.C. — and street-level violent crime locally. Trump said he would announce a replacement "over the next two days that will be great." Between the lines: MAGA influencers like Charlie Kirk had unloaded on Tillis for his opposition, but their efforts to save Martin's nomination fell short.
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Yahoo
DC man indicted on firearms charges after committing ‘lewd' acts
WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — A 44-year-old D.C. man was indicted for federal firearms violations, officials announced Friday. The U.S. Attorney's Office (USAO) for D.C. said that Lawrence A. Jordan was indicted on one count of unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition by a felon. One killed, two hurt after second triple shooting in Southeast DC on same day Court documents said that Jordan was in the 700 block of 2nd St. NE on Nov. 16, 2023, when Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers were called to the area for reports of disorderly conduct. Officers removed him from an apartment complex where, they noted, he was not a resident. They said he was found in a fitness center attached to the apartment. Later, officers removed him from a fitness center that was attached to the apartment buildings. The USAO said that around 40 minutes later, MPD officers went back to that same fitness center after a man was reported 'committing a lewd act.' That man, later identified as Jordan, had left by the time officers responded. One week later, MPD officers were called to the 1300 block of H St. NE for 'aggressive panhandling.' They arrested Jordan for 'lewd, indecent, or obscene acts.' During a search of Jordan, MPD officers found a loaded semi-automatic pistol. Jordan was prohibited from possessing a firearm or ammunition due to a prior felony conviction. Jordan was indicted as part of the 'Make D.C. Safe Again' initiative. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Yahoo
DC man indicted on federal gun charges after officers find modified Glock
WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — A man was indicted on federal gun charges after a 'giggle switch' was found on his Glock that converted it into a machine gun, according to the United States Attorney's Office (USAO) for the District of Columbia. Robert Calvin Corbin III, 45, was indicted on an unlawful possession of a firearm as a felon charge. According to court documents, Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers responded to reports of a large group gambling with guns nearby in the 100 block of Q Street NW. Gun discharges in student's backpack at Billingsley Elementary School in Waldorf, officials say There, officers found Corbin allegedly smoking marijuana and drinking tequila on the street. The officer pat Corbin down and noticed a hard object in his waistband. Court documents say Corbin then attempted to shove the officer away and resist being searched before he was placed in handcuffs. Officers allegedly found a loaded Glock 19 equipped with a laser sight and a bullet in the chamber, 19 rounds in a large-capacity magazine, and a second large-capacity magazine with an additional 17 rounds of ammunition in his bag. Police note the gun had been modified with a 'giggle switch,' which converted the Glock to an automatic machine gun. Corbin was arrested and charged with possession of a machine gun, carrying a pistol without a license, possession of unregistered ammunition, possession of an unregistered firearm, possession of a large capacity feeding device, felon in possession, and possession of an open container of alcohol. The arrest was made in part of the 'Make D.C. Safe Again' initiative. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Washington Post
07-04-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Ed Martin's new federal gun charge plan has 18 cases. All are Black men.
Police arrested one man after officers alleged they saw a gun fall out of his pocket as he walked away from a liquor store. They charged another who was smoking a blunt and ran away when police approached him in Southeast D.C. He, too, was carrying a gun, authorities said. Three more were taken into custody after officers stopped their vehicle in the 1500 block of Seventh Street NW, searched it and found three firearms along with red Solo cups and an open bottle of tequila. The five men, who were convicted felons before their most recent encounters with law enforcement, face federal firearms charges, swept up in interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin's 'Make D.C. Safe Again' initiative pledging to get guns off the city's streets. Martin boasted recently on social media and in a community meeting that his office had charged 18 felons with federal gun possession crimes in the month since he announced his plans, more than double the number charged in the same month a year ago. All 18 are Black men, The Washington Post confirmed through court records and charging documents, fueling criticism by some District residents and defense attorneys that Martin's plans are putting the city back on a path of targeting racial minorities even as D.C. is experiencing a sharp decline in violent crime. D.C.'s federal court sentenced an average of four people a month for firearms charges in the nine years ending with 2023, the latest data available from the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Of those, 93 percent were Black. None of the 18 — whose arrests occurred across the city — were charged with violent crimes alongside the recent gun charges. A similar initiative launched in 2020 was revealed to have targeted Black neighborhoods. At a recent community meeting where Martin pitched his plan to more than 200 people in Southeast Washington, he was met with jeers and sharp questions. The plan focuses on felons, who aren't allowed to carry guns in the city. Martin says there's a link between violent crime and illegal gun possession, so he's ordering prosecutors to make every felony gun possession case a federal one. Moving the cases from superior court to federal court brings the prospect of longer prison sentences, which Martin says will keep criminals off the streets. The shift to federal court would also prevent people 24 and younger from qualifying for the District's Youth Rehabilitation Act, which results in a lighter sentence and potentially having the case sealed after they're released. 'Our kids in this city deserve to be safe. Our neighborhoods and families deserve to be safe and our laws deserve to be prosecuted. We needed to do better at that,' Martin told the audience. Reducing crime is a goal everyone shares, said Ron Moten, longtime Ward 8 community activist and founder of the Go-Go Museum, but not in a way that targets only one group of people. Moten recalled the war on drugs that resulted in mass incarceration of Black men in the 1980s and '90s, including him. 'Will your gun crackdown turn into the same thing in our community? Will this war on guns result in locking up countless Black men, women and children for nonviolent crimes? Mass incarceration destroyed our community,' Moten said as other audience members shouted 'amen.' Martin did not respond to their concerns. Attorney Heather Shaner has defended clients in the District since 1979. She said some people in D.C. carry guns for protection because they live in violent neighborhoods, or because they have been shot before. 'But the guns don't protect them. They just get them locked up,' Shaner said. Shaner said the aggressive arrest and prosecution policy can result in unlawful arrests. 'I'm just so sick of seeing these young men being stopped and a gun is found in the car with each of these kids and yet the cops had no reason to go into the car,' she says. 'Or an officer thinks he sees a bulge and stops and frisk them and finds a gun. They're driving while Black or walking while Black.' Lamont Mitchell, chairman of the Anacostia Coordinating Council, which hosted the meeting in Anacostia, the city's largest and predominantly African American neighborhood, urged Martin to focus on how the guns were being brought into the city and focus on the suppliers, as opposed to individuals possessing guns. 'We have a plethora of gun violence in this city and in our community, yes,' Mitchell said. 'But what are you planning to do to intervene with these gun shipments?' Martin said his office was working with other federal law enforcement agencies including the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to identify firearms being transported from southern Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia into Washington. 'That is a priority. We now have new leadership in these agencies and they can help us go up the chain and try to cut the supply.' Martin's office has not announced any arrests or charges against alleged suppliers. Attorneys say another reason Martin moved gun possession to federal court was to keep defendants locked up while they await trial. In federal court, prosecutors can request an emergency hearing with Chief Judge James E. Boasberg if another judge orders a defendant released from custody. Boasberg has been the subject of Trump's ire since he temporarily blocked the administration, in a separate case, from deporting Venezuelan migrants without due process under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. After that ruling, Trump railed against Boasberg on social media, calling him a 'Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator' who should be impeached. And late last month Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to preserve the records of a Signal group chat about sensitive military operations in Yemen. On Tuesday, Martin's federal prosecutors and attorneys for Monte Tyree Johnson sparred in Boasberg's second-floor courtroom over whether Johnson could be released pending trial on weapons offenses. Johnson, 29, who was convicted in 2021 of voluntary manslaughter in the 2016 shooting of a transgender woman during a robbery, was taken into custody March 18. Authorities said they went to pick him up on an alleged probation violation and found a Glock 27 and 22 rounds of ammunition in his backpack. Soon after, Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh ordered him released from jail, and Martin's office sought Boasberg's intervention. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tiffany Wynn argued Johnson was a danger to the community and should remain in jail until trial. 'He has a propensity to use firearms,' Wynn told Boasberg, reminding him of his conviction in the killing of Deeniquia 'Dee Dee' Dodds. Boasberg — a former federal prosecutor — agreed and ordered Johnson to remain in D.C. jail until trial. 'I don't find any restrictions that could guarantee the safety of the community,' he said. Martin's critics question his decisions to shake up his office in a way that could make carrying out his gun initiative more difficult. At the meeting last month in Southeast Washington, Martin — a longtime defense attorney who never worked as a prosecutor — told the audience he 'needed more prosecutors' in his office, the nation's largest U.S. attorney's office, to focus on violent crime in the city. D.C. Shadow Sen. Ankit Jain (D) reminded Martin that in February, he oversaw the demotion of seven senior prosecutors who worked on the Jan. 6 Capitol seditious conspiracy and riot cases. Jain said Martin's actions 'created chaos' in the U.S. attorney's office and asked how the moves would help him in prosecuting violent criminals in the city. The top criminal prosecutor in Martin's office resigned in February after refusing an order from Martin she said wasn't backed up by evidence. And Martin reassigned senior prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases to misdemeanors or early case assessment screening in D.C. Superior Court, positions often held by early career federal prosecutors. The reassignments, Martin said, were the 'best use of our resources' and added 'we had focuses in our office that I think were misplaced.' But he didn't explain how the moves would help him with his goal of charging more gun possession cases. On March 19, Rickey Corey Watkins, Jr. was arrested after police say he was driving an all-terrain Suzuki around 8:30 p.m. inside the gated area of the Harrison Recreation Center in the 1300 block of V Street in Northwest Washington. Police say when they tried to pull Watkins over, he tossed what they said was a Glock 19X pistol and loading magazine. Watkins, 33, had been convicted in 2013 of assault with intent to kill while armed. Watkins's attorney, Eugene Ohm of the Federal Public Defender Service, declined to comment on his client's case. But he said in recent weeks that he has seen an increase in similar cases in which he believed prosecutors used an initial stop for a minor offense to charge a more serious crime, such as felon in possession of a firearm. 'There are many aggressive police tactics that they know cross the line. They are hoping the judges in federal court will let them get away with things that D.C. Courts have already found unconstitutional,' Ohm said. Thompkins and Watkins were among the recent federal gun charge cases touted by Martin's office. Tom Lynch, a D.C. police spokesman, said officers 'will continue our efforts of removing illegal firearms from our communities and leave the decision on how to prosecute each case to the prosecutors.'
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Yahoo
DC woman indicted on federal gun charges
WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — A D.C. woman is the latest to be indicted in part of the 'Make D.C. Safe Again' initiative, the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia (USADC) announced Friday. Ikea Gartrell, 35, was indicted on unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon. Court documents say on March 1, 2025, officers from the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) conducted a traffic stop shortly before 5 p.m. in the 900 block of Barnaby St. SE. DC LGBTQ bars seek security plans ahead of World Pride Gartrell was allegedly found operating without a valid license and an open container of alcohol could be seen in the vehicle, prompting a search by police. Police say officers found a loaded, unregistered firearm inside the vehicle, and Gartrell was arrested and charged with carrying a pistol without a license or permit. According to court documents, records indicated Gartrell also had a prior felony conviction. The incident remains under investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and MPD. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
