Justice Department slams Trump-appointed judge for questioning Lindsey Halligan’s authority
By Katelyn Polantz, CNN
(CNN) — The Justice Department is escalating its standoff with judges in the Eastern District of Virginia with a new filing defending Lindsey Halligan, President Donald Trump’s choice to lead the prosecutors’ office whose work in the cases against James Comey and Letitia James has been nullified.
The filing accuses federal Judge David Novak in Richmond, a Trump appointee, of trying to “coerce the Executive Branch into conformity.”
Several Eastern District of Virginia judges in recent weeks have said they believe Halligan is no longer the US attorney leading the office. Novak and other judges in the district have suggested prosecutors who are still making filings under Halligan’s name as US attorney could lead to attorney discipline inquiries for failing to comply with court rulings, a classic avenue available to judges as they oversee cases in their courtrooms.
“Adding insult to error, (Novak) posits that the United States’ continued assertion of its legal position that Ms. Halligan properly serves as the United States Attorney amounts to a factual misrepresentation that could trigger attorney discipline. 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 Justice Department wrote on Tuesday.
District judges for weeks have been questioning why Halligan was still signing court papers, especially those that charged criminal defendants in the district. Novak’s inquiry became notable last week when he asked for full briefing from the Justice Department on its reasoning, leading to Tuesday’s filing.
The Justice Department is appealing the decision undercutting Halligan’s authority in the Comey and James cases.
A South Carolina-based judge in the Comey and James cases who had been specially brought in to the district last year decided Halligan wasn’t the legitimate US attorney because she hadn’t been Senate confirmed nor selected by the court.
The fallout of the decision has caused major turmoil within the prosecutors’ office, as judges in the Alexandria and Richmond courthouses have scrutinized prosecutors still using her name and criminal defendants challenge the Justice Department’s actions in their cases that Halligan has overseen.
Similar fights have played out in several other Justice Department courthouses across the country, where the Trump administration has insisted lawyers who haven’t been confirmed by the Senate can continue to act as US attorneys.
In recent days, Robert McBride, a career prosecutor serving as Halligan’s No. 2 in the US Attorney’s Office for only a handful of weeks, was fired.
In the Tuesday filing, the Justice Department boldly defended Halligan and delivered its own criticism of the federal trial-level court.
“The Court is flat wrong to suggest that any change to the Government’s signature block is warranted in this or any other case,” Justice Department lawyers wrote to the court on Tuesday. “It is correct and consistent with the Department of Justice’s internal guidance, and at minimum reflects a contested legal position that the United States is entitled to maintain notwithstanding a single district judge’s contrary view.”
The filing is signed by Halligan, as well as two lower-level prosecutors, under the names of Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
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