The Department of Justice on Monday submitted a filing in the cases of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James defending the appointment of interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan. But multiple attorneys, professors and journalists are blasting the DOJ in what they view as a last-ditch attempt to keep Halligan in her role.
Reuters reporter Brad Heath posted to Bluesky on Monday that Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed to have "retroactively appointed former Trump attorney Lindsey Halligan as a 'special attorney' for DOJ and has 'ratified' all of her actions to date, including her presentations to the grand juries that indicted Trump's foes." Legal journalist Chris Geidner posted the DOJ filing and the appointment while quipping that Bondi "dressed up as a lawyer on Halloween."
"Evidently, time travel is now one of the Trump administration's powers," Columbia University history professor Karl Jacoby wrote.
In a post to his X account, American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick tweeted that while he is not a lawyer and doesn't know the intricacies of the judicial system, he still had "no clue how Pam Bondi can legally go back in time and appoint Halligan to a position as of six weeks ago."