The Department of Justice filed a consolidated response on Monday night to former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James’ challenges to the wildly illegal and totally comical appointment of Lindsey Halligan, America’s favorite former real estate lawyer, as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Comey and James have challenged Halligan’s latest gig because she was shuffled into her U.S. attorney spot through the same sorts of ridiculous appointment contortions courts have already ruled were not valid.
Not just one court: Looking at you, Alina Habba in New Jersey.
Not just two courts: Looking at you, Sigal Chattah in Nevada
But three courts and counting: Looking at you, Bill Essayli in the Middle District of California.
But, a-ha! Attorney General Pam Bondi has a trick up her sleeve, which boils down to “Haha, suckers! You challenged Halligan’s appointment as an interim U.S. attorney? Well, check out this order I wrote on Halloween that says Halligan is also a ‘Special Attorney’!! Betcha didn’t think of that!”
Yes, the DOJ filed with the court an order to nobody, allegedly written by Bondi on Oct. 31, where she retroactively appointed Halligan to her new special attorney role, effective back on Sept. 22, and claims that this ratified Halligan’s appointment “as an attorney of the Department of Justice going forward.”
And, since Bondi can always appoint a special attorney to do whatever she wants, then it was totally fine, cool, and good that Halligan indicted Comey and James, because she was magically doing it as a special attorney. Retroactively.
Bondi’s rationale is that she has the power to appoint anyone she wants as a special attorney, in whatever role she wants. So, by making Halligan a special attorney retroactively, even if the court were to rule that Halligan was not legally in her role as interim U.S. attorney, then Bondi can appoint Halligan in a limited capacity, where she is handling only two cases—the prosecutions of both Comey and James.
Also according to Bondi, she reviewed the grand jury proceedings in both cases and then exercised the authority vested in her by law to “ratify Ms. Halligan’s actions before the grand jury and her signature on the indictments returned by the grand jury in each case.”
Psych! Didn’t see that coming, didja? Since Comey and James are both arguing that their indictments are invalid because they were signed by Halligan, Bondi has now magically also signed them. Retroactively.
Law and Crime called this “one simple trick” to save the flailing prosecutions, but it’s really more “one weird trick,” the legal equivalent of skeevy ads you see at the bottom of tacky news sites offering a cure for toenail fungus that somehow involves a banana peel.
Bondi also says that even if Halligan gets tossed, her terrific work in getting those indictments shouldn’t get thrown out, as that is not an “appropriate remedy for “what is at most a procedural misstep.”
Now, if the DOJ had a shred of credibility, it would have to disclose that this is the same approach Bondi tried to save Alina Habba’s gig as acting attorney for the district of New Jersey, and we know that didn’t work out so well there.
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Also, Halligan’s appointment wasn’t a procedural misstep or some minor thing like a wrong date on a document. Halligan’s appointment was the result of the president of the United States demanding, via what he thought was a DM but was very much not, that Bondi install Halligan so she would prosecute his enemies.
Then, Trump fired Eric Siebert, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Then, Bondi appointed Halligan via the same shady mechanism courts had already ruled against. Then Halligan secured indictments before the grand jury, somehow only a few days after getting appointed. That’s not a procedural misstep.
One more thing, you rubes. Bondi says it’s no problem that Halligan signed those indictments solo, because even if she wasn’t the interim U.S. attorney, her role as a random DOJ attorney “can present a case to a grand jury or sign an indictment, and the Attorney General plainly possessed and exercised the authority to make Ms. Halligan a government attorney, as the Attorney General has now confirmed.”
This is, of course, ridiculous. Bondi’s statement essentially means that any junior prosecutor anywhere in the DOJ and U.S. attorney offices is fully empowered to present anything they want to a grand jury and sign an indictment. If that were the case, a line-level prosecutor could head into a friendly Washington, D.C., grand jury and get them to indict Pam Bondi, and somehow the DOJ would then just throw up its hands and say “Welp, you got us! Anyone can bring charges!”
Bondi bringing up her review of the grand jury proceedings may not have been the shrewdest move, given that one of Comey’s flurry of motions seeks to unseal the grand jury proceedings because of “Ms. Halligan’s likely motive to obtain an indictment to satisfy the President’s demands, the inaccuracies in the indictment, and the determination of every career prosecutor to consider the case that charges were not warranted.”
As much as the Trump administration has scrambled to save Habba, Chattah, and Essayli, they’re going to throw far more effort at saving Halligan. She’s there specifically for Trump to exact revenge on Comey and James, and the DOJ is not going to let up.
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