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Washington ― The U.S. Senate on Wednesday confirmed veteran federal prosecutor Michael Martin to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in a bipartisan 62-36 vote.
Ten Democratic senators and one independent voted with the Republicans for Martin, including Democratic Michigan Sens. Gary Peters of Bloomfield Township and Elissa Slotkin of Holly.
Martin, 51, of Grosse Pointe Park, was nominated by President Donald Trump on May 11 and is the first judicial nominee from Michigan to be confirmed during Trump's second term.
Martin is the criminal division chief in the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District and has been a federal prosecutor for 20 years, including a stint as the office's national security unit chief. Previously, he was an analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency.
Martin on Wednesday also became the first judicial nominee confirmed in a state represented by two Democratic senators in Trump's second term.
Peters and Slotkin returned so-called "blue slips" allowing Martin to advance to a June hearing in the Judiciary Committee, whose custom is not to hold hearings for a judicial nominee unless their home state senators consent to their moving forward.
Martin likely earned bipartisan support in part because he gave "better" answers to key questions that Democratic senators have been asking all Trump nominees about who won the 2020 election and what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol, said Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law, where he studies the federal judicial nomination process.
The senators said this summer that Martin was chosen as part of the state's judicial nominations process with the bipartisan Judicial Nominations Advisory Committee vetting, interviewing and providing feedback on applicants for the Eastern District vacancy.
"I think they are partly deferring to the Michigan home-state senators and out of respect for their judgment about who can best serve in the Eastern District of Michigan," Tobias said of Wednesday's bipartisan vote.
"He also brings the qualifications as an assistant U.S. attorney that many federal judges have, because they possess the knowledge and competence to serve as district judges. I also think that the Dems want to show they can cooperate to fill vacancies when Trump nominates well-qualified candidates and do not want to look like they are always voting lockstep against Trump."
During his confirmation hearing last month, Martin affirmed to senators that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election and that the U.S. Capitol was attacked on Jan. 6, 2021, in a departure from prior Trump judicial nominees who had sidestepped those questions at their hearings.
"As part of my work as an assistant United States attorney, I had the opportunity to look at pictures and videos from that day, and what I saw was officers ― law enforcement officers ― were attacked, and the building was damaged and vandalized," Martin said when asked about the Capitol on Jan. 6.
When pressed about whether Biden won the popular vote in 2020, Martin said Biden received more Electoral College votes and that, under the Constitution, the popular vote is "not the operative fact."
Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, argued this meant that Martin and the other judicial nominees on the panel had adopted a new "script" to "thread the needle" and "protect" Trump's lie that he won the presidency in 2020.
Martin was born in Cincinnati and graduated from Miami University in Ohio, earning a master's degree from Georgetown University and his law degree from Boston College in 2002.
At the Department of Justice, his role focused on prosecuting violations of espionage and export control offenses. In the Eastern District of Michigan, he investigated and prosecuted terrorism, espionage, export control, theft of trade secrets and immigration violations, as well as drug, gun and violent crime cases, according to a questionnaire he filled out for the Judiciary Committee.
Martin, when sworn into office, would fill the seat vacated by Judge Sean Cox, a nominee of President George W. Bush, after his retirement last year.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Senate confirms Michael Martin to serve on federal bench in Detroit
