President Trump announced Friday that U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin will leave the administration to wage legal fights aimed at securing the upcoming midterm and 2028 presidential elections, a move that shifts one of the Justice Department's most combative figures from inside government to the outside.

Trump disclosed the departure in a Truth Social post Friday afternoon, shortly after Martin spent an hour with the president at the White House. The 56-year-old Martin had served in multiple roles during Trump's current term, pardon attorney, brief acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and director of the Justice Department's Weaponization Working Group, a unit that reviewed Biden-era prosecutions of Trump.

The New York Post reported that Martin had told colleagues earlier this year he planned to leave after establishing a new process for felons to apply to regain their gun rights, an application the Justice Department unveiled on its website just days earlier.

It was not immediately clear which outside group Martin would join, or what specific legal battles he would lead. Trump's post offered praise but few operational details.

Trump's farewell cited the Weaponization Group and Martin's work as D.C. attorney

Trump's full Truth Social post framed Martin's departure as a natural next chapter rather than a shake-up:

"Ed Martin has been with me from the very beginning, and done an incredible job as an Attorney, Director of the Weaponization Working Group, and the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. Ed is now leaving to go outside to fight Legal Battles for the upcoming Midterm Election, and the Presidential Election of 2028. I know he will do an outstanding job, ensure Free, Fair, and Honest Elections, and strongly advance our Constitutional Rights. Good luck Ed!"

The statement listed three distinct titles Martin held inside the administration, a breadth of responsibility unusual for a single appointee and a reflection of how central Martin became to the Justice Department's most politically charged work.

That work included administering Trump's mass clemency for defendants charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Martin also helped push forward a criminal investigation of New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud, a case whose current status remains unclear.

The Trump administration has simultaneously been pressing election-related legal fights on other fronts. It recently asked the Supreme Court to reinstate mail-in ballot restrictions before the midterms, a move that signals how seriously the White House views the legal landscape heading into the next two election cycles.

Martin rescued a pardon office the White House once considered eliminating

Neil W. McCabe, a former senior adviser to Martin who now works as a reporter for Real America's Voice, credited Martin with saving an office that nearly ceased to exist. McCabe said:

"Ed Martin saved the US pardon office because his predecessor had such a toxic tenure that in the beginning of the Trump administration, there was a feeling at the White House and at Main Justice that the pardon office should be eliminated."

Instead of shutting the office down, the administration installed Martin, who processed pardon applications and oversaw the Jan. 6 clemency effort. He also refused to accept hand-delivered pardon requests, a procedural line that mattered because Trump has unconventionally granted many pardons and sentence commutations to people who lobbied him directly.

Alice Johnson, whom Trump freed from prison during his first term, remains in place as the White House's pardon czar and will continue handling that side of the portfolio after Martin's exit.

Blanche and Martin clashed, then made it work

Martin's tenure overlapped with a complicated relationship with Attorney General Todd Blanche, who won Senate confirmation on August 8. That confirmation itself was not a foregone conclusion; Trump at one point floated pulling Blanche's nomination after two Republican senators blocked it.

An unnamed DOJ source told the Post that Blanche once addressed the friction with Martin in a meeting by quipping: "Ed and I have had our differences, but we always have great makeup sex." The remark, whatever its tone, acknowledged tensions that were apparently an open secret inside the department.

During their Friday meeting at the White House, Trump and Martin discussed their mutual fondness for the late conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, a personal note that underscored the ideological bond between the two men even as Martin prepared to step outside the government.

An outside role with big unanswered questions

Martin's shift to outside legal work raises several practical questions the administration has not yet answered. No specific organization has been named. No successor for the pardon attorney role has been announced. And the scope of "legal battles" for the midterms and 2028 remains undefined.

What is clear is the political logic. Republicans face a midterm cycle in which election procedures, ballot access, and voter-roll integrity will be contested in courtrooms across the country. Democrats have already begun positioning for 2028 as well, with the party locking in South Carolina as its first primary state and reshuffling leadership after prominent voices within the party admitted its leaders have failed.

Martin's gun-rights initiative, the felon application process the Justice Department posted on its website, stands as one concrete policy deliverable he completed before leaving. The application, hosted at justice.gov, creates a formal pathway for felons to petition for restoration of their Second Amendment rights, a process that had no standardized federal mechanism before.

Internal Democratic struggles over direction and leadership, including calls from senators like Elissa Slotkin for the party to move on from its current leaders, may only sharpen the legal and political battles Martin is heading into. A fractured opposition does not mean an easy fight, it means a messy one, with litigation on multiple fronts.

Martin leaves the Justice Department with a record that drew praise from the president and skepticism from critics who viewed the Weaponization Working Group and the Jan. 6 clemency effort as inherently political projects. Whether that record translates into effective outside legal work will depend on the organization he joins, the cases he picks, and the courts that hear them.

If the last two election cycles taught anything, it is that the legal fights over how Americans vote matter as much as the campaigns themselves. Martin is betting his next chapter on exactly that premise, and the administration just handed him the field.