Former chief justice who helped Trump on election challenges named NC law school dean
High Point University announced this week it hired as the first dean of its new law school Mark Martin, a former North Carolina Supreme Court chief justice — and an informal Trump adviser.
“Chief Justice Mark Martin has led a distinguished judicial career in North Carolina, and he’s demonstrated tremendous results as a law school dean,” university President Nido Qubein said in a news release. “We welcome him to HPU and look forward to his extraordinary partnership as he champions HPU’s newest professional program.”
Martin made a name for himself in North Carolina as the youngest person to ever be elected to the state’s Court of Appeals and the youngest to serve on the state’s Supreme Court. In 2014, Gov. Pat McCrory appointed him to serve as chief justice to fill a vacancy left by the retirement of Sarah Parker.
Martin garnered national attention in 2021 when the New York Times reported former President Donald Trump consulted with Martin about overturning the election of President Joe Biden.
High Point dean
Qubein announced the new law school in March as part of a $400 million campus and academic expansion. He said three families had made donations of $100 million collectively to build a law school, a school of dental medicine and oral health and a library.
During the announcement, Qubein said a dean had already been hired for the law school but he wouldn’t announce who that person was until a later date.
“Words cannot adequately express my appreciation to Dr. Qubein for giving me this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Martin said in this week’s release. “I look forward to working with a broad array of extraordinary legal scholars and leaders to build a law school of distinction, one with a national reputation for excellence.”
Qubein added that many students and parents inquire about additional graduate programs and he felt a law school was an important one to add to High Point’s offerings.
Trump administration
Twenty days after Qubein announced he hired his then-unnamed dean, Martin would make national news for the second time in connection to a plot to overturn the presidential election.
The Washington Post reported on March 29, that there was a 7-hour and 37-minute gap in the White House phone logs on Jan. 6, 2021, that occurred while rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a coup to stop the certification of Biden’s election.
When the phone calls started back up at 6:54 p.m., the Washington Post reported, Martin was among the first people who spoke with the president.
Asked about Martin’s connection to Trump and Biden’s election, Allison Lightner, a spokeswoman for the university, told McClatchy in an email that Martin “has a proven track record of success in nobly serving as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in North Carolina and leading a law school. His service is highly regarded in the legal community, and his metrics of success at Regent (University School of Law, where Martin has served as dean) show his ability to lead a law school that prepares its graduates for impressive careers.
“Speculation about what may have happened between a lawyer and client is just that – speculation.”
The Washington Post report came a year after the New York Times reported on the lengths Trump and his allies went to ensure he was reelected.
Martin’s name first came up in that report as the one who wrongly told the president that the Constitution gave Pence the authority to toss any election results he thought were fraudulent.
He was also described as one of several lawyers working with Trump on a lawsuit that alleged that when four states had made last-minute rule changes to their election laws in order to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, it allowed for widespread voter fraud and gave Biden the win, the newspaper reported.
Trump allies’ thought process was, the Times wrote, that if they could convince the U.S. Supreme Court that this happened, the Republican-controlled legislators from these states could “send slates of their choosing to the Electoral College.”
But the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
Instead, on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump stood underneath the Washington Monument at the “Stop the Steal” rally and told his supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell.”
Jan. 6 committee
Over the past 11 months, the Jan. 6 committee investigated what led to the Capitol riot and who was responsible.
The committee planned to hold its first public hearing at 8 p.m. Thursday to be aired on all major broadcast and cable news networks, except Fox News, which opted out. The broadcast will be the first of several public hearings held by the committee.
It’s unclear if Martin’s name might come up in the hearings, but another notable North Carolinian has been a key player in the committee’s investigation: former U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows.
Meadows represented the 11th Congressional District before resigning to join the Trump administration as the president’s chief of staff and has emerged as a central figure in the Jan. 6 investigation.
Meadows was held in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena from the committee, but last week the U.S. Department of Justice announced it would not prosecute Meadows after he first turned over thousands of pieces of evidence, then refused to continue his cooperation.
Meadows argued that some of the information the committee sought fell under the president’s executive privilege and he wasn’t able to release those particular items. Litigation is pending in federal court over that argument.
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at https://campsite.bio/underthedome or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published June 9, 2022 at 11:30 AM with the headline "Former chief justice who helped Trump on election challenges named NC law school dean."
