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THE WEAPONIZATION CZAR AND OUR RUSSIA PROBLEM  
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Timothy Snyder
May 20, 2025
Thinking about...
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_ Ed Martin is a major actor in Trump's attempted regime change to
authoritarianism. His particular role is to transform the law into a
tool to intimidate Americans. Martin will now continue his work for
Trump as the official "weaponization czar." _

Ed Martin speaks to supporters of Donald Trump at a rally in
Washington, D.C., on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal”
rally., Right Side Broadcasting Network screenshot // The Kansas City
Star

 

After a stint as interim US Attorney for DC which was marked by
unprecedented weaponization of the position, Martin will now continue
his work for Trump as the official "weaponization czar."

This is a new position within the Justice Department, designed by the
Trump administration, to punish people who have committed no crimes.
Martin was originally placed on the "weaponization working
group" seemingly ex officio
[[link removed]] when
he was a US Attorney; he will now continue as its chairman. On
Martin's account, his assignment will be to publicly single out
Americans who have not been found guilty of anything, or for that
matter even indicted. He says
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will be "no limit to the targets."

Martin's authoritarian past and loyalties are a matter of public
record. He helped build an alternative reality around Trump's Big Lie
and coup attempt, treating the January 6th criminals as heroes
deserving of financial support and pardons. As interim US attorney, he
described himself as President Trump's lawyer
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and abused his position to send letters to people who displeased the
president in some way. He threatened journalists, universities
and scientists
[[link removed]].

Martin, to use the historical term, is taking an ostentatious part in
the ongoing attempt at what the Nazis
[[link removed]] called
a _Gleichschaltung_ of institutions: of dropping the distinction
between the law and the leader, and of attempting to force everyone in
public life into line with the leader's latest statements. The
reference is not accidental. Martin is on the far right, and
an advocate
[[link removed]] of
great replacement theory: the spurious idea that a conspiracy seeks to
replace white Americans with immigrants. He had a very
supportive relationship
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a known American Nazi.

The czars, lest we forget, were Russian autocrats. The title
"weaponization czar" reminds us that much of happening in the United
States under Trump happened first in the home of the czars. In the
Russian Federation today, the law is weaponized. Prosecutions follow
the whims of Putin and his regime, and that the law will be invoked
against them according to the political (and financial) interests of
those who hold power. Russian media is full of accusations made by
Russian officials that people are criminals or wrongdoers, even before
they have been tried or subjected to any judicial procedure.

It is important that we understand that Russian-style authoritarianism
is a real possibility in the world, one which Martin not only
advocates but represents. Russia is not a comparison for Martin. It is
a central part of his career. He has no actual qualifications to serve
in the Department of Justice. His role has to do instead with making
the law something that it is not supposed to be: a way to protect the
powerful and punish the innocent who offend them. He auditioned for
this role as a propagandist for Russia's regime.

The title "weaponization czar" is appropriate because Martin's most
interesting achievements thus far are, in fact, in the service of
Russia. He has done more visible work for the Russian state television
than for any other institution. Martin, in other words, has already
been part of one weaponized legal system for some time. His American
career as "weaponization czar" is a natural second step of his Russian
career as apologist for both Russian and American weaponizers and
authoritarians.

Between 2016 and 2024, Martin was a star of both RT and Sputnik, which
are propaganda arms of the Russian state. Putin himself
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made this completely clear. One of the central missions of RT and
Sputnik is to weaken the standing and power of the United States.
Anyone who goes on RT or Sputnik, as Martin did more than a hundred
times, knows what he is doing. For eight years, on any issue of the
day, Martin was there to spread mendacious propaganda about Americans
and to defend Putin and Trump. His Russian work surpassed any media
exposure in the United States.

Julia Davis,
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important work of contextualizing
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propaganda television available for a global viewership, has made
Martin's appearances visible. With her permission, I am sharing her
work in the following paragraph. It provides samples, with video links
back to his appearances, of how Ed Martin spreads untruth in the
service of Russian and American authoritarians. If you want to take
the time to judge more of his appearances than the ones I cite below,
here (again thanks to Julia Davis) is a longer compilation
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on Russian propaganda television.

Trump as American president can do, says Martin on Russian propaganda
television, whatever he wants
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should live in the alternative reality provided by the Russian
propaganda he serves, since American media cannot be trusted
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American elections are rigged
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6th criminals are political prisoners
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thereby on Russian propaganda television forecasting his own role in
seeking pardons for these people and raising money
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them.) Martin denied
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in the 2016 US elections, although this was quite blatant -- and
indeed continuous, right down to the uncontested reports that Russians
called in bomb scares
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predominantly Democratic precincts in 2024. Martin also quite clear on
the American role in the world, which is that the US should serve
Putin and his wars. Echoing Russian claims at the time,
Martin claimed [[link removed]] that US
intelligence was wrong about the coming full-scale Russian invasion of
Ukraine, when is in fact it was entirely correct. In his view,
the NATO [[link removed]] alliance is
unnecessary. The United States should be Russia's ally
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There was a time, not so very long ago, when long service to hostile
foreign propaganda networks would have been disqualifying for
positions in the federal government. Now, as the head of RT boasts
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be a qualification. Since Trump wants loyalists to him rather than to
the United States, willingness to serve foreign countries, at least
corrupt dictatorships, would be a useful filter. Repeating Russian
propaganda tropes could hardly be offensive to Trump; he does this all
the time. Taking part in Putin's propaganda system would be naturally
understood as the right kind of apprenticeship for work on Trump's own
regime change. We know that Trump chooses his people by treating their
television appearances as auditions. So why not Russian television
appearances? All the better.

No surprisingly, Martin says
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his key assignment as weaponization czar will be to punish those who
investigated Trump's very real connections to Russia. This country has
paid a huge price for not recognizing Russia's intervention in the
2016 election
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what it was: highly consequential and quite possibly decisive
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the moment
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and a sign of the coming age of oligarchical cooperation
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digital tools to build right-wing regimes. That age is now upon us.
There is, unmistakably, something very strange about the Trump's
submissiveness to Russia: appointing its media darlings
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list includes Tulsi Gabbard
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of all things director of national intelligence); exempting it from
tariffs when everyone else was targeted, refusing to pressure Putin to
end a war when that is the obvious policy, sending as his envoy to
Moscow a man who simply repeats Russian claims and uses Russian
translations. Too many of us have allowed ourselves to be intimidated
by the fear that Trump will use the word "hoax" when we point to the
Russian elements of our present reality: such as, for example, that
our "weaponization czar" apprenticed in the role in the service of
Russia. With our weaponization of the law and our czars, we have a
Russia problem.

Working with Russian institutions will not hurt Martin with Trump's
followers, who have been trained to see Russia not as an actual
country with interests but as part of a "hoax," a conspiracy against
Trump. This is the sad convenience of "America First": it really means
"America Only": no matter how things get, we get to be first, since no
other countries exist in our minds. If other countries are
meaningless, then MAGA people can rest assured that there is nothing
like the complicity of international oligarchs, or the guild of
international fascists, or the plans of countries like Russia to
destroy the United States from within. If other countries do not
matter, then it never seems right to ask: just why is it that Russian
propaganda and Trumpian rhetoric so often overlap, to the point that
training on one is preparation for mouthing the other? But there are,
of course, Republicans who have a notion of the interests of the
United States, and of the rule of law. For them, Martin's services to
Russia should matter.

The Russia connection is perhaps most important to opponents of Trump.
Speaking of Martin's connections to Russia is not a way of sloughing
off responsibility to another country for our own failings. It is,
instead, a way to take responsibility. So long as we see Trump and his
loyalists as purely American characters, our American exceptionalism
tempts us to normalize what they do. We ask ourselves, over and over
again, if this is "really" an attempt to end democracy. But if we take
seriously the connections of someone like Martin with a hostile
foreign authoritarian power engaged in a genocidal war, we get a sense
of where things could be headed. Russia is a real country and, for us,
a real possibility
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When we recognize that the attempt to make America authoritarian is
part of a tawdry global
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with general patterns that we can recognize, we can better see where
we are, and get to work [[link removed]].

Thinking about... is a reader-supported publication. To receive new
posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber
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* JULIA DAVIS'S BOOK IN THEIR OWN WORDS
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* ON RESISTANCE SEE ON TYRANNY
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* FOR POSITIVE SOLUTIONS SEE ON FREEDOM
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* ON TRUMP AND RUSSIA, ROAD TO UNFREEDOM
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* Ed Martin
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* Weaponization Czar
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* Authoritarianism
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* Justice Department
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* Justice Dept.
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* Russia
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* Russian Trump connection
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* Donald Trump
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* Trump 2.0
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* weaponization working group
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