The Justice Department responded defiantly Tuesday to an order from a federal judge directing Lindsey Halligan to explain why she continues to use the title U.S. attorney in Virginia despite another judge’s ruling that her appointment was unconstitutional.
In a response signed by Halligan, the Justice Department opposed U.S. District Judge David Novak, who demanded last week that Halligan account for why she continues to use the U.S. attorney title in court filings. Novak, a Richmond judge who Trump nominated to the bench in 2019, suggested Halligan’s use of the title could amount to false or misleading statements.
“The bottom line is that Ms. Halligan has not ‘misrepresented’ anything and the Court is flat wrong to suggest that any change to the Government’s signature block is warranted in this or any other case,” the response said.
The response, which accuses Novak of making “rudimentary” legal errors and missing “elementary” legal principles, is written in a derisive tone unusual for a government lawyer addressing a federal judge.
Halligan was a personal lawyer for President Donald Trump before being appointed as interim U.S. attorney in Virginia’s Eastern District.
Several other judges in the Eastern District have called for Halligan’s name and U.S. attorney title to be struck from court filings.
U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, who supervises the Alexandria, Virginia, courthouse, on Friday struck Halligan’s name from a case, commenting that “she should resign from the position at this point.”
In November, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled that Halligan’s appointment as interim U.S. attorney was invalid because of an unusual maneuver the Trump administration used to install her. Trump had previously appointed an interim prosecutor to lead the office, Erik S. Siebert, at the start of his term in January 2025. Siebert was forced out in September after declining to seek charges against former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Career prosecutors had recommended against pursuing the two cases because of insufficient evidence of wrongdoing.
In tossing cases that Halligan then brought against Comey and James, Currie ruled that under federal law the power to appoint a U.S. attorney shifted to the federal judges in the Eastern District after Siebert’s 120-day appointment concluded.
The Justice Department has appealed the ruling, but it did not request a stay, meaning that the ruling disqualifying Halligan remains in effect for now.
Like Brinkema, Novak acted on his own in issuing his order — rather than in response to a motion from a litigant. The Justice Department characterized the action as out of line.
“The Court’s thinly veiled threat to use attorney discipline to cudgel the Executive Branch into conforming its legal position in all criminal prosecutions to the views of a single district judge is a gross abuse of power and an affront to the separation of powers,” Halligan’s filing said.
Halligan said Currie’s ruling in the Comey and James cases has no bearing on any other cases, and that “no authority exists for a court to strike an attorney title out of a signature block, and certainly not on its own motion.”
The post Halligan defends her use of U.S. attorney title in combative court filing appeared first on Washington Post.
