The White House is quietly moving to get the U.S. Senate to confirm Lindsey Halligan as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, MS NOW has learned.
Without any White House announcement or fanfare, Halligan submitted her confirmation questionnaire, a copy of which MS NOW has obtained, to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.
In a statement to MS NOW, the White House confirmed the submission of Halligan’s questionnaire. “She’s the president’s nominee,” said press secretary Karoline Leavitt. “It is our hope that she is confirmed and submitting her questionnaire is a part of that process.”
Two sources familiar with the nominations process tell MS NOW that Halligan’s submission requires the Committee to send Halligan written questions within seven days as the next step in her confirmation process. There is no deadline for Halligan to respond, but her nomination cannot proceed until her answers are received.
The push for confirmation comes after a federal judge dismissed indictments that Halligan secured against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, ruling that she was improperly appointed by President Donald Trump and lacked the legal authority to prosecute anyone.
Trump first installed Halligan, an insurance lawyer and former White House aide with no prosecutorial experience, as the acting top prosecutor in the office on September 22. The appointment came after neither the previous interim U.S. attorney Erik Siebert, who was also Trump’s nominee to the permanent post, nor any of the career prosecutors in the office would agree to pursue an indictment of James or Comey. In writing and verbal presentations, career prosecutors had warned that, despite Trump pressing for both to be criminally charged, the factual evidence was insufficient to bring charges against them. Trump and his allies urged James be charged with mortgage fraud, and that Comey be charged with lying to Congress in 2020.
Trump then formally nominated Halligan to serve in the post on a permanent basis in late September, but had not taken further steps to advance her nomination.
Halligan obtained indictments against Comey in September, on her fourth day in office, and against James the following month.
It is unclear whether, despite the White House’s renewed focus, Halligan’s nomination will be voted upon by the Senate Judiciary Committee, much less the full Senate. The Senate maintains a longstanding tradition known as the “blue slip” process, through which a nominee’s home-state senators can block his or her nomination from progressing to a committee or floor vote.
Although the Senate no longer allows blue slips for all types of nominations, they can still be used to thwart U.S. attorney and district court nominees. In recent months, President Trump has railed against the Senate’s continued use of blue slips, which have complicated his ability to install U.S. attorneys of his choice. Trump has also attacked Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley for refusing to eliminate the blue slips, even suggesting last August that the practice was unconstitutional.
Trump’s ire has grown in the last couple of weeks in the wake of the dismissal of the Comey and James indictments and a district court’s accompanying ruling that Halligan was not validly appointed as the interim U.S. attorney. Additionally, a federal appeals court last week determined that former Trump defense lawyer Alina Habba could not serve as an interim or acting U.S. attorney for the district of New Jersey. Habba resigned from her post earlier this week and vowed to pursue the matter in court; she is now serving as a senior advisor to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
After a White House event on Tuesday, Trump was overheard on an open microphone complaining about the blue slip process, saying, “I can’t appoint anybody. Everybody I’m appointing, their time has expired. And then they’re in default. And then we’re losing.”
This morning, Trump took the fight to Truth Social, appealing to Senate Majority Leader John Thune to end the blue slip process so “well qualified Republican candidate[s]” can become judges and U.S. attorneys. Hours later, Thune told reporters, “There are many Republican senators, way more Republican senators who are interested in preserving that than those who aren’t.”
Neither of Virginia’s two senators, Democrats Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, stood in the way of Halligan’s predecessor, Erik Seibert, when he was nominated for the role.
Asked about Halligan’s nomination today, Kaine told reporters she had not reached out to either his or Warner’s offices. “It would seem like, you want Senate confirmation, you might reach out. It’s been weeks, maybe months. There’s been no outreach,” Kaine said. “They just want to do an end-run around the Senate completely.”
One Democrat on the Committee, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a former federal prosecutor, told MS NOW the Committee should conduct oversight of Halligan and those of other Trump-installed U.S. Attorneys he deemed “unqualified” for these posts.
Carol Leonnig is a senior investigative reporter with MS NOW.
Lisa Rubin is MS NOW's senior legal reporter and a former litigator.
Laura Barrón-López covers the White House for MS NOW.
Ali Vitali is MS NOW's senior congressional correspondent and the host of "Way Too Early." She is the author of "Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put a Woman in the White House … Yet."