President Donald Trump’s embattled U.S. attorney pick filed a furious response to a judge’s question about why she’s still calling herself a U.S. attorney after a court ruled her appointment was illegal.
The president’s own appointee, Judge David Novak, issued an order earlier this month demanding that Lindsey Halligan “explain why her identification does not constitute a false or misleading statement.”
The 36-year-old former beauty pageant contestant and insurance lawyer—who also worked as a civil attorney for Trump—is still calling herself the U.S. attorney on the Eastern District of Virginia’s website and on X, and has been signing criminal indictments as the U.S. attorney.
In response to Novak’s order, the Justice Department accused Novak of trying to “coerce the Executive Branch” in a court filing submitted on Tuesday.
“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,” the filing raged.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the DOJ and Novak’s office for comment.
In November, a judge threw out Halligan’s indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York state Attorney General Letitia James on the grounds that she was illegally serving as interim U.S. attorney.
Six weeks later, Novak wrote in his order that although the government had appealed the ruling that nullified Halligan’s appointment, the appeals court had not issued a stay in the case, meaning the original decision remained “binding precedent in this district” while the appeals process played out.
Halligan was sworn in as interim U.S. attorney on Sept. 23 after her predecessor was pushed out over his refusal to bring cases against Trump’s perceived enemies, citing lack of evidence.
She quickly secured indictments against Comey and James that were called into questions over the validity of her appointment.
In early November, Attorney General Pam Bondi tried to shore up the indictments by giving Halligan the additional title of “special attorney,” which the administration claimed applied retroactively to Sept. 22.
The court, however, rejected that argument and dismissed the cases in a Nov. 24 ruling by Judge Cameron Currie, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, that found Halligan was illegally serving as U.S. attorney.
Bondi’s DOJ has nevertheless continued to insist that Halligan is the Eastern Virginia office’s lead attorney. Last month, several judges in the district complained to prosecutors in open court about Halligan signing new criminal case filings in that capacity.
The government argued in Tuesday’s filing that Currie’s decision wasn’t binding on other courts and that Halligan’s name can “indisputably be included” on new indictments, “with the only dispute being whether her title should be ‘Special Attorney’… rather than ‘United States Attorney.’”
By law, interim U.S. attorneys can only serve 120 days without Senate confirmation, unless the federal judiciary agrees to keep them in the position longer. The court ruled that veteran prosecutor Erik Siebert had already served the interim period, making Halligan’s appointment illegal.
This week, it was revealed that Halligan’s deputy, 64-year-old Robert McBride, had been ousted after just a few months on the job for meeting with federal judges in a bid to convince them to give him Halligan’s position.
McBride also reportedly refused to take charge of the case against Comey, saying it would be difficult to prosecute Trump’s nemesis while trying to run the office, which oversees most of the country’s intelligence and national security cases.
In December, the White House pushed to advance Halligan’s nomination in the Senate, a plan that appeared dead on arrival because neither of Virginia’s Democratic senators was willing to support her nomination.
In the meantime, the Department of Justice has brought in new prosecutors to try to secure grand jury indictments against Comey and James but has so far failed to convince two grand juries to sign off on charges against James.
James successfully sued Trump for civil fraud, while the president blames Comey for helping to trigger special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
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