Halligan and DOJ brass pick fight with Trump-appointed judge
In an extraordinarily combative filing, Lindsey Halligan called a Trump-appointed judge's inquiry an "inquisition" and a "gross abuse of power."
Tonight in Your Rights, the All Rise News evening brief, recaps the most important legal news that should be on your radar.
One week after a federal judge suggested that she may have committed professional misconduct, Lindsey Halligan doubled down on identifying herself as a U.S. Attorney even though she has been disqualified from that position.
Halligan has the full backing of Donald Trump’s Justice Department in an extraordinary and combative legal brief signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Threatened with the prospect of professional discipline, Halligan launched a full-pronged counterattack on U.S. District Judge David Novak, a Trump appointee. Novak launched an inquiry last week after finding that Halligan identified herself as the U.S. Attorney despite a “binding” order that she was unlawfully appointed.
Halligan, and the top Justice Department leadership, repeatedly labeled Novak’s order an “inquisition” in a brief accusing him of making “rudimentary” and “elementary” errors.
“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,” Halligan wrote.
She defiantly continued to identify herself as the “United States Attorney” for the Eastern District of Virginia, despite Novak writing that the ruling disqualifying her from that position is “the binding precedent in this district and is not subject to being ignored.”
It is unclear how Novak will respond to the defiant and even pugilistic filing, which called his order an “insult” resulting from a “fixation on a signature block title is untethered from how federal courts actually operate.”
Novak ordered Halligan to explain why he shouldn’t strike the “United States Attorney” from her signature and why her insistence on continuing to do so doesn’t violate four separate Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct.
The brief makes clear that Halligan has the Trump Justice Department’s full support in positioning herself as a U.S. Attorney, even though U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed her cases against James Comey and Letitia James after finding Halligan’s appointment to that position violated the Constitution and federal law.
Blanche, Bondi and Halligan cast Judge Currie’s ruling as a “disagreement” with the government.
“It is the United States’ position that Ms. Halligan was properly appointed as interim United States Attorney—a position the United States has maintained in part based on internal legal advice from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel,” they wrote. “That Judge Currie dismissed two indictments based on her disagreement with that position does not prevent the United States from otherwise maintaining it.”
An advocacy group called the Campaign for Accountability filed a bar complaint against Halligan which the Virginia Bar rejected, finding that a court’s referral would be necessary for the bar to open an investigation.
In an interview on Tuesday, the group’s CEO Michelle Kuppersmith told All Rise News that they are monitoring the litigation to see whether to revive that complaint.
“Campaign for Accountability is preparing to reaffirm our request to the Virginia Bar if and when Judge Novak's response comes out,” Kuppersmith said in an interview.
Look out for an extended interview with Kuppersmith in the coming days.
Read Halligan’s brief here.
Judge mulls special master for Epstein files
A federal judge in New York will consider whether he has the power to appoint an independent monitor to supervise the congressionally-mandated disclosure of the Epstein files.
House Oversight Committee members Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) argued that such a measure was necessary after the government blew past the Dec. 9 deadline for the full release of the files.
“Put simply, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the Act,” they wrote in a two-page letter on Jan. 8.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer launched a process to determine whether that request was legally possible.
Engelmayer took over Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal docket after a different trial judge received a promotion to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and the congressional request landed in his court.
The judge asked whether Congress members have “standing to participate in this criminal case, including to raise issues concerning DOJ’s compliance with the Act that have not been raised in this matter by any party or victim.” He also sought legal briefings on “whether the Court—by virtue of its supervision of the protective order in this case or otherwise—has the authority to rule upon (or take action to bring about) DOJ’s compliance with the Act.”
Engelmayer’s reckoning on the issue could be brief. He set out a briefing schedule that ends on Jan. 20, one week from today.
Read Engelmayer’s order in full here.
Prosecutor purge in Minnesota linked to ICE shooting
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that six federal prosecutors resigned rather than comply with the Trump Justice Department’s wishes for them to investigate the widow of Renee Nicole Good, the slain mother-of-three shot to death by a federal agent.
One of the prosecutors to resign, Joseph H. Thompson, reportedly objected to probing Good’s widow and freezing out state officials from the government’s investigation. Thompson helped lead the multibillion-dollar docket of fraud prosecutions that began during the Biden administration, which Trump officials have used to vilify Minnesota’s Somali-American community.
The Times reports:
The Minneapolis police chief, Brian O’Hara, said in an interview that Mr. Thompson’s resignation dealt a major blow to efforts to root out rampant theft from state agencies. The fraud cases, which involve schemes to cheat safety net programs, were the chief reason the Trump administration cited for its immigration crackdown in the state. The vast majority of defendants charged in the cases are American citizens of Somali origin.
Less than one year into Trump’s second term, federal prosecutors have been fired or forced to resign in U.S. Attorney’s offices across the country for refusing to comply with the government’s political agenda.
Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York resigned rather than dismiss charges against former Mayor Eric Adams. The Eastern District of Virginia’s former U.S. Attorney Eric Siebert was pressured out to make way for Halligan, whose deputy recently was ousted for resisting an effort to revive Comey’s prosecution.
Read the Times article here.
🤦🏻♀️ Facepalm emoji because I have no words left.
She must have been picturing Traitor when she came up with "gross abuse of power."