(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Donald Trump’s hand-picked prosecutor, who just indicted former FBI Director Jim Comey — 36-year-old Lindsey Halligan — is an enigma to the legal community, which has never seen her successfully prosecute a federal criminal case.
That’s because she has never prosecuted a federal criminal case and will essentially be learning on the job as she goes after Trump’s top political enemy for allegedly perjuring himself before Congress in 2020.
Halligan replaces Erik Siebert as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after Siebert resigned — or was fired, to hear Trump tell it — for refusing to prosecute another Trump enemy, New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Last Saturday, Trump posted to Truth Social, announcing Halligan’s appointment, calling her a “tough, smart, and loyal attorney.”
She’ll be able to serve as interim U.S. attorney for only 120 days unless she’s confirmed by the Senate.
But Halligan’s experience is down to the insurance law that she practiced in Florida, which is where Trump first met her in 2021.
According to The New York Post, Halligan met Trump “at a West Palm Beach golf course, where she had come straight from court wearing one of her signature fitted suits. Trump asked her what she did for a living, and she joined his legal team the following year.”
The Post added that “Halligan was present during the FBI’s August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago and later represented Trump in a dismissed defamation lawsuit against CNN.”
Originally from Colorado, Halligan was a two-time contestant in the Miss Colorado USA pageant before graduating from the University of Miami School of Law. She went to work for a Fort Lauderdale firm and represented insurance company cases involving residential and commercial properties.
Halligan joined the White House in March 2025 as senior associate staff secretary.
“Trump then assigned her to lead an initiative to remove ‘improper ideology’ from Smithsonian Institution museums, the National Zoo, and other facilities,” The Post reported.
Former federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of Virginia Gene Rossi told CNN that Halligan has “zero justification” to head up a U.S. attorney’s office and even less justification for signing the Comey indictment.
Halligan’s inexperience appeared to show through on Thursday when the Comey indictment got off to a rocky start, according to MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin, who told an interesting anecdote about a paperwork snafu.
“The judge who received the indictment was confused,” Rubin said, “because there were two charging instruments. And she basically said to Lindsay Halligan, ‘Which of these is your charging instrument?’ And she said, ‘Well, I didn’t see them.’ And she said, ‘They both have your signature on it.’”
Rubin continued, “And then she asked Lindsay Halligan to come up to the well of the courtroom and to make a handwritten change on one of the documents…But that speaks to how fish out of water Lindsay Halligan, who has a background as an insurance lawyer, is here.”
Watch the clip above via MSNBC.
The post From Beauty Queen To Comey Prosecutor: Just Who is Lindsey Halligan? first appeared on Mediaite.