Lindsey Halligan is not having a great day. But you know who is probably having a worse day? President Donald Trump.
Halligan’s indictments against both former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James just got tossed. The sham investigation into California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff is also disintegrating into a gossipy mess.
So much for New York Attorney General Letitia James’ indictment.
The mortgage fraud allegations against Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook are problematic, as several Trump administration officials have the same arrangements that are ostensibly so fraud-sy for Cook.
How dare so many people stand in the way of Trump’s desire to wreak vengeance??
The defeat that has to sting the most right now is seeing Halligan, Trump’s handpicked interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Nevada, absolutely crash and burn.
Fam, is it good when 100% of the cases you brought are dismissed, and you also learn you are not legally in your job and never have been? Honestly, it makes U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C. Jeanine Pirro’s cavalcade of no-bills and trial losses look positively minor by comparison.
On Monday, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, who was hearing both Comey’s and James’ challenges to Halligan’s appointment, found that Halligan’s appointment violated both 28 U.S.C. § 546, which specifically covers the attorney general’s power to fill vacancies, and the Appointments Clause.
So what does this mean for our favorite insurance lawyer/Smithsonian DEI cop/Interim U.S. attorney for retribution for the Eastern District of Virginia?
Well, first, she can no longer put interim U.S. attorney on her resume, as the ruling says she was never in her job legally, not even from day one. And what flows from that, of course, is that the indictments she secured while flying completely solo are out.
Goodbye, indictment of James Comey. Goodbye indictment of Letitia James. Currie was basically able to cut and paste the order dismissing Comey’s indictment into the order dismissing James’.
The reason Halligan is not legally in her job is similar to the reasons that three other Trump interim picks—Alina Habba, Sigal Chattah, and Bill Essayli—are not. All of these people were named as interim or acting U.S. attorneys, so Trump doesn’t have to try to secure Senate confirmation for this passel of pliable nitwits. The courts keep finding that all these appointment shenanigans do not add up to being an actual U.S. attorney.
But Halligan was the only one specifically tasked with delivering Trump’s retribution, so this one no doubt really stings.
“Blind justice” by Clay Bennett
Currie found that since Halligan’s installation violated the Appointments Clause, the only remedy is to dismiss the indictment, as she wasn’t an attorney authorized by law to conduct grand jury proceedings when she did. And since she was flying solo on those, there’s no way to save the indictments by arguing that some other eligible attorney presented and signed them as well.
The judge apparently did not buy Attorney General Pam Bondi’s argument that she could somehow magically ratify Halligan’s indictments by reviewing Halligan’s grand jury testimony and deciding it was dandy. The problem with that approach was that the government didn’t yet have the complete transcription at the time Bondi was bragging about having read it all.
Unfortunately, the judge dismissed both Comey’s and James’ indictments without prejudice, which means the government could theoretically bring new charges. However, it isn’t at all clear what happens with Comey’s indictment, as the statute of limitations has already run out.
You can expect appeals. You can expect howling from Trump and Bondi. You can expect some sort of attempt to refile both of these. You can expect an attempt to have the Cool Big Friends at the Supreme Court fix this, but it’s not clear that even this court would step into this mess.
Meanwhile, Trump and Bondi are going to have to figure out how to salvage the investigation into Schiff, which is currently way, way off the rails. Christine Bish, a full MAGA activist in California, seems to have gone rogue. Bish has been bragging on social media about how she wrote the “report” that led to Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte referring Schiff to the DOJ for criminal charges.
The mortgage fraud allegations against Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook don’t seem to be holding up either.
But now prosecutors are investigating Bish to determine whether Pulte and jack-of-all-bad-trades Ed Martin used improper tactics in their investigation of Schiff and whether the criminal investigation was revealed to unauthorized people.
Things aren’t as tacky in the Cook case, but things are equally shambolic. Trump and his minions targeted Cook with the same sort of vague mortgage fraud allegations. Too bad that multiple high-level Trump appointees have the same arrangements, including Pulte’s father and stepmother who managed to save themselves $158,000 in taxes in 2025 alone.
Much like Halligan having learned that securing an indictment doesn’t somehow magically mean that Comey and James would have to go to jail immediately, Trump seems to be learning that howling for revenge doesn’t carry the day either.
Getting a criminal conviction in these situations is hard work, and no one in the administration is cut out for it. That doesn’t mean they’ll stop trying, but it might mean they keep failing.
