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Deadline Legal Blog-Ordered to explain herself, Lindsey Halligan invokes Jack Smith
Halligan maintains that she can still call herself a U.S. attorney even though a judge said she was unlawfully appointed.
Link to tweet
https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/lindsey-halligan-us-attorney-jack-smith-unlawfully-appointed
A federal judge ruled in November that Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully installed by the Trump administration as the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia. That led a different judge to order Halligan to explain why she kept calling herself the district’s U.S. attorney in court papers.
Among her defenses: Jack Smith did it, too.
In her response Tuesday, Halligan recalled that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Donald Trump’s classified documents indictment in Florida on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel. “Yet in the days and weeks that followed, the Government continued — openly and without objection by any Court — to file documents identifying Jack Smith by his title as Special Counsel while appellate review proceeded,” Halligan wrote.
She added that Smith continued to refer to himself as special counsel in Trump’s separate election interference case in Washington, D.C., and that “as far as the Government is aware, no court — much less any judge — ever threatened Smith with attorney discipline for making purportedly ‘false or misleading statement[s],’ ‘knowingly disobey[ing]’ a court order, or engaging in ‘professional misconduct,’” Halligan wrote, referring to the order that demanded her response, which was issued by U.S. District Judge David Novak, a Trump appointee in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Yet Cannon’s 2024 order dismissing the documents indictment specified that it was “confined to this proceeding” in the Florida case, so it’s unclear how it could’ve led Smith to think he couldn’t refer to himself as special counsel in D.C., where Cannon’s ruling would not apply anyway..
But that general notion wouldn’t make much sense to apply in this situation, where Currie was seemingly brought in to resolve the issue across the board throughout the district. When dealing with the lawfulness of a U.S. attorney’s appointment, a judge will be brought in from outside the district, apparently to avoid a conflict because the judges in a given district have the power to appoint replacement U.S. attorneys when there’s a vacancy. So unless Currie or some other out-of-district judge is going to be brought in to resolve the legality of Halligan’s tenure whenever a new defendant challenges it, it would make sense to consider her ruling as binding throughout the district unless it’s overturned on appeal.
Among her defenses: Jack Smith did it, too.
In her response Tuesday, Halligan recalled that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Donald Trump’s classified documents indictment in Florida on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel. “Yet in the days and weeks that followed, the Government continued — openly and without objection by any Court — to file documents identifying Jack Smith by his title as Special Counsel while appellate review proceeded,” Halligan wrote.
She added that Smith continued to refer to himself as special counsel in Trump’s separate election interference case in Washington, D.C., and that “as far as the Government is aware, no court — much less any judge — ever threatened Smith with attorney discipline for making purportedly ‘false or misleading statement[s],’ ‘knowingly disobey[ing]’ a court order, or engaging in ‘professional misconduct,’” Halligan wrote, referring to the order that demanded her response, which was issued by U.S. District Judge David Novak, a Trump appointee in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Yet Cannon’s 2024 order dismissing the documents indictment specified that it was “confined to this proceeding” in the Florida case, so it’s unclear how it could’ve led Smith to think he couldn’t refer to himself as special counsel in D.C., where Cannon’s ruling would not apply anyway..
But that general notion wouldn’t make much sense to apply in this situation, where Currie was seemingly brought in to resolve the issue across the board throughout the district. When dealing with the lawfulness of a U.S. attorney’s appointment, a judge will be brought in from outside the district, apparently to avoid a conflict because the judges in a given district have the power to appoint replacement U.S. attorneys when there’s a vacancy. So unless Currie or some other out-of-district judge is going to be brought in to resolve the legality of Halligan’s tenure whenever a new defendant challenges it, it would make sense to consider her ruling as binding throughout the district unless it’s overturned on appeal.