On September 22, 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi designated Lindsey Halligan as acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia under a 120-day appointment. Halligan was a former insurance defense lawyer from Florida who had joined Trump's personal legal team during his classified documents case and subsequently became a White House attorney. She had zero prosecutorial experience -- she had never tried a criminal case, never presented evidence to a grand jury, and had never worked in a U.S. Attorney's office.
Halligan's appointment was nakedly purpose-driven: within days she personally presented cases to a grand jury and obtained indictments against former FBI Director James Comey (September 25) and New York Attorney General Letitia James (October 9) -- both prominent Trump political opponents. She was the sole prosecutor to sign both indictments and appeared alone before the grand jury, an extraordinarily unusual practice reflecting that career prosecutors in the office apparently refused to participate.
The Comey charges alleged mishandling of classified documents found at his home -- the same category of offense for which Trump himself had been charged and then had charges dropped. The James charges targeted her civil fraud case against Trump. Both prosecutions were widely characterized as political retribution.
On November 24, 2025, federal judge Leonie Brinkema ruled Halligan's appointment unconstitutional, finding that the 120-day window under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act had already expired because the clock began running when her predecessor Erik Siebert was initially appointed in January 2025. Brinkema dismissed both the Comey and James indictments. Halligan continued to claim authority despite the ruling, leading judges to order her to explain why she was still using the U.S. Attorney title. She eventually departed DOJ in January 2026.
The Halligan episode represented an extraordinary weaponization of the U.S. Attorney system: installing a loyalist with no qualifications into a powerful prosecutorial role solely to pursue indictments against the president's political enemies, then defying judicial rulings declaring the appointment unlawful.