Ding Dong, The Not So Scary Witch Is Dead: Lindsey Halligan Is Out As Interim US Attorney
Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia — who was handpicked by President Donald Trump because he couldn’t get seasoned and competent federal prosecutors to do his political lawfare bidding — left her position at the Justice Department on Tuesday, two whole months after a federal judge ruled that she had been serving in the role illegally.
Apparently, somebody finally got the memo that she doesn’t even work there anymore.
From CNN:
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Halligan’s exit in a post on X Tuesday evening, writing that it “is a significant loss” for the department and noting that she “will continue to serve her country in other ways.”
News of Halligan’s departure came hours after a federal judge issued a withering ruling calling out Halligan’s decision to use unusually sharp language earlier this month as she pushed back on the judge’s questioning of her authority, saying the “unnecessary rhetoric” had “a level of vitriol more appropriate for a cable news talk show.”
The assessment from US District Judge David Novak, who was appointed by Trump in 2019, was the latest dramatic development in a months-long legal saga surrounding Halligan, an insurance lawyer turned prosecutor whose tenure as interim US attorney appeared to be cut short after a judge determined in November that she was unlawfully serving in the role.
Back in November, the Trump administration’s transparently retaliatory criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James took a nosedive after U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie dismissed both cases, which she largely did because Halligan was prosecuting the cases despite not being confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and having exceeded the grace period acting U.S. attorneys get before their confirmation is required. Of course, Halligan’s glaring incompetence had already put the case against Comey in jeopardy, and the case against James had so little merit that the administration had tried and failed to persuade grand juries to re-indict her, not once, but twice.
Still, Trump and Bondi went to bat for their woefully inexperienced and underqualified legal stooge — who was appointed after at least two seasoned prosecutors were fired by the Trump administration for opposing the charges against James — and in early January, nearly two months after Judge Currie’s initial ruling, Judge Novak issued a three-page order demanding to know why Halligan was still serving in the position she had been told she couldn’t legally hold.
But apparently, Halligan was still out here using her U.S. attorney title while presenting new criminal cases in federal court, drawing the ire of district judges, including Novak, who issued another 18-page ruling, accusing Halligan of openly defying previous rulings.
“Ms. Halligan has continued to identify herself as the United States Attorney for this District in pleadings, including on the indictment and other pleadings in this case,” Novak wrote. “I elected to give Ms. Halligan an opportunity to explain her position … After reviewing Ms. Halligan’s filing and piercing through the unnecessary rhetoric, I find her position to be unavailing.”
“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,” the judge continued. “The Court will not engage in a similar tit-for-tat.”
And that was Novak being far too kind. In fact, the judge even spared Halligan from the disciplinary action he said she could face, essentially saying her “inexperience” is what saved her.
“In light of her inexperience, the court grants Ms. Halligan the benefit of the doubt and refrains from referring her for further investigation and disciplinary action regarding her misrepresentations to this Court at this time,” Novak wrote.
Mind you, Novak’s latest ruling came just after EDVA’s chief judge, M. Hannah Lauck, issued a brief order, noting that when Halligan was first appointed to serve as interim US attorney in September, her time in the position was supposed to last 120 days, meaning Tuesday marked her last day anyway.
I mean, how many different federal judges needed to tell Halligan, “You can’t sit with us,” before she stopped playing around in everyone’s faces?
So, finally, Halligan took the hint and got the hell on — but not before she blamed EDVA judges for hers and the Trump administration’s failure to — how do I put this — know WTF they’re doing.
More from CNN:
In a statement Tuesday evening, Halligan acknowledged that the 120-day window for her temporary assignment to the role had ended.
She criticized the EDVA judges for not appointing a new US attorney following the November decision and took aim at members of the bench who challenged the way she continued to operate in the aftermath of that decision.
“The court took no action to fill the vacancy it said already existed,” she said in the statement. “The result was a vacuum: the Executive Branch was told it lacked appointment authority, and the Judiciary declined to exercise the authority it claimed was exclusively its own.”
It’s almost as if this entire administration is trained not to accept responsibility for literally anything.
Sad.
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