Federal judges demolish U.S. attorney pretender Lindsey Halligan

Federal judges have toppled embattled Trump appointee Lindsey Halligan in a ruling accusing her of ignoring court orders and a separate move aimed at stripping her of her self-proclaimed U.S. attorney title.

On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that Halligan, a loyalist President Donald Trump appointed to prosecute his enemies, had spent weeks presenting herself as the top federal prosecutor in eastern Virginia, despite being formally disqualified from the role months ago.

That ruling came just hours after the chief federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia moved to give Halligan the boot by announcing a job opening to replace her.

The ruling and announcement combined represent the strongest formal rejection of Halligan’s continued claim to the position in the monthslong struggle between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and federal judges over who should lead the local U.S. attorney’s office.

Other judges have previously struck Halligan’s name from legal documents and added footnotes that cite the ruling on her unlawful appointment in an effort to push back at her continued misrepresentations.

The saga of Halligan’s strange tenure in the DOJ came to a head in November, when U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie determined that she had been unlawfully serving as interim U.S. attorney because Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi circumvented the Constitution and federal vacancy law in appointing her to the role.

But that didn’t stop Halligan from continuing to present herself as a U.S. attorney. She even sometimes dropped the words “acting” or “interim” from her title. 

In his ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Judge David Novak slammed Halligan for continuing to insist that she remains the top federal prosecutor in the district, saying it violated Currie’s order and undermined the rule of law.

“The Court cannot tolerate such obstinance, because doing so would undermine the very essence of the Rule of Law,” Novak wrote. “If the Court were to allow Ms. Halligan and the Department of Justice to pick and choose which orders that they will follow, the same would have to be true for other litigants and our system of justice would crumble.”

In addition to striking her claimed title from an indictment secured after she was disqualified, Novak also chastised Halligan for her remarkably defiant and combative response after he asked her to explain how her continued identification as U.S. attorney didn’t amount to her making false or misleading statements to a court. 

In her response, Halligan had accused Novak of abusing his power by questioning her authority in light of Currie’s order.

“Ms. Halligan’s response, in which she was joined by both the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, contains a level of vitriol more appropriate for a cable news talk show and falls far beneath the level of advocacy expected from litigants in this Court, particularly the Department of Justice,” Novak wrote Tuesday.

To add insult to injury, Novak said he would not refer Halligan for further investigation and disciplinary action unless she continued violating Currie’s orders because she “lacks the prosecutorial experience that has long been the norm” for U.S. attorneys in the district. 

Hours before Novak’s ruling, M. Hannah Lauck, the chief judge of the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a court notice that since Halligan’s 120-day appointment formally ends Tuesday, the U.S. attorney title in the district would be vacant. 

Lauck said that because the Senate had not confirmed Halligan, federal judges in the district now had the authority to appoint someone to replace her. She further asked for qualified attorneys to apply to fill the role.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia did not immediately respond to Democracy Docket’s request for comment.

On social media Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche implied that Trump would fire whomever the judges appoint and put his own pick back in the job.

“It’s guaranteed that the President gets to pick his U.S. attorneys,” Blanche wrote.

The notice and job posting came just days after Trump, in a desperate attempt to keep Halligan at the helm of the key U.S. attorney’s office, nominated her to the position for a second time.

Trump initially appointed Halligan, his former personal lawyer who at the time had no prosecutorial experience, to the interim U.S. attorney position shortly after publicly ordering Bondi to target his political enemies more aggressively. 

Just days after being sworn in, Halligan brought criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey, one of Trump’s long-time foes. She later also brought charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James, another one of Trump’s targets.

But after finding Halligan’s appointment unlawful, Currie dismissed the indictments against Comey and James. The judge said the charges could not stand because they were sought by someone unlawfully serving a U.S. attorney.

The DOJ has appealed Currie’s dismissals to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

This story has been updated with new details throughout.