Attorneys representing New York Attorney General Letitia James have sharply criticized U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi for allegedly manipulating procedural timelines to bolster a contentious interim U.S. attorney appointment. They argue that this action reveals the Department of Justice’s awareness of the bank fraud indictment’s potential invalidity.

Bondi raised suspicions when she signed an appointment order on Halloween, but dated it back to September 22. This retrospective adjustment was intended to eliminate any “doubt” regarding the legitimacy of Lindsey Halligan’s appointment.

The Department of Justice explained that by granting Halligan the role of supervising special attorney after the fact, her appointment should remain unquestionable. This move aims to counteract the efforts by James and former FBI Director James Comey to have the case dismissed in the Eastern District of Virginia.

The DOJ asserted that the attorney general had personally endorsed the indictments, validated Halligan’s actions with the grand jury, and legitimized her authority to prosecute, thereby resolving any potential issues with her appointment.

Lindsey Halligan, special assistant to the president, speaks with a reporter outside of the White House, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin).

Legal representatives for AG James, Abbe Lowell and Andrew Bosse, reiterated their stance that Halligan’s initial appointment was unlawful. They directly responded to Bondi’s unusual retrospective action, describing it as a significant indication of underlying issues with the appointment process.

“The government argues that Attorney General James’s request for an injunction has been ‘overtaken by events.’ But none of those ‘events’ cure the constitutional violation or render Ms. Halligan eligible to supervise this prosecution,” the Monday filing said. “The Attorney General’s attempt to fix Ms. Halligan’s appointment is invalid on its face.”

President Donald Trump, the defense went on, “could not announce tomorrow” that Bondi was NASA’s acting administrator from January to March. Thus, Bondi “lacked the power announce [sic] an appointment of Ms. Halligan that bent space and time.”

Tearing a page from Comey’s playbook, the defense said Halligan was not a “government” attorney but merely a “private citizen” when she went to the grand jury, meaning the case should be dismissed on the same Appointments Clause grounds that befell then-special counsel Jack Smith’s Mar-a-Lago prosecution of Trump.

“In United States v. Trump, the district court recognized that if an inferior office [sic] is appointed in a manner that does not comply with any statute, her appointment violates the Appointments Clause,” James said, embracing the dismissal ruling that benefited Trump. “The government contends that Attorney General James’s theory of Appointments Clause violations is too broad, but tellingly, it does not argue that Trump was incorrectly decided.”

Special counsel Jack Smith turns from the podium after speaking about an indictment of former President Donald Trump, Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023, at a Department of Justice office in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The “only appropriate remedy” now is the dismissal of an indictment that the DOJ — as evidenced by its own “series of novel maneuvers to attempt to clean up the mess” — “knows” is doomed, the filing asserted.

“[T]he Executive Branch cannot retroactively appoint Ms. Halligan to positions she never held. Nor can it ratify this illegitimate indictment or claim that Ms. Halligan—whose purported appointment plainly violated the Appointments Clause—was a ‘de facto’ officer,” court documents said. “Attorney General Bondi’s attempt to retroactively give Ms. Halligan new titles and to bless the improper indictment is a telling indication that the government knows Ms. Halligan’s actions were unauthorized, null and void.”