Halligan defends her use of U.S. attorney title in combative court filing

[LetMyPeopleVote]

A court filing by Lindsey Halligan accuses a federal judge of making “rudimentary” legal errors, marking another escalation in the Trump administration’s clash with the judiciary.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/01/13/virgina-united-states-attorney-trump-halligan/

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.....

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.

I have read the brief filed by the DOJ and Halligan. I would not be surprised to see some sanctions issued due to Halligan being an utter asshole in this filing

[Wiz Imp]

1. She needs to be immediately disbarred as should every single attorney at the DOJ who supports her.

[lastlib]

2. From your keyboard to God's ears!

Or at least her Bar association....

Insulting a federal judge in the way she did is not a great career move.

[Wiz Imp]

3. Insulting a judge is bad enough, but she's openly defying a judge and saying she

knows the law better than the judge. That is absolutely actionable.

[Johonny]

4. Doesnt she have staff that can explain

This not only won't work, but will be counter productive

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. Deadline Legal Blog-Ordered to explain herself, Lindsey Halligan invokes Jack Smith

Halligan maintains that she can still call herself a U.S. attorney even though a judge said she was unlawfully appointed.

Link to tweet

https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/lindsey-halligan-us-attorney-jack-smith-unlawfully-appointed

A federal judge ruled in November that Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully installed by the Trump administration as the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia. That led a different judge to order Halligan to explain why she kept calling herself the district’s U.S. attorney in court papers.

Among her defenses: Jack Smith did it, too.

In her response Tuesday, Halligan recalled that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Donald Trump’s classified documents indictment in Florida on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel. “Yet in the days and weeks that followed, the Government continued — openly and without objection by any Court — to file documents identifying Jack Smith by his title as Special Counsel while appellate review proceeded,” Halligan wrote.

She added that Smith continued to refer to himself as special counsel in Trump’s separate election interference case in Washington, D.C., and that “as far as the Government is aware, no court — much less any judge — ever threatened Smith with attorney discipline for making purportedly ‘false or misleading statement[s],’ ‘knowingly disobey[ing]’ a court order, or engaging in ‘professional misconduct,’” Halligan wrote, referring to the order that demanded her response, which was issued by U.S. District Judge David Novak, a Trump appointee in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Yet Cannon’s 2024 order dismissing the documents indictment specified that it was “confined to this proceeding” in the Florida case, so it’s unclear how it could’ve led Smith to think he couldn’t refer to himself as special counsel in D.C., where Cannon’s ruling would not apply anyway..

But that general notion wouldn’t make much sense to apply in this situation, where Currie was seemingly brought in to resolve the issue across the board throughout the district. When dealing with the lawfulness of a U.S. attorney’s appointment, a judge will be brought in from outside the district, apparently to avoid a conflict because the judges in a given district have the power to appoint replacement U.S. attorneys when there’s a vacancy. So unless Currie or some other out-of-district judge is going to be brought in to resolve the legality of Halligan’s tenure whenever a new defendant challenges it, it would make sense to consider her ruling as binding throughout the district unless it’s overturned on appeal.