Harry Litman - Quiet Surrender

For months, the Trump administration fought tooth and nail to install Lindsay Halligan as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, where her clear mandate was to indict former FBI Director James Comey. Trump, Pam Bondi, and others railed against any effort to question Halligan’s legal qualifications, and they even continued to order the office to list her as U.S. Attorney after a court ruled her appointment unlawful. The public posture was one of arrogant defiance—of judges, of senators, of tradition itself—for daring to question the President’s constitutional, even God-given, right to choose his U.S. attorneys.

Then, quietly last week, Halligan submitted her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation questionnaire—a low-profile about-face. After months of insisting the law did not constrain them, the administration is now—at least formally—attempting to follow the lawfully prescribed route.

The quiet course correction is not an embrace of norms so much as a concession to gravity—the recognition that even a politicized Department of Justice cannot function indefinitely in open violation of the law.

The pivot followed a series of court decisions unanimously rejecting the administration’s theories and issuing rulings that imperiled prosecutions in offices headed by unlawful appointees. In recent days, DOJ has begun to yield ground—quietly and by half measures—even while continuing to rail against “activist judges” and “corrupt senators.”

https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/quiet-surrender