Halligan quits US attorney role amid court pressure

What happened

Lindsey Halligan, the White House aide installed as U.S. attorney in Virginia to prosecute President Donald Trump’s perceived enemies, stepped down Tuesday night amid growing pressure from federal judges. One judge in the Eastern District of Virginia on Tuesday threatened disciplinary action against Halligan or any other federal lawyer who referred to her as U.S. attorney in court filings, while the district’s chief judge declared the position “vacant” in a posting for Halligan’s replacement.

Who said what

Halligan’s exit “ended a bizarre monthslong standoff” during which federal judges repeatedly pressed her to “explain why she continues to identify herself” as the U.S. attorney “despite a ruling in November that she had been unlawfully appointed to the job,” The New York Times said. “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,” U.S. District Judge David Novak, a Trump appointee, said in an order Tuesday.

The “pair of extraordinary moves” by Novak and Chief Judge M. Hannah Lauck “signaled a breaking point for the federal bench” in Virginia over Halligan’s 120-day tenure, The Washington Post said. It also “intensified a battle playing out nationwide” over Trump’s efforts to install loyalists to back-to-back temporary positions as U.S. attorney without Senate confirmation. Halligan was the third such Trump-appointed acting U.S. attorney to step down, following Alina Habba in New Jersey and Julianne Murray in Delaware last month.

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What next?

It isn’t clear who will replace Halligan. Tuesday’s moves suggest the district’s judges plan to “select a temporary replacement,” as allowed under federal law, the Times said. But “it is likely that the president would try to fire that person and put his own choice — possibly Ms. Halligan — back in the job.”