A senior Clinton-appointed judge from South Carolina will decide whether the Trump Justice Department improperly appointed a U.S. attorney in Virginia.
On Wednesday, I discussed former FBI Director Jim Comey’s motion to disqualify Lindsey Halligan, the Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVa) who indicted him on false-statement and obstruction charges. At the end of that post, I explained that Judge Michael Nachmanoff, the Biden appointee who is presiding over the case, had referred the disqualification motion to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for the purpose of having a judge from outside the EDVa assigned to decide the disqualification motion. The Fourth Circuit assigned Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, a Clinton appointee and senior judge from the District of South Carolina, to do the honors.
It is appropriate to reassign such a disqualification motion outside the pertinent district because the judges of the district have a conflict of interest. Besides working on various cases in which the government is a party (cases that the district U.S. attorney supervises), the judges of the district could be asked to vote on whether an interim U.S. attorney can remain in her position after the statutory 120-day interim term has expired. (The theory of Comey’s disqualification motion is that the term expired, under interim U.S. attorney Erik Siebert, before President Trump fired Siebert and appointed Halligan.)
The same procedure has been followed by the judges of the District of New Jersey, where Alina Habba’s appointment as U.S. attorney faces a similar challenge. The judges of the district referred challenges to Habba’s appointment to the Third Circuit, which assigned Chief Judge Matthew Brann to rule on them. Judge Brann found that Habba’s appointment was invalid; that ruling is on appeal before the Third Circuit, which heard arguments this week.
At today’s arraignment in Norfolk, Va., of another Trump political enemy, New York Attorney General Letitia James, presiding EDVa Judge Jamar K. Walker ordered that James’s anticipated motion to disqualify Halligan be consolidated with Comey’s motion before Judge Currie. The two motions raise the same issue; it therefore makes sense to assign it to the same judge who has been specially appointed from outside the district to address the matter.