President Trump is withdrawing his nomination of Ed Martin to serve as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia after a Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Tillis, said he would not vote for the nominee. Mr. Trump said he is “disappointed,” though he says Mr. Martin will have a role in the administration in another capacity. 

Mr. Tillis announced on Tuesday that he would not vote for Mr. Martin because of the lawyer’s support for those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Mr. Martin has been serving as the capital’s top federal prosecutor in an acting capacity since January 20, though he was going to be forced to step down in 12 days if the Senate did not act to confirm his nomination. 

“He wasn’t getting the support,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday when asked about the future of Mr. Martin’s nomination. “I’m very disappointed in that, but I have so many different things that I’m doing now.”

The president also expressed a lack of interest in pressing the issue, given that Mr. Tillis was likely one of several Senate Republicans — none of whom, apart from Mr. Tillis, were willing to speak publicly on the issue — who were not thrilled to be voting on Mr. Martin’s nomination. 

“I can only lift that phone so many times in a day,” Mr. Trump said, seated behind the Resolute Desk. When asked about Mr. Tillis’s opposition to Mr. Martin on Wednesday, the president said he supports senators voting their conscience. “That’s really up to the senators. If they feel that way, they have to vote the way they vote. They have to follow their heart and they have to follow their mind,” he said of Mr. Tillis. 

“We have somebody else that will be great,” Mr. Trump added. “Hopefully we can bring him into — whether it’s DOJ or whatever — in some capacity because he’s really outstanding.”

“It was disappointing, I’ll be honest,” he said. “But that’s the way it works sometimes.”

“We have somebody else that we’ll be announcing over the next two days who’s gonna be great,” Mr. Trump told reporters.

With Mr. Tillis voting “no” along with all Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, the panel would have deadlocked, 11 to 11. In order to get the nominee to the floor under that scenario, the Senate would have been required to go into what is known as “executive session” and consider a resolution to discharge the nominee from the committee — a process that would take several days and eat even more into the Senate calendar. 

The chairman of the committee, Senator Grassley, was mum on his plans for possibly holding a vote for Mr. Martin in order to kickstart the process of getting him to the floor. He told the Sun on Wednesday that he would only do so if he thought he had the votes to get Mr. Martin confirmed. 

“You’re just gonna have to wait us out because I want the president to have wins, and I’ve gotta make sure I have the votes to have wins,” Mr. Grassley said.