发布时间：2026年2月7日，美国东部时间上午7:00 | 作者：宝拉·里德（Paula Reid）、汉娜·拉比诺维茨（Hannah Rabinowitz）、埃文·佩雷斯（Evan Perez）
特朗普总统最信任的两名检察官之间的裂痕在年初达到了顶点。当时，总统的前私人律师、司法部副部长托德·布兰奇（Todd Blanche）将“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）运动的激进分子埃德·马丁（Ed Martin）从调查总统政敌的关键职位上撤换下来。
这一将马丁“贬黜”的举动——他或许是在法庭上最公开致力于打击特朗普政敌的官员——暴露了政府内部两个截然不同派系之间的分裂。
一派将布兰奇视为维护法治框架的英雄，另一派则认为马丁是MAGA运动的烈士，是唯一愿意不惜一切代价实现特朗普优先事项的人。
近几周，随着总统明确表示对司法部在起诉那些他认为在2016年调查中错误针对他的人的进展不满，检察官们对政敌采取激进手段的分歧变得更加尖锐。
在特朗普的第一任期内，官员间的分歧经常在公众视野和社交媒体上公开。但现任白宫办公厅主任苏西·怀尔斯（Susie Wiles）明确表示，要在其第二任期内平息公开的分歧和戏剧化冲突。
“让这些事情在公开场合上演对总统的议程毫无帮助，”一位既认识两人的特朗普盟友告诉美国有线电视新闻网（CNN），“你能理解布兰奇办公室的挫败感——因为事情进展太慢，很多事情都不了了之。但马丁的行事方式最终也无助于实现总统的愿望。”
司法部的两条路径
布兰奇和马丁以不同方式效力于特朗普。
布兰奇曾在纽约大型律所执业，2023年创立了自己的律所，并在特朗普的四起刑事案件中为其辩护。他因巧妙处理特朗普圈子内部政治事务而声名鹊起，特朗普重返白宫后被任命为司法部第二号官员。
马丁——前密苏里州政客——因在“停止偷窃”（Stop the Steal）运动中担任组织者、坚定捍卫特朗普关于2020年大选存在大规模选民欺诈的无根据指控，以及为2021年1月6日国会山骚乱被告辩护而赢得MAGA阵营的赞誉。
在特朗普第二任期伊始，马丁被任命为华盛顿特区美国检察官，立即着手实施特朗普的议程，包括降级参与1月6日相关案件的资深检察官，并誓言保护政府效率部员工。
“我明确表示：这一变动并非临时性的，”马丁在当时被CNN获取的一份备忘录中写道，描述了他对检察官的降级决定。
在15周的任期内，他因管理混乱和社交媒体上对总统批评者发出威胁而备受争议，最终未能获得参议院确认。
2025年5月，他的提名被撤回，特朗普随后任命他担任司法部两个新职位，包括“武器化工作组”主任和特赦律师，这些职位均隶属于布兰奇的指挥链。
马丁预计将离开司法部
据CNN此前报道，马丁预计将在未来几周内离开司法部。他的被解职标志着布兰奇数月来试图让马丁在法律框架内行事的努力达到顶点。
马丁本应领导的武器化工作组调查迅速停滞。他在调查特朗普优先事项（包括特朗普声称拜登司法部在处理1月6日骚乱时过度干预、以及前特别检察官杰克·史密斯对特朗普及其幕僚的起诉）方面几乎没有取得任何成果。
尽管如此，马丁仍找到了其他方式取悦总统。
进入司法部总部后，马丁继续在其美国检察官办公室的做法——推动起诉特朗普的政敌。去年夏天，马丁在调查纽约州总检察长莱蒂蒂亚·詹姆斯（Letitia James）是否存在抵押贷款欺诈时，在她位于纽约布鲁克林的住所外合影。
布兰奇对马丁的不满持续加剧。两人因马丁的策略而产生激烈冲突——尤其是马丁倾向于在未告知布兰奇的情况下直接与白宫协调。
但直到12月，马丁犯下了一个重大错误，促使布兰奇努力将其彻底调离司法部。有报道称，他在调查民主党参议员亚当·希夫（Adam Schiff，特朗普名单上的主要目标之一）的案件中，不当处理了秘密大陪审团证据。
布兰奇办公室在12月迅速启动了对该事件的审查，最终发现马丁存在不当行为，两名熟悉审查情况的消息人士此前告诉CNN。
马丁在12月初被剥夺了领导武器化小组的头衔，并被安排在离司法部总部隔城相望的另一栋建筑工作。他现在正考虑彻底离开该部门。
布兰奇周二在给CNN的一份声明中表示：“目前没有针对埃德·马丁的不当行为调查。埃德作为特赦律师做得非常出色。”
MAGA阵营的分裂
布兰奇与马丁之间的事件揭示了司法部内部的根本裂痕。一些人希望在司法部的法律传统框架内推进总统的议程，另一些人则认为司法部法律传统的限制过于繁琐，难以执行总统的命令。
这种分裂并非前所未有的——在特朗普第一任期内也出现过类似分歧。当时包括前司法部长杰夫·塞申斯（Jeff Sessions）的幕僚长马修·惠特克（Matthew Whitaker）在内的特朗普盟友，对总统自己任命的官员在处理特别检察官罗伯特·穆勒（Robert Mueller）的“通俄门”调查时的阻力感到不满。
当时的冲突在于，是应该不顾特朗普的频繁公开不满而不破坏正在进行的调查，还是应该更好地服务于总统的利益。
一位总统盟友指出，尽管司法部的运作本就缓慢，但最终放弃其法律约束已经损害了部门的公信力及其执行总统议程的能力，最近几个月大陪审团和法官拒绝起诉的情况就是例证。
“我们这边不断发生这种情况，这说明了很多问题，”该人士表示，“他们在争夺谁更‘MAGA’。”
“共和党人总是这样，我们自作自受，什么都做不成，”该人士补充道。
上个月，特朗普在白宫会议上抨击检察官，称他希望对政敌的起诉采取更激进的行动，并长期抱怨2020年总统选举。
据一位知情人士透露，总统还直接向司法部长帕姆·邦迪（Pam Bondi）抱怨这些调查进展缓慢。
司法部显然对这些压力十分敏感。CNN周一报道称，武器化工作组将开始每日开会，以找出落实总统议程的方法。
随着马丁的离开，该小组预计将加倍努力推进这些问题，期望在未来几个月内取得成果。
尽管马丁被边缘化，但他仍在担任特赦律师，继续参与审查赦免申请。尽管这一头衔听起来崇高，但与其他政府一样，特朗普政府的最终赦免决定主要由白宫内部做出。
如果马丁离开司法部，尚不清楚他将何去何从，但有消息人士告诉CNN，马丁上周一直在白宫工作。
A rift between Trump’s favorite lawyers exposes a broader MAGA divide in the administration
Published Feb 7, 2026, 7:00 AM ET | By Paula Reid, Hannah Rabinowitz, Evan Perez
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.
