The Justice Department is escalating its standoff with judges within the Eastern District of Virginia with a new filing defending Lindsey Halligan, President Donald Trump’s alternative to guide the prosecutors’ workplace whose work within the circumstances in opposition to James Comey and Letitia James has been nullified.
The submitting accuses federal Judge David Novak in Richmond, a Trump appointee, of attempting to “coerce the Executive Branch into conformity.”
Several Eastern District of Virginia judges in latest weeks have stated they consider Halligan is not the US lawyer main the workplace. Novak and different judges within the district have steered prosecutors who’re nonetheless making filings below Halligan’s title as US lawyer could lead to attorney discipline inquiries for failing to adjust to court docket rulings, a traditional avenue accessible to judges as they oversee circumstances of their courtrooms.
“Adding insult to error, (Novak) posits that the United States’ continued assertion of its legal position that Ms. Halligan properly serves as the United States Attorney amounts to a factual misrepresentation that could trigger attorney discipline. The Court’s thinly veiled threat to use attorney discipline to cudgel the Executive Branch into conforming its legal position in all criminal prosecutions to the views of a single district judge is a gross abuse of power and an affront to the separation of powers,” the Justice Department wrote on Tuesday.
District judges for weeks have been questioning why Halligan was nonetheless signing court docket papers, particularly those who charged prison defendants within the district. Novak’s inquiry grew to become notable final week when he requested for full briefing from the Justice Department on its reasoning, resulting in Tuesday’s submitting.
The Justice Department is interesting the choice undercutting Halligan’s authority within the Comey and James circumstances.
A South Carolina-based judge within the Comey and James circumstances who had been specifically introduced in to the district final 12 months decided Halligan wasn’t the authentic US lawyer as a result of she hadn’t been Senate confirmed nor chosen by the court docket.
The fallout of the choice has induced major turmoil within the prosecutors’ office, as judges within the Alexandria and Richmond courthouses have scrutinized prosecutors nonetheless utilizing her title and prison defendants problem the Justice Department’s actions of their circumstances that Halligan has overseen.
Similar fights have played out in a number of different Justice Department courthouses throughout the nation, the place the Trump administration has insisted attorneys who haven’t been confirmed by the Senate can proceed to behave as US attorneys.
In latest days, Robert McBride, a profession prosecutor serving as Halligan’s No. 2 within the US Attorney’s Office for solely a handful of weeks, was fired.
In the Tuesday submitting, the Justice Department boldly defended Halligan and delivered its personal criticism of the federal trial-level court docket.
“The Court is flat wrong to suggest that any change to the Government’s signature block is warranted in this or any other case,” Justice Department attorneys wrote to the court docket on Tuesday. “It is correct and consistent with the Department of Justice’s internal guidance, and at minimum reflects a contested legal position that the United States is entitled to maintain notwithstanding a single district judge’s contrary view.”
The submitting is signed by Halligan, in addition to two lower-level prosecutors, below the names of Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.