It turns out that when you try to prosecute the rule of law with people who have never been legally seated to uphold it, things tend to fall apart faster than a Truth Social IPO.
The Justice Department’s two showcase revenge cases—one against former FBI Director James Comey and the other against New York Attorney General Letitia James—are starting to wobble. Not because of surprise witnesses or hidden evidence, but because the Trump administration apparently decided that laws governing who can prosecute crimes don’t actually apply to them.
At the center of this slow-motion implosion sits Lindsey Halligan, an attorney whose resume would be rejected by most community theater casting calls for “Lawyer #3.” She is the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, a title she holds the same way a squatter holds an apartment lease—by hoping nobody checks.
The problem is that people checked.
The Appointments Clause, Now Available in Shreds
Federal prosecutors aren’t supposed to be appointed like shift managers at a mall kiosk. Congress passed 28 U.S.C. § 546 to set strict limits: the Attorney General can appoint an interim U.S. attorney for up to 120 days. After that, only the district court can extend the appointment.
That’s the whole point of checks and balances. You get a prosecutor, sure—but you also get Senate confirmation, oversight, and accountability.
Except, apparently, when you’re Donald Trump.
In his administration’s zeal to fill the ranks with loyalists, the White House and its political operatives turned interim appointments into a governing philosophy. They discovered that if you never bother to seek confirmation, you can install whoever you want, wherever you want, and call it “efficiency.”
Now, the hangover has arrived. Courts in Los Angeles and D.C. have already ruled that several of these “acting” or “interim” U.S. attorneys were serving illegally after their 120-day windows lapsed. Every indictment they touched is radioactive.
And Lindsey Halligan’s fingerprints are on the biggest political cases of them all.
A Revenge Plot with Clerical Errors
The Comey and Letitia James prosecutions were always political theater. They were billed as the righteous restoration of accountability, a full-circle moment where the deep state would face its own consequences.
But from day one, they looked more like a stage play where half the actors forgot their lines and the other half weren’t supposed to be on stage in the first place.
The Comey case was filed in Virginia with claims that he “abused authority” and “mishandled classified materials”—a charge that never quite explained what authority he was abusing or what materials were mishandled. The Letitia James case was more theatrical: an “abuse of office” indictment filed right after she moved to enforce the Trump Organization’s fraud judgment in New York.
Even before the appointments scandal, defense attorneys were calling these “revenge indictments.” But now the revenge itself may not survive a motion to dismiss.
Timeline of a Constitutional Faceplant
- September: James Comey’s legal team files a motion to dismiss, arguing that the entire case is retaliatory and unconstitutional. Buried in a footnote: a challenge to the legitimacy of Lindsey Halligan’s appointment.
- October 14: Federal courts in California rule that two other Trump-appointed interim prosecutors were serving beyond the 120-day limit. Their indictments are vacated.
- October 23: Halligan signs a superseding indictment against Letitia James, even though her own 120-day window expired weeks earlier.
- October 25: Legal experts begin warning that Halligan’s continued service violates § 546 and separation of powers principles.
- October 29: A district court in D.C. references the Halligan situation during an unrelated hearing, calling it “an unresolved constitutional concern.” Translation: the judiciary smells smoke.
- October 30: New filings in both the Comey and James cases raise the issue of “unlawfully seated prosecutors.”
What began as a technicality has now metastasized into a constitutional crisis.
The Statute Everyone Pretended Not to Read
28 U.S.C. § 546(b) isn’t ambiguous. The law gives an interim U.S. attorney 120 days. After that, the district court may appoint a replacement. If neither happens, the office reverts to a career line assistant under civil service rules.
There’s no gray area. No “wink and nod” exception.
Halligan was installed under a memorandum signed by Acting Attorney General Patrick Philbin, a man whose devotion to Trump loyalty tests would make Torquemada blush. When her 120 days expired, no one bothered to seek judicial extension. They simply… didn’t mention it.
She kept signing indictments, attending grand jury sessions, and giving press conferences as if nothing had happened.
Now every one of those signatures is a landmine.
Defense lawyers are circling like sharks. They’re filing motions to dismiss under the Appointments Clause, arguing that Halligan lacked lawful authority to act. If the courts agree, every indictment bearing her name could collapse.
This is not a procedural hiccup. It’s a constitutional implosion.
A Prosecutor Without a License
Halligan’s credentials aren’t helping her case.
Before being catapulted into the U.S. attorney’s office, she was best known as a Florida insurance litigator who occasionally appeared on right-wing talk shows defending Trump’s handling of classified documents. Her federal experience could fit on a Post-it note.
Insiders say her promotion was “personally blessed” by Trump himself. Translation: she was loyal, not qualified.
When reporters asked her about the statutory 120-day limit, she called it “an administrative detail.” When pressed on whether she had sought a court extension, she replied, “The president’s confidence is sufficient authority.”
It’s not. It’s barely sufficient delusion.
Now, the legal machinery she commandeered may grind to a halt, and the cases she built may collapse because the rule of law cannot flow through an unlawful appointment.
The Weaponization of “Acting”
This isn’t just about one prosecutor. It’s about an entire architecture of governance-by-loyalty.
By filling top jobs with “acting” or “interim” officials, Trump turned the bureaucracy into an improv troupe of loyalists untethered from accountability. Senate confirmation? Optional. Legal compliance? Bureaucratic noise.
The idea was to create plausible deniability. If a prosecutor crosses the line, they can be replaced overnight. If a case goes south, the appointment was “temporary” anyway.
Now that tactic is backfiring. Because what was meant to shield the administration from scrutiny is instead making its prosecutions legally untenable.
The Constitution doesn’t care about your loyalty oaths. It cares about your paperwork.
The Legal Fallout
The remedy spectrum ranges from bad to catastrophic.
- Disqualification: Judges can remove Halligan and her office from both prosecutions. That alone would stall the cases for months while replacements are appointed and briefed.
- Dismissal: If courts find that the indictments were signed by someone without lawful authority, the charges vanish. The government can re-present the case—but only under a lawfully appointed U.S. attorney.
- Suppression: Any evidence gathered under Halligan’s direction could be tainted, triggering suppression motions and discovery challenges.
In short, the prosecution becomes its own cautionary tale: a monument to hubris disguised as justice.
Comey’s Motion: The Irony Writes Itself
James Comey’s defense motion brands the case as “retaliatory, vindictive, and constitutionally infirm.” But the irony is delicious.
This is the same man Trump fired for not pledging loyalty. The same man Trump accused of treason. The same man who woke up one morning to find himself indicted by a prosecutor who may not legally exist.
Now, Comey’s best argument for dismissal isn’t even political—it’s procedural. The man who once led the FBI is about to be saved by the bureaucracy he built.
Letitia James’s defense team, meanwhile, is calling the whole process “a parody of justice,” which may be the most accurate thing any lawyer has said this year.
The Judiciary Reacts
Judges hate being made to look like fools. And nothing makes them angrier than discovering that the government is conducting criminal prosecutions with unconfirmed appointees pretending to hold office.
At least two federal judges—one in California, one in D.C.—have already ordered evidentiary hearings to trace appointment chains. One referred to it as “a question of whether the prosecution has a pulse.”
If these hearings proceed, the Trump DOJ will have to produce emails, memos, and timelines proving that Halligan’s appointment was properly extended. Spoiler: it wasn’t.
The Broader Implication: You Can’t Fake a Republic
For all the talk of “weaponized justice,” the truth is simpler and more pathetic. The Trump administration has tried to use the machinery of law as a personal vendetta engine, but it forgot to read the manual.
You can’t restore the rule of law by violating the rule of law. You can’t claim divine authority to prosecute political enemies while ignoring statutory ones.
Every government that flirts with authoritarianism eventually hits the same bureaucratic wall: the forms still matter.
The framers understood this. The Constitution doesn’t rely on the virtue of men. It relies on the tyranny of process. You can’t skip the paperwork. Not forever.
Consequences in Motion
The next two weeks will be decisive:
- District judges are expected to hold evidentiary hearings on appointment chains.
- DOJ may try to salvage the cases by re-presenting indictments under properly seated prosecutors.
- Defense attorneys are preparing to move for full dismissal if Halligan’s authority cannot be retroactively fixed.
- And inspectors general are quietly investigating whether this pattern of illegal appointments was systemic.
The odds are high that both cases implode before reaching trial. If that happens, the administration’s revenge crusade will die not by scandal, but by statute.
The Moral of the Story
Every generation learns the same lesson about autocrats: they crave power but despise governance.
Donald Trump wanted to be Caesar but didn’t want to fill out the forms. His team wanted to punish enemies but didn’t bother to confirm the executioners. Now the ghosts of process have come calling, armed with citations and deadlines.
The irony is that it won’t be Comey or Letitia James who expose the corruption of these prosecutions—it’ll be the law itself, doing what it always does when you try to weaponize it: firing back.
You can’t make government loyal to one man. The bureaucracy belongs to the Constitution. And no matter how many interim titles you hand out, the paperwork always wins.