Lindsey Halligan, the former beauty queen who pursued indictments against enemies of President Donald Trump as a prosecutor for the Department of Justice, left her position Tuesday.
Halligan’s departure comes as her 120-day tenure as interim US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia had expired and as judges were raising questions about the legitimacy of her appointment.
Both Halligan and Attorney General Pam Bondi announced her departure on social media Tuesday.
‘The circumstances that led to this outcome are deeply misguided,’ Bondi said in a social media post on X announcing Halligan’s departure.
‘We are living in a time when a democratically elected President’s ability to staff key law enforcement positions faces serious obstacles. The Department of Justice will continue to seek review of decisions like this that hinder our ability to keep the American people safe.’
The White House referred The Daily Mail to Bondi’s statement when reached for comment.
The announcement followed dual orders from separate judges that marked a dramatic new front in an ongoing clash between the Trump administration and the federal court over the legitimacy of Halligan’s appointment.
A White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience, Halligan was picked for the role by President Donald Trump in September only to have a judge rule two months later that the appointment was illegal.
Lindsey Halligan, the former beauty queen who pursued indictments against enemies of President Donald Trump as a prosecutor for the Department of Justice, left her position Tuesday
A White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience, Halligan was picked for the role by President Donald Trump in September only to have a judge rule two months later that the appointment was illegal
In one order, M. Hannah Lauck, the chief judge of the Eastern District of Virginia and a nominee of President Barack Obama, directed a clerk to publish a vacancy announcement on the court’s website and with the news media and said she was ‘soliciting expressions of interest in serving in that position.’
The judge noted that the temporary appointment given to Halligan, who has since been nominated by Trump but not confirmed by the Senate, expired Tuesday.
In a separate order, US District Judge David Novak said he was striking the words ‘United States Attorney’ from the signature block of an indictment in a case that was before him, and barred Halligan from continuing to present herself with that title.
He said he would initiate disciplinary proceedings against Halligan if she violated his order and persisted in identifying herself in court filings as a U.S. attorney, and said other signatories could be subject to discipline as well.
‘No matter all of her machinations, Ms. Halligan has no legal basis to represent to this Court that she holds the position. And any such representation going forward can only be described as a false statement made in direct defiance of valid court orders,’ Novak wrote.
‘In short, this charade of Ms. Halligan masquerading as the United States Attorney for this District in direct defiance of binding court orders must come to an end.’
The order from Novak, who was appointed to the bench by Trump during the Republican president’s first term in office, followed a defiant filing signed by Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in which they stood behind Halligan’s authority and accused the judge of abusing his power by demanding that Halligan publicly explain why she continues to identify herself as a US attorney.
‘Ms. Halligan’s response, in which she was joined by both the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, contains a level of vitriol more appropriate for a cable news talk show and falls far beneath the level of advocacy expected from litigants in this Court, particularly the Department of Justice,’ Novak wrote.
Lindsey Halligan at the US Open last summer in New York
‘The Court will not engage in a similar tit-for-tat and will instead analyze the few points that Ms. Halligan offers to justify her continued identification of her position as United States Attorney before the Court,’ he added.
Halligan was named to the job on an acting basis in September after the Trump administration effectively forced out veteran prosecutor Erik Siebert amid pressure to bring charges against two of Trump’s political foes, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Halligan secured the indictments, but the win was short-lived. In November, US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled that Halligan had been illegally appointed as an acting US attorney and dismissed both cases.
The Justice Department has appealed that ruling.
Although Currie’s November ruling did sink Halligan’s prosecution against Comey and James, it did not remove her from office.
The US attorneys who serve atop dozens of regional Justice Department offices across the country are typically appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Attorneys general are empowered to directly install interim US attorneys who can serve for 120 days, after which federal judges in the district have the authority to appoint a prosecutor to serve until the vacancy is filled.
An ex-beauty queen who defended Donald Trump during the classified documents case, 36-year-old Halligan unsuccessfully prosecuted former FBI Director James and Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James last year.
A separate judge ruled in November that the DOJ had unlawfully appointed Halligan to her position
Halligan pursued indictments against New York Attorney General Letitia James (pictured left) and former FBI Director James Comey (pictured right)
Halligan was placed into the role as US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after her predecessor refused to bring forward criminal charges against Trump’s perceived political enemies.
Former US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, declined to prosecute James for mortgage fraud over what he said was a lack of evidence.
In September, Trump posted a brutal attack Truth Social message demanding Attorney General Pam Bondi replace Siebert with Halligan, who served as a member of the White House counsel at the time.
He described Siebert as a ‘Democrat Endorsed ‘Republican” and said Halligan will ‘be Fair, Smart, and will provide, desperately needed, JUSTICE FOR ALL!’
Halligan, whose parents worked in healthcare, went to a private Catholic school in Broomfield, Colorado, where she was a basketball and softball star.
She went on to study politics and broadcast journalism at Regis University, a Jesuit college in Denver, which was also attended by Erika Kirk, the widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated on September 10.
Halligan competed twice in Miss Colorado USA, making the semi-finals in 2009 and finishing fourth in 2010.
At the time, Trump co-owned the Miss Universe organization, which ran the pageants.
Trump’s legal team, including Halligan, arrive at a courthouse in New York in September 2022
President Trump urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to install Halligan
Halligan told the Washington Post earlier this year: ‘Sports and pageants taught me confidence, discipline, and how to handle pressure, on the court, on the field, on the stage, in the courtroom, and now in the White House.’
Later, she graduated from the University of Miami with a law degree and served in the city’s public defender’s office, before working on insurance cases as a partner in a private firm.
In late 2021 she went straight from a court case to an event at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Halligan has previously recounted how she stood out because she was dressed in a suit. She said Trump spoke to her and she ended up becoming part of his legal team a few months later.
Then, on August 8, 2022, when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago looking for classified documents, she was the first of the president’s legal team on the scene.
On TV she revealed that agents had searched Trump’s bedroom and office
‘They refused to talk to me, they refused to let me in,’ she told Fox News at the time.
‘They had unfettered access to the property They looked at God knows what in there and did God knows what in there. We have no idea. What the FBI did was an appalling display of abuse of power. If they needed any other documents, they could have just asked.’
She added: ‘They thought they could sneak in and snoop around without attorneys present.’
Trump was impressed by her performance on television and in the subsequent case brought by special counsel Jack Smith over classified documents, which was ultimately dropped.
By 2024 Halligan was seated close to Trump at the Republican National Convention.
Following the election she moved from Florida to Washington as a special assistant and senior associate staff secretary.
In March 2025, she was instrumental in the president’s issuing of an executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.
The order instructed officials to ‘remove improper ideology’ from the Smithsonian museums.
‘We should be able to take our kids, our students, through the Smithsonian and feel proud when we leave,’ Halligan told the Washington Post.
‘There’s a lot of history to our country, both positive and negative, but we need to keep moving forward. We can’t just keep focusing on the negative, all it does is divide us.’
In the order she was designated with three titles – assistant to the president for domestic policy, the special assistant to the president, and senior associate staff secretary.
