As others have pointed out, one of the key differences between the first Trump administration and the current iteration is that in the first one, he was willing to appoint people who were acceptable to the Republican party establishment to key positions. Of course, he then got tired of those who were not totally supportive of his crackpot ideas and fired them or they left, but by and large he kept intact the senior-level professional cadres, the ones who have the institutional memories, are aware of the norms under which their institutions operate, and essentially keep the wheels of government rolling.

But after he lost the 2020 election, Trump began his paranoid delusions that the entire government was filled with people who opposed him and were the ones who brought him down, going so far as to postulate the existence of a ‘deep state’ that actually stole the election from him. He targeted in particular the department of justice, falsely claiming that Joe Biden had ‘weaponized’ the institution to target him and his supporters, by investigating him and prosecuting the members of the violent mob that attacked the Capital building on January 6th, 2021 at his instigation.

So this time around, Trump has forced out of office any career person whom he did not feel was sufficiently loyal to him to do his bidding and put in place stooges and sycophants even if they were not qualified and barely knew what their job entailed. While this happened everywhere, the department of justice has been the place where the incompetence has been revealed the most. While so much attention has been focused on the mess that Trump is creating at a high level, that can shield the fact of messes further down.

Which brings us to the case of Lindsey Halligan whom he wanted to appoint to the position of US attorney attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. These are very important federal positions.

United States attorneys are officials of the U.S. Department of Justice who serve as the chief federal law enforcement officers in each of the 94 U.S. federal judicial districts. Each U.S. attorney serves as the United States’ chief federal criminal prosecutor in their judicial district and represents the U.S. federal government in civil litigation in federal and state court within their geographic jurisdiction. U.S. attorneys must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, after which they serve four-year terms.

There is nothing that Trump can directly do with the state departments of justice but US attorneys are the ones who can bring federal prosecutions and they are overseen by the attorney general Pam Bondi and deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, both Trump stooges.

Trump wants to use the US attorney’s office to prosecute those on whom he seeks to wreak revenge and these included former FBI director James Comey and New York state attorney general Letitia James. But the US attorney under whose direction they fell, Eric Siebert, refused to bring charges against them, feeling that they were unwarranted. So he was forced to resign. In his place, on September 21, 2025 Trump appointed 36-year old Lindsey Halligan as interim, pending confirmation by the US senate. At that time, she was serving as a senior White House advisor to Trump but she had no prosecutorial experience, her legal background consisting of working in a law firm that dealt with insurance. Even Bondi and Blanche were dubious about her but Trump went ahead with her appointment anyway. Perhaps the fact that she was a former model and a finalist in the Miss Colorado beauty contest impressed him.

Halligan dutifully went ahead with indictments of Comey and James but they were thrown out by judges because of irregularities that demonstrated her incompetence. Meanwhile lawyers for Comey and James argued that her interim appointment had expired and she should not be calling herself the US attorney. As a consequence, the courts appointed a judge to determine if she could call herself the US attorney and the answer was no. Despite this, she went ahead anyway, claiming that she could still serve in the role

This was too much for the courts. They issued a blistering opinion essentially telling her to get lost, informing her and her superiors in extraordinarily strong language that if they persisted in keeping her on, they would call for disciplinary action against them.

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. 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. Ultimately, the Court concludes for the reasons that follow that Ms. Halligan’s continued identification of herself as the United States Attorney for this District ignores a binding court order and may not continue; otherwise, Ms. Halligan and anyone who joins her on a pleading containing the improper moniker subjects themselves to potential disciplinary action in this Court pursuant to the Court’s Local Rules.
…

The Eastern District of Virginia has long enjoyed the service of experienced prosecutors with unquestioned integrity from both political parties serving as the United States Attorney. Despite coming from different political backgrounds and holding very different ideological views, they all shared an unwavering commitment to the Rule of Law, putting the interests of the citizens of the District before their own personal ambitions, as true public servants do. Unfortunately, it appears that this ethos has come to an end. A district judge acting at the direction of the Chief Judge of the Fourth Circuit has ruled on behalf of the district judges of this District that Ms. Halligan was invalidly appointed as the United States Attorney. 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. 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. [My emphasis-MS]

They added that they are cutting Halligan some slack for now because they realize that she is clueless about her job but that if she continues any further, they were going to throw the book at her.

The Court recognizes that Ms. Halligan lacks the prosecutorial experience that has long been the norm for those nominated to the position of United States Attorney in this District. Consequently, and in light of her inexperience, the Court grants Ms. Halligan the benefit of the doubt and refrains from referring her for further investigation and disciplinary action regarding her misrepresentations to this Court at this time. However, this Memorandum Order provides notice that, should Ms. Halligan persist in ignoring Judge Currie’s Orders and this Memorandum Order in any matter before the undersigned, the Court will initiate disciplinary proceedings against Ms. Halligan and any other signatory to an offending pleading pursuant to Federal Rule of Disciplinary Enforcement V(A).

So Halligan finally resigned. She joins another Trump loyalist Alina Habba, a Fox News favorite, who was also disqualified as US attorney for New Jersey.

Questions about whether Habba would continue in the job arose in July when her temporary appointment was ending and it became clear New Jersey’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Cory Booker and Andy Kim, would not back her appointment.

Earlier this year as Habba’s appointment was expiring, federal judges in New Jersey exercised their power under the law to replace her with a career prosecutor who had served as her second-in-command.

Attorney General Pam Bondi then fired the prosecutor installed by the judges and renamed Habba as acting U.S. attorney. The Justice Department said the judges acted prematurely and said Trump had the authority to appoint his preferred candidate to enforce federal laws in the state.

Brann’s ruling said the president’s appointments are still subject to the time limits and power-sharing rules laid out in federal law.

So Habba, who has also been sanctioned by the courts for filing frivolous lawsuits on behalf of Trump, resigned on December 8, 2025.

But that is not all. Judge’s keep striking down revenge actions frivolously taken by Trump’s justice department without proper grounds, such as the case of reporter Don Lemon.

A federal magistrate judge declined to sign off on charges against Don Lemon, the former CNN anchor, in connection with a protest at a Minnesota church over the weekend, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The magistrate’s decision “enraged” the attorney general, Pam Bondi, according to NBC News and CNN.

The refusal comes as Donald Trump and other allies have called for Lemon to be arrested after he attended and broadcast a protest in which demonstrators interrupted a service at Cities church in St Paul over the weekend. Protesters said they were there because a pastor at the church was the acting field director of a local ICE office and videos of the incident went wild.
…

Federal prosecutors can go before a magistrate judge to get them to determine there is probable cause for charges to begin a criminal case. A grand jury must then return an indictment within 30 days. It is “extremely rare” for a magistrate judge to reject charges, said Andrew Tessman, a former federal prosecutor.

“I really have not heard of it happen before,” he said. “Usually just because the prosecutor is usually very careful about alleging all the supporting facts that would support a charge.”

While there are other ways the justice department could move to charge Lemon, a magistrate judge’s refusal to sign off on the case was not a good sign for the government, Tessman said. “That probably means a grand jury is going to be as skeptical about this as the federal judicial officer.”

And then there was the charge that Espinoza Martinez had ordered the murder of Border Patrol head thug Gregory Bovino. A jury took less than four hours to arrive at a verdict of not guilty.

A man accused of a murder-for-hire plot targeting a top US border patrol leader was found not guilty on Thursday in Chicago, the latest high-profile prosecution by the Department of Justice to fall apart in court.
…

Defense lawyers said the government failed to produce any evidence Espinoza Martinez intended to carry out or pay for the killing of Bovino, arguing he had sent the messages as “neighborhood gossip” after coming home from work and unwinding with beers. He didn’t follow up on the messages and had only a few dollars in his bank account.

“Sending a message about gossip that you heard in the neighborhood, it’s not murder for hire,” his defense attorney Dena Singer told jurors. “It’s not a federal crime.”
…

Federal prosecutors initially referred to Espinoza Martinez as a “ranking member” of the Latin Kings, but their lack of evidence led the judge to bar testimony on the Chicago street gang at trial.

Singer pointed out holes in the government’s case, including in the testimony of their first witness, Adrian Jimenez.

The 44-year-old owns a construction company and had been in touch with Espinoza Martinez over Snapchat about work. Unknown to Espinoza Martinez, he had also worked as a paid government informant over the years and shared the Snapchats with a federal investigator.

Jimenez, who has back problems, walked slowly with a limp to the witness chair and needed help getting up.

“Would you solicit for hire an individual that was in that much pain and could barely walk?” Singer said to jurors. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
…

The jury’s acquittal, after less than four hours of deliberation, is an embarrassing outcome for federal prosecutors in the first criminal trial stemming from the Trump administration’s major crackdown in the Chicago-area that started last year.
…

The verdict comes after dozens of criminal cases tied to immigration enforcement have crumbled across the country. In September, the first Los Angeles protester to go to trial in connection with the southern California demonstrations against immigration raids was also acquitted in a case that featured direct testimony from Bovino.

We are finding resistance to Trump’s vendettas at all levels, from courts ordering his pet prosecutors out, to grand juries refusing to indict, to judges refusing to issue warrants and sign off on charges, to juries quickly acquitting, all because of utter incompetence by Trump’s people.

This is an utterly vindictive and malicious administration, intent on ignoring the law and ethical norms in its pursuance of vendettas. That they are also incompetent is the one slight positive.