WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., were ordered on Monday to pursue every firearms case referred to them and to seek pretrial detention against every person charged with such an offense, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.
The directive, from President Donald Trump’s interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, is part of a new initiative he called “Make D.C. Safe Again.”
“We will flood the federal district court with cases – to make our City safe,” Martin wrote in an email accompanying the new memo.
A spokesperson for his office declined to comment.
Martin last week demoted more than half a dozen senior leaders in his office who supervised prosecutions involving fraud, public corruption and civil rights, as well as those who oversaw cases involving firearms, narcotics trafficking and child exploitation.
As the top federal prosecutor in Washington, Martin plays a crucial role in helping the Trump administration carry out its agenda, which critics say they fear will be used to seek retribution against political enemies.
Martin, who worked to advance Trump’s false claims that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread fraud and admitted to being present during the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, has threatened investigations of members of Congress for political rhetoric and said he plans to open criminal investigations at the behest of Elon Musk.
Last month, his office’s top criminal chief, Denise Cheung, resigned after she said she was pressured to launch a criminal probe and freeze assets of a grant awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency during Democratic President Joe Biden’s tenure, even though she said there was no evidence of a crime.
In an internal email seen by Reuters, Martin on Monday said that Jonathan Hornok, a prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Narcotic and Dangerous Drug Section, would be stepping in to replace Cheung as chief of the office’s Criminal Division.
In Martin’s memo on the violent crime initiative, he said that prosecutors will be prohibited from declining to bring firearms charges, unless they receive approval from Hornok.
If a magistrate judge turns down a request for pretrial detention, prosecutors will have to appeal that decision, the memo says.
He also said on Monday that about a dozen agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were being reassigned to the “Make D.C. Safe Again” initiative.
Meanwhile, more interim U.S. Attorneys are expected to be appointed this week. In Maryland on Monday, veteran prosecutor Kelly Hayes was named Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, according to an email seen by Reuters.
Rod Rosenstein, the former Deputy Attorney General during Trump’s first term who also served as Maryland’s U.S. Attorney from 2005 through 2017, praised her as “a brilliant lawyer of utmost integrity who has earned the respect of judges, defense lawyers, and colleagues.”
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Nia Williams)
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