Lindsey Halligan's Downfall Has The Same Shady Thing About Alina Habba On Everyone's Lips

Soon after she became interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsey Halligan got off to a rocky start with a spelling blunder. This mistake foreshadowed a tenure that only got worse. Not only did Halligan clash with her colleagues about indicting James Comey, the case got tossed out on the grounds that the law hadn't been followed when Halligan took the job. Since then, other judges have escalated the situation, questioning why Halligan's name continues to appear in court filings even after her appointment was ruled unlawful.

For months, people have joked that Halligan and Alina Habba are competing to be Donald Trump's worst lawyer. "Lindsey Halligan — making Alina Habba look like an intellectual heavyweight. No small feat, I'll tell you," quipped one poster on X (formerly Twitter). With this latest development, Halligan is seemingly following in Habba's footsteps even more. After lots of legal tug of war, Habba ultimately resigned as top federal prosecuting attorney in New Jersey in December 2025. 

As Halligan's woes have mounted, the wisecracks have intensified. "Alina Habba just declared, 'I told you I wasn't the worst lawyer in the world! Lindsey Halligan, get up here, girl!'" teased novelist Paul Rudnick on X. Rudnick also imagined silly reasons Halligan might give a judge to explain why she was appointed U.S. attorney in the first place, writing, "'Because I was 4th runner-up as Miss Colorado. Were you?'" and "'I have a degree in lawyering from Trump University.'"

Of course, Paul Rudnick was going for snark, so some of his quips are exaggerated or untrue. While Lindsey Halligan did get fourth runner-up in the 2006 Miss Colorado Teen Pageant, she placed one spot higher in the 2010 Miss Colorado Pageant. In terms of how far Halligan got in school, she earned academic honors both for her undergrad work at Regis University and when she received her law degree from University of Miami. Halligan's career experiences mostly involved insurance law before she segued into working for Donald Trump.

Despite her educational and professional background, Halligan continues to give off a vibe of incompetence. Just like in the first days of her becoming interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Halligan's office is still being dogged by spelling errors. According to CBS News, someone forgot to hit spellcheck and misspelled "attorney" in interoffice correspondence about the debacle involving Halligan's job.

As of this writing, Halligan still has a little less than a week to provide a compelling case for remaining in her current role. However, in anticipation of a possible exit, she may also want to check out Alina Habba's official message when she resigned from her post. "To protect the stability and integrity of the office which I love, I have decided to step down," Habba proclaimed on X in December 2025.