Pursuing Hamas and its supporters is personal for acting US attorney in DC

A vandal, who spray-painted “Hamas is coming” on a D.C. monument, was sentenced to 10 days in jail and a $1,500 fine earlier this month. A few days beforehand, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it had seized some $200,000 in cryptocurrency, which it says was destined for Hamas coffers.

Both cases came out of the office of Ed Martin, interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, who has been nominated for the role on a permanent basis.

“The message to these people that say Hamas is coming is: ‘You come to D.C., you’re going to go to jail,’” Martin told JNS in a recent interview.

The pro-Hamas vandal in question defaced the monument outside Washington’s Union Station on the same day that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress on July 24, 2024.

“Coming through Union Station, where that violence was on this monument—100,000 people come through every day. In fact, many of them work on the Hill, and those folks deserve to be safe,” Martin told JNS. “They deserve not to be threatened, and we’re going to stop that.”

Martin said his office is aligned with U.S. President Donald Trump’s strategy to tackle Jew-hatred, as outlined in part in executive orders. Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights, leads a federal task force on combating antisemitism and is slated to visit campuses that have experienced Jew-hatred.

“Look nearby where we are,” Martin told JNS. “It’s Georgetown University Law School.”

The law school sits near the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Capitol—some three-and-a-half miles from the university’s main campus, which has been roiled by antisemitic protests and graffiti.

“We’re not going to let Georgetown turn into Columbia University in terms of the chaos and the hate that’s spewed. It’s not going to happen,” Martin told JNS.

“President Trump was clear from the beginning,” he said. “We are going to be aggressive in protecting D.C., protecting our citizens and protecting America from terrorists like Hamas.”

‘We’re going to get them’

Even after the seizure of the cryptocurrency, the case is developing, and no suspects have been charged yet, according to Martin. He told JNS that there are several ongoing cases that have to do with Hamas that he can’t discuss.

“I can say that, yes, we stopped the currency from flowing. Yes, there are some bad actors,” he said. “We’re going to get them, we hope, in that case.”

“This U.S. attorney’s office has cases all over the world because of the jurisdiction we have, including cases that relate to overseas,” he told JNS. “I don’t know what the Biden administration and my predecessor was doing. If they didn’t believe that Hamas was a terror organization.”

“Once you know that, you have to change your behavior to hold people accountable, and that’s what we’re doing,” he said.

Martin has rarely given media interviews since taking office, but his posts on social media suggest that he has a personal connection to fighting Jew-hatred and anti-Israel bias. JNS asked if that was the case.

A Catholic, Martin told JNS of his time in Rome, where he served as a papal assistant at the Synod of the Americas and occasionally struck up conversations with Pope John Paul II.

“He had this incredible outreach to the Jewish community in Rome, and that was kind of an opening for me to the faith community, to our Jewish brethren, our brothers and sisters in the faith,” Martin told JNS.

The St. Louis native, who escorted civil rights icon Rosa Parks to a 1999 meeting with the pope at the city’s cathedral basilica, told JNS that “in St. Louis, there were some great Jewish leaders that I worked with on issues, and I learned to understand the hate that is Hamas and the hate that is a threat to Israel.”

The current climate is not “a fight over nations” but “a fight over who people are and who the Jewish faithful are.”

“I take it very personally, in the way that I take attacks on my own faith,” he said.

© JNS