# Weaponization Working Group A working group established inside the Office of the [[Attorney General]] by memorandum on **February 5, 2025**, hours after [[Pam Bondi]] was sworn in. Its assignment was to review prior federal and state investigations of [[Donald Trump]] and his allies: the [[Special Counsel]] investigations, the New York prosecutions, the January 6 cases, prosecutions of anti-abortion protesters, and alleged FBI targeting of traditionalist Catholics. ## The structural point Its significance for this vault is **structural rather than biographical**. The group is the clearest example of what replaced the Part 600 apparatus. Compared with a [[Special Counsel]] under 28 C.F.R. Part 600, it has: - no outside-the-Government requirement for its personnel; - no written jurisdiction statement issued by the Attorney General; - no enumerated removal grounds; - no confidential closing report; - no notification to the congressional Judiciary Committees. It is an ordinary internal Department body, and that is exactly the point. None of the independence architecture attaches. ## Leadership - **May 2025.** [[Ed Martin]] was named director at the same time he became Pardon Attorney, after his nomination as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia collapsed in the Senate. - **Early 2026.** He was removed as director. Reporting puts the removal between January 1 and February 2, 2026, and links it to his posting photos of himself outside [[Letitia James]]'s home. He stayed on as Pardon Attorney until **August 21, 2026**, when Trump announced he was leaving to "fight Legal Battles" for the midterms and 2028. - **Since then.** This page could not find a named successor director. The group's output is now announced by Acting Attorney General [[Todd Blanche]]. > Corrected 2026-09-28: an earlier version said Martin "left the Department in February 2026." He lost the directorship then, but he left DOJ in August 2026. ## What it produced Its first major product, and at the time NPR called it the group's only meaningful one, is the **April 14, 2026 report on FACE Act prosecutions**. Announced by Blanche, it drew on more than 700,000 internal records. - **What it alleged.** The report claimed that Biden-era prosecutors coordinated with abortion-rights groups, screened jurors by religion, and sought longer sentences for anti-abortion defendants. - **What followed.** At least four prosecutors were fired, and a directive limited future [[FACE Act]] prosecutions to "extraordinary circumstances." Critics called it cherry-picked. The sharper critique came from Lawfare. Its point was not that the report was shrill but that it was *normal*: over 200 footnotes and 800 pages of appendices, a polished record whose measured tone could serve as a blueprint for prosecuting career officials in front of grand juries and judges who defer to prosecutors. Read that way, the working group's function is to convert the "weaponization" grievance into a Department record that can support the next personnel action or indictment. See [[How a Federal Prosecution Begins and Ends]] and [[Prosecutorial Discretion]]. ## See Also - [[Special Counsel Appointment and Removal Flow]]: the architecture this body does not have - [[Special Counsel]] · [[Attorney General]] · [[Department of Justice]] - [[Ed Martin]] · [[Pam Bondi]] · [[Todd Blanche]] · [[Weaponized]]