Lindsey Halligan, the new US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, has no experience as a prosecutor.

Lindsey Halligan, the new US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, has no experience as a prosecutor.

The US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia is one of the most significant positions in the Department of Justice.

Erik Siebert, the federal prosecutor whom President Donald Trump pushed out Friday for declining to prosecute his political enemies, had extensive experience. He is listed as an attorney on 675 federal cases. His replacement, Lindsey Halligan, a 36-year-old former Florida insurance lawyer, has worked on only three.

But for an administration in which loyalty reigns supreme, what matters is whom Halligan represented in each of those federal cases: Trump.

  • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    11·
    8 days ago

    Halligan told the Washington Post that she met Trump at a November 2021 event at his golf club in West Palm Beach. A former contestant in Miss Colorado USA pageants, Halligan has said she probably stood out to Trump during their initial meeting because, unlike other women at the event, she was wearing a suit. Trump hired her as a lawyer soon after.

    Halligan was at Mar-a-Lago during the FBI’s 2022 raid of the club. And she went on to represent Trump in a civil suit related to the raid. According to court records, it was the first time she had represented a client in federal litigation.

    At the start of the case in August 2022, District Judge Aileen Cannon rejected two filings Halligan submitted for failing to comply with local procedures. The judge directed Halligan to the court’s website for instructions on how to file the documents correctly.

    Two days later, Halligan submitted a notice updating her contact information. That filing was similarly rejected by the court. “Attorney has not followed the required procedures for updating their address with the Court,” a court notice explained. “See the Court’s website for detailed instructions.”

    Two observations:

    1. Even in her own telling, she was put on Trump’s radar for the qualification of…“wearing a suit.”

    2. And she was not being able to even competently file documents to satisfy freaking Aileen Cannon, Trump’s pet judge who is singularly responsible for Trump not facing justice for a clear violation of federal criminal law, multiple times. How dumb do you need to be to appear incompetent to a judge that is herself the epitome of incompetence and fecklessness?