The Justice Department accused a federal judge of abusing his power by demanding that Lindsey Halligan explain why she continues to identify herself as a U.S. attorney in Virginia after another judge ruled she was illegally appointed.
The dispute was sparked after U.S. District Judge David Novak ordered Halligan to submit a written explanation addressing whether her continued use of the U.S. attorney title is false or misleading, following an earlier ruling by U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie. Currie, in November, decided that cases tied to Halligan’s invalid appointment had to be dismissed.
Halligan had secured charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James before Currie’s dismissal ruling. The Justice Department’s latest filing says nothing in Currie’s order bars Halligan from acting as U.S. attorney or from using that title.
In a response co-signed by Halligan, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche argued that Currie’s order did not require changes to how the government identifies the U.S. attorney in proceedings. They wrote, “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 filing also criticized Novak’s focus on Halligan’s signature-block title. Justice Department officials said Novak’s “fixation on a signature block title is untethered from how federal courts actually operate,” and they further argued that the court was improperly using threats of attorney discipline to pressure the executive branch.
They wrote, “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 AP story described Novak as a former federal prosecutor who was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump during Trump’s first term. It also said Novak overlapped in the Eastern District of Virginia with Comey, who had previously been a supervisor in that office.
The same account said Halligan was a former White House aide who had no prior prosecutorial experience before she was chosen by Trump to lead one of the Justice Department’s key offices. It said she replaced Erik Siebert, a veteran prosecutor who resigned in September as interim U.S. attorney amid Trump administration pressure to file charges against both Comey and James.
The AP report said a grand jury indicted Comey three days after Bondi swore in Halligan, and that James was charged two weeks later. The filing’s latest dispute comes as Novak, in an unrelated criminal case, questioned why he should not strike Halligan’s name from an indictment, citing court rules that make it professional misconduct to make false or misleading statements.