The Judicial Branch Didn’t Actually Cover Itself In Glory in the Lindsey Halligan Saga

Judges Sidestep Halligan Confrontation

On the surface it looks like the federal judges in the Eastern District of Virginia tackled the Lindsey Halligan problem head on. But if you look a little closer, the judges went out of their way to avoid a direct confrontation with the White House.

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge David J. Novak issued a blistering ruling threatening Halligan — and the attorney general and deputy attorney general — with disciplinary proceedings if she continues to identify herself as interim U.S. attorney. “In short, this charade of Ms. Halligan masquerading as the United States Attorney for this District in direct defiance of binding court orders must come to an end,” ruled Novak, a Trump appointee. Novak’s rip-roaring order came the same day that the judges of the district began advertising for the vacant U.S. attorney position.

Sounds good, right? Various reports on the latest developments called it an “escalation” of the confrontation over Halligan. But that’s a mistaken read of the situation. It was in fact a deescalation by the judges, an elaborate dance to avoid a confrontation with the executive branch. Let me explain.

Both the Novak order and the announcement that the judges would fill the federal prosecutor vacancy came the same day that Halligan’s purported 120-day tenure as interim U.S. attorney was set to end by terms of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s own order appointing Halligan. That cannot be just a coincidence of timing.

The judges waited to act until Halligan was no longer U.S. attorney even by the strained definition adopted by the Trump administration that had already been rejected by a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled back in November that Bondi’s appointment of Halligan was invalid. Assigned to hear challenges to Halligan’s appointment because the local federal judges were conflicted out, Currie ruled that the executive branch had already used up its one shot at appointing an interim U.S. attorney when it named Erik Siebert in January 2025. When his 120-day term interim expired in May, the judges of the district extended it, as is their power under the statute.

When Trump fired Siebert, Bondi then purported to appoint Halligan to another 120-day term. Currie emphatically said it doesn’t work that way. The executive branch gets one bite at that apple, and if the Senate still hasn’t confirmed a permanent U.S. attorney, then under the statute the local judges get to pick the interim U.S. attorney.

Yet, despite Currie’s ruling in November, the judges stalled for two months, not naming a new interim even though some of them went on the record in court griping about Halligan submitting filings in which she continued to hold herself out at interim U.S. attorney. Even Novak, who eviscerated Halligan’s arguments for their substance and tone and in the process called out Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, crafted his order explicitly not to give it effect until 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 21 (today), which is after Halligan’s purported term ended.

In a kicker, Halligan herself made the judges’ failure to act the central focus of her barely-veiled “eff you” farewell statement:

Statement from Lindsey Halligan, whom a judge ruled today cannot sign filings as the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia pic.twitter.com/hghGY1EMpH

— Sam Levine (@srl) January 21, 2026

It’s not clear why the judges weren’t more forceful, either initially — when Trump fired the guy they had appointed because he refused to do the president’s bidding in indicting former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James — or later when Currie issued her definitive ruling. They only waited two months, you might say, but that’s half the length of Halligan’s purported 120-day term.

Was there a lack of consensus among the judges? Did some support the administration’s position? Were others reluctant to confront the executive branch? Did conflict-averse judges prefer to let the clock run out on Halligan’s purported appointment so that there wasn’t the risk of dueling U.S. attorneys, one appointed by the judges and another by Bondi, in a Avignon papacy situation? Were they concerned that they might be undermined if the 4th Circuit had quickly weighed in on the Trump administration’s appeal of Currie’s decision (even though the administration did not immediately appeal nor ask for expedited treatment of the appeal)? Were the judges unable to find qualified candidates willing to take the risk of accepting the job with all of the above uncertainties hovering over it?

Because of the cloistered nature of the federal judiciary, we’re not likely to ever know what happened behind the scenes that made the judges leery about asserting themselves and forcing the issue. But whatever the reason, it had the effect of validating Halligan’s appointment despite Currie’s two-month-old ruling that made it abundantly clear that she was appointed in violation of the authorizing statute and the Constitution’s Appointments Clause.

I have been laser focused for the past year on whether the judicial branch would stand up to the executive branch to protect its own constitutional and statutory powers and prerogatives. The record so far is decidedly mixed, and the Halligan episode shows how quickly these confrontations can get muddied and obscured, leaving the underlying principles not entirely vindicated in the clutch.

Trump DOJ Issues Corrupt Subpoenas

The baseless and corrupt DOJ “investigation” into Minnesota Democratic officials for allegedly interfering with the administration’s Operation Metro Surge now includes subpoenas to Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty.

Notably, the Trump DOJ’s move against Ellison and Moriarty means the state officials investigating the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good — which the Justice Department has refused to investigate — are now under criminal subpoena. Let that sink in.

Good Point

I’ve called what the Trump DOJ is doing to bury the shooting of Renee Good a cover-up, but that word felt insufficient and not quite on point, for reasons I was having trouble articulating to myself. Radley Balko clarified the point for me in a NYT op-ed:

The lies this administration is telling about Ms. Good aren’t those you deploy as part of a cover-up. They’re those you use when you want to show you can get away with anything. They’re a projection of power.

Exactly right.

Mass Deportation Watch

• Garrett Graff: How Trump changed ICE and CBP into a fascist secret police
• President Trump slightly softened his tone about Renee Good after apparently learning that her father is a Trump supporter: “Mr. Trump appeared to link his apparent change of heart to what he said were the political views of Ms. Good’s parents, particularly her father, who he said was a ‘tremendous Trump fan.’”
• Minnesota police chiefs came out against ICE tactics as civil rights violations after numerous off-duty officers of color were repeatedly stopped by federal agents:

Greenland Watch

With Russia cheering on the real-time dissolution of NATO, let’s turn again to what U.S. allies are saying about President Trump’s designs on Greenland:

In an especially powerful speech, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned of a “‘rupture in the world order”:

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever: “We tried to appease the new president in the White House … We’re dependent on the United States so we chose to be lenient. But now, so many red lines are being crossed that you have the choice between your self-respect — being a happy vassal is one thing, being a miserable slave is something else.”

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide: “There’s a real war with the Russians going on in Ukraine. Greenland is taking energy away from what we should be talking about.”

Former Danish Prime Minister Per Stig Møller: “For my entire life, I have looked up to America, and had excellent cooperation with America. It is crucial for world peace that Europe and the U.S. stand together. That mutual loyalty has been completely destroyed. It is extremely hurtful. And it shows I have been incredibly naive.”

Hans Mouritzen, emeritus senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies: “It’s an irony of fate that the country, which has been the most pro-American, also gets punished the hardest. But maybe this is what it takes to pull Denmark out of its sleepy superatlanticism.”

A Danish member of the European Parliament was more succinct:

LIVE: SCOTUS Hears Lisa Cook Case

TPM’s Kate Riga and Layla A. Jones are liveblogging the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in the case of President Trump’s purported firing of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook over bogus mortgage fraud claims. The proceedings convene at 10 a.m. ET.

Chart of the Day

“In total, federal science agencies lost about 20% of their staff in 2025 relative to the previous year, after modest increases over the past few years,” according to a Nature assessment of U.S. science after a year of Trump:

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Judges Sidestep Halligan Confrontation On the surface it looks like the federal judges in the Eastern District of Virginia tackled… TPM – Talking Points Memo