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It seems fair to assume that Donald Trump’s second presidency hasn’t turned out quite the way Ed Martin had hoped. The former interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia has faced a series of embarrassing setbacks over the past 14 months, tumbling down the Justice Department’s ladder, rung by rung, as fellow Republicans turned sharply against him. But the biggest blow so far arrived on Tuesday, when disciplinary counsel for the D.C. bar announced a formal complaint against Martin for professional misconduct. The charges accuse him of violating his oath to the Constitution, then interfering with the investigation into his alleged malfeasance. If found culpable, he could be suspended from the practice of law or disbarred in D.C.

What’s perhaps most remarkable about the case against Martin isn’t its allegations of unconstitutional behavior, which was already a matter of public record. It’s that upon receiving the initial complaint, Martin reportedly launched a pressure campaign against the D.C. Court of Appeals, lobbying the chief judge to dismiss the charges and suspend the lead investigator on his case. These actions would constitute egregious breaches of professional ethics—clearer-cut violations, in fact, than the conduct that triggered the accusations against him. It’s no wonder that Attorney General Pam Bondi is trying to award herself the power to shut down bar investigations into DOJ attorneys like Martin: D.C.’s disciplinary counsel appears to have him dead to rights.

Martin’s fall from grace has been swift but not particularly surprising. He rose to prominence helping plan and finance the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, then defended many of that day’s insurrectionists in court. Trump installed him as D.C.’s interim U.S. attorney on Inauguration Day, even though Martin had had no prosecutorial experience whatsoever. From this post, he implemented the president’s mass clemency for Jan. 6 defendants and purged the office of prosecutors who had helped convict them. He also investigated Democratic lawmakers on bogus charges of mortgage fraud.

When Senate Republicans refused to........

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