Ed Martin, the acting US Attorney for Washington, DC, had recently been peppering medical journals with “vaguely threatening” letters accusing them of acting as “partisans” in scientific debates.
Those missives are just one genre within a barrage of communiques Martin has sent to perceived Trump foes—congressional Democrats, special counsel Jack Smith, a former Mueller prosecutor, nonprofits and Georgetown law—since taking office in January, part of a clumsy effort to turn the nation’s largest prosecutorial office into an organ of his boss’s retribution.
But the letters Martin addressed to prominent publications, including the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and JAMA, and lesser-known journals such as CHEST, published by the American College of Chest Physicians, have been among the weirdest.
The US Attorney in DC has no evident authority over the tax status of medical journals published in other jurisdictions. Martin, who has no prosecutorial experience, let alone a scientific background, also seems to lack any understanding of, or interest in, how peer-reviewed journals work. His letters ask whether the publication in question accepts submissions from scientists with “competing viewpoints,” and inquire about how they “handle allegations that authors of works in your journals may have misled their readers.”
The letters fail to acknowledge the strong First Amendment protections scientific journals enjoy against the government telling them what to print.
But the reason for Martin’s bizarre campaign against medical publications became clearer Monday night, when Trump, in a social media post attempting to resuscitate Martin’s declining hopes of Senate confirmation, said Health and Human Services secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. believed Martin’s confirmation “is IMPERATIVE in terms of doing all that has to be done to SAVE LIVES and to, MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN.”
Martin also had a little-noticed meeting with Kennedy on March 18 at HHS.
Martin began writing to the medical journals the following month. “It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publication…are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates,” he wrote to CHEST, before asking about the inclusion of competing viewpoints. Martin also questioned the journals about the influence the National Institutes of Health exerts over “the development of submitted articles.”
These lines of questioning track views expressed by Kennedy. As the New York Times recently noted, Kennedy attacked NEJM on a podcast last year as an example of a journal that had taken part in “lying to the public” and “retracting the real science.” Kennedy, then a presidential candidate, said he planned to use federal criminal and civil statutes against the journals. “I’m going to litigate against you under the racketeering laws, under the general tort laws,” he said. “I’m going to find a way to sue you unless you come up with a plan right now to show how you’re going to start publishing real science.”
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon declined to comment on whether Martin targeted the journals at Kennedy’s direction. But Nixon cited the March 18 meeting where the men agreed to work together.
Kennedy’s apparent role in Martin’s missives is an ominous development for science publishers. Martin’s odds of confirmation declined on Tuesday, when Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), a member of the Judiciary committee, announced his opposition. If not confirmed, Martin will have to leave office on May 20, after which Jeb Boasberg, the chief judge of the DC District Court, whom the Trump White House also has attacked, would be charged with picking an interim attorney to serve until the Senate confirms a presidential nominee.
But a Kennedy campaign against scientific journals and other institutions will likely carry on in some form. Though Martin’s nomination may be dead, MAHA will live at least a bit longer.
