A rift between Trump’s favorite lawyers exposes a broader MAGA divide in the administration
By Paula Reid, Hannah Rabinowitz, Evan Perez, CNN
(CNN) — A rift between two of President Donald Trump’s favorite prosecutors came to a head at the start of the year, when Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the president’s former personal lawyer, removed MAGA firebrand Ed Martin from a key post investigating the president’s political enemies.
The move to bench Martin — perhaps the official most publicly committed to targeting Trump’s political foes in the courts — has revealed a schism between two distinct factions within the administration.
One is a group that celebrates Blanche for what they consider as honoring guardrails around the rule of law. The other believes Martin is a martyr to the MAGA movement and the only one who is willing to do what it takes to deliver on Trump’s priorities.
In recent weeks, disagreements over how aggressively prosecutors pursue Trump’s political adversaries have become more acute — as the president has made it clear he is not happy with the Justice Department’s progress in bringing criminal prosecutions against people he believed wrongly targeted him in investigations dating back to 2016.
In the first Trump Administration, disputes between officials regularly played out in public view and on social media. But Trump’s current chief of staff, Susie Wiles, has made a point to tamp town public disagreement and drama in the second term.
“It’s not helping the president’s agenda to have these things play out in public,” one Trump ally who knows both men told CNN. “You can understand the frustration that Blanche’s office is where things go to die, because things move so slow. But Ed’s ways ultimately don’t help get what the president wants.”
Two paths to Justice Department
Blanche and Martin came to work for Trump through different paths.
Blanche, formerly of big law in New York, founded a namesake firm in 2023 and represented Trump in three of his four criminal cases. He earned a reputation for deftly managing the inside politics of Trump-world and was later appointed to the number two spot at the Justice Department when Trump returned to office.
Martin — a former Missouri politician — won his MAGA accolades as an organizer with the “Stop the Steal” movement, a staunch defender of Trump’s unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and as an attorney for January 6, 2021, Capitol riot defendants.
At the start of Trump’s second administration, he was tapped to serve as the US attorney in Washington, DC, immediately getting to work implementing Trump’s agenda, including demoting senior prosecutors who worked on cases related to January 6 and vowing to protect employees of the Department of Government Efficiency.
“Let me be clear: this change is not temporary,” Martin wrote of demoting the prosecutors in a memo that was obtained at the time by CNN.
After a 15-week tenure marked by chaotic management and social media posts that included threats against the president’s critics, he failed to secure confirmation.
His nomination was pulled in May 2025 and Trump then put him in two new positions at the Justice Department, including the director of the Working Weaponization Working Group and pardon attorney, which all fall under Blanche’s chain-of-command.
Martin’s expected Justice Department departure
Martin is expected to depart from the Justice Department in the coming weeks, CNN previously reported. His ouster represented the culmination of a monthslong campaign by Blanche to keep Martin operating within the bounds of the law.
The Weaponization Working Group investigations that Martin was supposed to lead quickly stalled. He produced little to no results on investigating major Trump priorities, including what Trump alleges was widespread overreach in the Biden Justice Department’s handling of the January 6 riot and into the now-defunct prosecutions of Trump and members of his staff by former special counsel Jack Smith.
Still, Martin found other ways to please the president.
Once inside the Justice Department’s headquarters, Martin continued what he had done at the US attorney’s office — pushing for prosecutions of Trump’s political adversaries. Last summer, Martin posed for photos outside the Brooklyn, New York, home of Letitia James while conducting an investigation into whether she had committed mortgage fraud.
Blanche’s frustration with Martin continued to grow. The two butted heads over Martin’s tactics — particularly over Martin’s penchant to coordinate directly with the White House without Blanche’s awareness.
But it wasn’t until December when Martin made a misstep major enough to prompt Blanche’s effort to push him out from the Justice Department entirely. There was a report that he had mishandled secret grand jury evidence in an investigation into Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff — one of the foes high on Trump’s list of targets.
Blanche’s office swiftly initiated a review of the incident in December, ultimately finding that Martin had committed misconduct, two sources familiar with the review previously told CNN.
Martin was stripped of his title of leading the weaponization group in early December and sent to work out of a separate building across town from DOJ headquarters. He is now considering leaving the department entirely.
In a statement to CNN Tuesday, Blanche said, “there are no misconduct investigations into Ed Martin. Ed is doing a great job as Pardon Attorney.”
A MAGA schism
The episode between Blanche and Martin illustrates a fundamental rift in the department. Some want to work within the legal traditions of the Justice Department in order to carry out the president’s agenda. The others view the constraints of the Justice Department’s legal traditions as too cumbersome for carrying out the president’s orders.
The division is not unprecedented — a similar divide played out during Trump’s first term as president. Trump allies including Matthew Whitaker, former chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and then Sessions’ interim replacement, chafed at resistance from the president’s own appointees over the handling of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
At the time, the clashes were over whether the president’s interests were better served by not undermining the ongoing probe despite Trump’s frequent public frustrations.
One ally of the president observed that while the Justice Department by design moves slowly, ultimately dispensing with its legal constraints has damaged the department’s credibility and its ability to carry out his agenda, citing the rejection of prosecution attempts by grand juries and by judges in recent months.
“The fact that this keeps happening on our side tells you a lot,” the person said. “They’re competing for who is more MAGA.”
“The GOP keeps doing this, we do this to ourselves and we can’t get sh*t done,” the person added.
Last month, Trump railed at prosecutors during a White House meeting, saying he wanted more aggressive action on prosecutions of his political enemies, as well as on his longstanding complaints about the 2020 presidential election.
The president has also complained directly to Attorney General Pam Bondi about those investigations lagging, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
The Department is apparently sensitive to these pressures. CNN reported on Monday the Working Weaponization Group would start meeting daily to figure out how to deliver the president’s agenda.
With Martin out of the picture, the group is expected to redouble its efforts to pursue these issues with the expectation of producing results in the next few months.
While Martin is sidelined, he continues to serve as pardon attorney, according to sources familiar. He has been actively involved in reviewing clemency applications. While the title sounds lofty, the final decision on pardons in the Trump administration, as in other administrations, are largely made inside the White House.
It is unclear where Martin will go if he leaves the Justice Department, but a source told CNN Martin spent all of last week working at the White House.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
