If Interim and nominee for United States Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin’s bizarre overreach by sending a letter to Georgetown Law School was worthy of a Cleveland Brown’s response, at least Georgetown was within his district. His latest missive, however, not only shares the same bizarre overreach, but no longer reflects any grasp of American geography. This time, he sent a letter to a medical journal in Illinois.

Ed Martin, the Interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia, has sent out a letter to a rather obscure medical journal, “Chest” – a journal published in Illinois by the American College of Chest Physicians and focused on pulmonary and sleep-related medical research[*].  The letter, dated 4/14/2025, was first reported on the website “Medpage Today,” and was, apparently, one of at least three that Martin sent out to different medical journals.

What conceivable interest would Martin have in a medical journal? Well, consider the letter.

You may wonder why Martin crosses out the typed “Dr. Mazzone” and scribbles in by hand “Dr Mazzone,” as if they are old pals of the sort that doesn’t address the other informally. Then again, you may wonder why nobody proofreads Martin’s letters so it doesn’t contain sentences like “I look forward to I look forward to and appreciation your cooperation with my letter of inquiry after request,” because why look stupider than absolutely necessary. But I digress.

What, then, is Martin’s putative interest, as DC US Attorney, in what a medical journal in Illinois does?

Why does Martin begin by declaring that he “receive[s] frequent requests for information and clarification” and that he “take[s] these requests seriously and act[s] on them with letters like this one you are receiving”?  What is he talking about?  Is he implying that he has received a “request for information and clarification” about CHEST’s publication practices, and that he “takes the request seriously”?  What does it mean to take a request for information and clarification about medical journal publication practices “seriously”?

To be fair to Martin, this is pretty much the rhetoric of choice in all his inquiry letters, starting with his embrace of Elon Musk’s complaints about critics. But what is about CHEST that caught Martin’s attention specifically so as to invoke his prosecutorial involvement?

What does it mean – in English – to say that publications like CHEST Journal “are conceding that they … have a position for which they are advocating either due to advertisement (under postal code) or sponsorship (under relevant fraud regulations).” [Emphasis added]

If that doesn’t clarify Martin’s interest and justify his sending US Attorney letters to Illinois, nothing will. While the position of United States Attorney carries the potential for grave concern, given the authority vested in the office to prosecute crimes, what obligation does CHEST have to answer Martin’s inquiry?

Here’s an easier one:  Does the Editor-in-Chief of “CHEST” have any obligation to respond to Mr. Martin’s questions?  The answer, of course, is “No, he does not,” and if I were CHEST’s lawyer, I’d recommend replying to Martin’s request with a polite but firm “No.” No obligation is (or can be) imposed on the Editor by a letter — even a letter from a US Attorney – simply requesting information about how he runs his operations. Mr. Martin has plenty of ways to impose such an obligation on the Editor and to get that information via subpoena or warrant if, in fact, he requires it for an investigation his office is conducting or some case his office is prosecuting.

David Post is being quite generous to Martin in even considering that there could be some legitimate justification for his interest, such as an investigation or prosecution being conducted by his office. There is not. Martin, whose previous prosecutor experience falls short of even New Jersey United States nominee and Trump criminal defense lawyer Alina Habba, simply has no sense of limitations, believing himself to be some roving avenger of DEI wherever it may be found.

But David Post sees this as part of the Trump’s administration’s war on science, in which Martin plays the good soldier.

But the war on science makes no sense to me whatsoever; perhaps there are some readers who can enlighten me on that. In what alternate world are we made better off by weakening or crippling our major scientific institutions?  In what way is a United States without NIH grants a better country than one with NIH grants? Same for NSF grants, NOAA, the CDC, Office of Climate Research, the USGS, etc. Why the hostility? Why would anybody want to take them all down?

Whether this is part of a war on science, or just a war on DEI wherever it may be found, or a both, I don’t know. What is clear, however, is that whatever this may be, it is far away from anything that should involve Ed Martin, who has no conception of the geographic and jurisdictional limits of his office or his power. And yet, despite his continued bizarre and irresponsible use of “just asking questions” letters from a United States Attorney’s office, remains in a position where he can abuse his power with abandon.