In addition to vanishing the Epstein Files and making ethics violations disappear, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has seemingly cracked the code on time travel. Incredible!
Ever since Trump demanded that Bondi appoint Lindsey Halligan as the top attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in September, it’s been a bumpy ride for the former beauty pageant queen. Mainly because she has zero prosecutorial experience and doesn’t understand how to speak with journalists, but also because she was appointed to do the president’s dirty legal work—which she wasted no time getting started on.
But with Halligan’s qualifications in question, it appears Bondi revisited the date around her appointment. In a court document that was signed on Halloween and filed on Monday, Bondi wrote that as of September 22, she was appointing Halligan “to the additional position of Special Attorney.” (I, too, would like to pretend October didn’t happen.) This way, if a judge decides that yes, Trump unlawfully installed Halligen, she’ll still have plenty of authority to oversee cases against Trump’s political foes. Which is neither how time—nor the law—works.
Bondi added that she was also “ratifying” Halligan’s “actions” regarding the indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York AG Letitia James (D), both of which are cases that Halligan—alone—collected evidence for and signed.
The “special attorney” slip-in came a little over a week after Comey and James filed motions arguing that their prosecutions should be thrown out, since Trump just stuck Halligan in the position to investigate them.
Evidentially, time travel is now one of the Trump Administration’s powers.
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— Karl Jacoby (@karl-jacoby.bsky.social) November 3, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Those indictments have been obviously political from day one, and one of the biggest pushbacks has been over Halligan’s appointment. As acting U.S. attorney, her tenure is subject to Senate confirmation, and technically, she’s only allowed to hold the position for 120 days, max. And because her predecessor, Erik Siebert, already served 120 days before he was pushed out of office (unlike her, he’d refused to pull indictments from thin air), Comey and James have been arguing that she shouldn’t have been sworn in.
It’s unclear whether Halligan could actually be stripped of her title, but the DOJ’s move definitely signals they’re worried it could. A judge has scheduled a hearing regarding Halligen’s appointment for next week.
But the maneuver was still a new low, with various legal experts and scholars denouncing it. “We really need to talk about ‘ratification,’” Cathy Gellis, a lawyer, wrote on Bluesky. “This administration keeps thinking it can take garbage decisions made with no authority and somehow retroactively clean them up … this is not how anything can possibly work.” “I have no clue how Pam Bondi can legally go back in time and appoint Halligan to a position as of six weeks ago,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, tweeted.
Attorney General Pam Bondi says she has retroactively appointed former Trump attorney Lindsey Halligan as a “special attorney” for DOJ and has “ratified” all of her actions to date, including her presentations to the grand juries that indicted Trump’s foes.
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— Brad Heath (@bradheath.bsky.social) November 3, 2025 at 9:27 PM
Halligan’s appointment was as sudden as it was obvious. Days before, Trump accidentally posted to Truth Social what appeared to be meant as a personal text to Bondi. “Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot. We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!)” She was sworn in two days later, where she took three days to file the indictment against Comey, and a few weeks to file one against James.
Halligan’s résumé is an interesting one and includes home insurance litigation as well as being a beauty pageant finalist. I bet there’s nothing like being made a time traveler, though.
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