The nomination of the prosecutor, Ed Martin, has been teetering amid revelations that he once compared former President Biden to Adolf Hitler.
Thom Tillis, a key Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Tuesday that he would not support the nomination of Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington who has been nominated to hold that post, dealing a major blow to one of President Trump’s most polarizing nominees.
Mr. Tillis, who faces a potentially difficult re-election campaign in North Carolina next year, told reporters at the Capitol that he had informed the White House that he could not back Mr. Martin, a 2020 election denier, because as a lawyer in private practice he had defended rioters who stormed the building on Jan. 6, 2021.
That would leave the committee deadlocked at 11 to 11, with all 10 Democrats on the panel opposing Mr. Martin. He was on the grounds of the Capitol, supporting Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, the day the violent mob broke through the cordon of police officers.
Mr. Martin’s nomination has been teetering amid revelations that in 2021 he appeared on a podcast hosted by a white nationalist and compared former President Biden to Adolf Hitler. Mr. Tillis’s action could spare reluctant Republicans from casting a “yes” vote for a nominee many privately see as ill-suited, even unfit, for the job.
“Most of my concerns are related to Jan. 6,” said Mr. Tillis, who met on Monday with Mr. Martin, a conservative lawyer from Missouri, describing him as “a good man.”
Mr. Tillis said Mr. Martin had made a compelling case that some of those prosecuted for Jan. 6 might have been treated too harshly, but failed to allay his larger concerns.