Dec. 15, 2025, 4:04 a.m. ET
America’s federal courts have delivered in the past three weeks a series of colossally embarrassing defeats in President Donald Trump‘s furious campaign to punish his critics by contorting our justice system.
And now it looks like that campaign’s slogan should be “if at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again.”
Trump’s epic flops, engineered by a team of shameless and incompetent lawyers, will apparently continue. There is no lesson for them to learn from failure when the boss can’t hear anything but his own howling for retribution.
That’s why Trump is now trying to quietly reinstall Lindsey Halligan as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, after a judge ruled on Nov. 24 that he had not legally appointed her to that position in September.
That ruling came with the dismissal of dodgy criminal indictments Halligan had procured against two prominent Trump critics, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.
Lindsey Halligan has made some bold résumé claims
Trump and the Department of Justice have been curiously quiet about the attempt to reinstall Halligan, who is still calling herself a U.S. attorney, a title a judge said she does not legally hold.
And the Republicans in control of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight approval for U.S. attorney appointments, did not respond recently when I requested information about Halligan.
I obtained a copy of Halligan’s 28-page questionnaire for that committee, which she submitted on Dec. 10. She’s been a lawyer for 11 years, mostly working on insurance matters and for one of Trump’s political action committees.
Halligan estimated that just 3% of her legal practice has taken place in federal courts and that just 1% involved criminal proceedings. Not exactly a strong résumé to be the top prosecutor in an office that says it “serves more than six million residents living in Northern Virginia, the Greater Richmond Region, Hampton Roads, Tidewater, and surrounding communities.”
But what really jumped out from Halligan’s questionnaire was when she was asked to describe the 10 “most significant litigation matters” that she had personally handled. No. 3 on that list was the Comey case, which she described as “pending,” followed by No. 4, the James case, which she described as “ongoing.”
I don’t think Halligan was trying to be funny. But her answers made me laugh out loud all the same.
Trump’s losses over Comey, James cases show his obsession with retribution
Comey’s case was dismissed on Nov. 24. The Department of Justice, which is trying to reindict him, on Dec. 9 challenged a ruling from another judge that prevents federal prosecutors from using some of the documents used in his first indictment.
A federal magistrate who oversaw Comey’s case before it was tossed cited on on Nov. 17 what he called “a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps” by investigators and prosecutors.
Comey, who led the FBI when it investigated Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, has insisted the case against him, accusing him of making false statements to Congress, was really just retribution from Trump.
The case against New York’s attorney general is even more of a wreck. A federal grand jury in Virginia on Dec. 11 refused to reindict James, just a week after another grand jury in that state also refused to reindict her.
James, who had been charged with fraud, had pursued a civil case in New York against Trump and his private company. She accused Trump of trying to “weaponize justice for political gain” after she was indicted in October.
Trump, in a September social media post, demanded that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi prosecute Comey and James after he forced out his first appointee as U.S. attorney in Virginia, Erik Siebert, for suggesting those cases lacked merit. Trump’s post suggested Halligan as Siebert’s replacement.
But Trump can’t force Halligan into the job, and he knows it. This process will probably drag into the new year. All that is compounding Trump’s fury.
Presidents nominate appointees to the 93 posts of U.S. attorney. But those appointees must be approved by the U.S. Senate. And a process known as a “blue slip” gives senators from states where those federal prosecutors would serve veto power over their appointments.
US attorney resignations signal more failure ahead for Trump
Alina Habba, who represented Trump before he became president, resigned on Dec. 8 as U.S. attorney for New Jersey after a legal challenge found that she was not serving legally in that post. New Jersey’s senators, Democrats Cory Booker and Andy Kim, opposed her appointment.
Julianne Murray, Trump’s appointee as U.S. attorney for Delaware, announced her resignation in a Dec. 12 social media post. She blamed a lack of support from Delaware’s senators, Democrats Chris Coons and Lisa Blunt Rochester.
It doesn’t seem likely that Virginia’s senators, Democrats Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, will back Halligan now, especially after her abbreviated rookie season as a federal prosecutor proved so calamitous.
Trump, in a Dec. 11 social media post, railed against the blue slip process, calling it “unfair” and demanding that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, end the practice. But Thune responded by saying that Republican senators want to keep the blue slip process in place.
Trump plays the victim here because that’s what he does when he doesn’t get his way. But Trump being stymied in his quest to twist our justice system into a tool to torment his critics is good news.
We have “no kings” in America. We have three coequal branches of government – a president, Congress and the courts – providing checks and balances for one another.
Trump’s Department of Justice has abandoned jurisprudence in favor of reckless reprisals. But Congress and the courts so far have refused to join in that cultish desertion of duty. That signals more failures ahead for Trump.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.
