Who is Lindsey Halligan? The legal eagle ex-beauty queen becoming a nightmare for Trump’s enemies

The news that James Comey could be charged with lying to Congress came four days after Donald Trump appointed a rising MAGA legal star to pursue his old foe.

Lindsey Halligan, 36, a former beauty queen, is rapidly emerging as a presidential favorite and will now have the task of investigating the former FBI Director, who remains one of the people her boss loathes most in the world.

The high-profile role catapults Halligan into the spotlight and means she will be front and center in more than one controversial case.

As US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia she will take charge of separate criminal investigations into Comey and another Trump nemesis, New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has denied accusations of mortgage fraud.

Halligan, whose parents worked in healthcare, went to a private Catholic school in Broomfield, Colorado, where she was a basketball and softball star.

She went on to study politics and broadcast journalism at Regis University, a Jesuit college in Denver, which was also attended by Erika Kirk, the widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated on September 10.

Halligan competed twice in Miss Colorado USA, making the semi-finals in 2009 and finishing fourth in 2010.

At the time, Trump co-owned the Miss Universe organization, which ran the pageants.

Halligan told the Washington Post earlier this year: ‘Sports and pageants taught me confidence, discipline, and how to handle pressure, on the court, on the field, on the stage, in the courtroom, and now in the White House.’

Later, she graduated from the University of Miami with a law degree and served in the city’s public defender’s office, before working on insurance cases as a partner in a private firm.

In late 2021 she went straight from a court case to an event at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Halligan has previously recounted how she stood out because she was dressed in a suit. She said Trump spoke to her and she ended up becoming part of his legal team a few months later.

Then, on August 8, 2022, when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago looking for classified documents, she was the first of the president’s legal team on the scene.

On TV she revealed that agents had searched Trump’s bedroom and office

‘They refused to talk to me, they refused to let me in,’ she told Fox News at the time.

‘They had unfettered access to the property They looked at God knows what in there and did God knows what in there. We have no idea. What the FBI did was an appalling display of abuse of power. If they needed any other documents, they could have just asked.’

She added: ‘They thought they could sneak in and snoop around without attorneys present.’

Trump was impressed by her performance on television and in the subsequent case brought by special counsel Jack Smith over classified documents, which was ultimately dropped.

By 2024 Halligan was seated close to Trump at the Republican National Convention.

Following the election she moved from Florida to Washington as a special assistant and senior associate staff secretary.

In March, she was instrumental in the president’s issuing of an executive order titled ‘Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.’

The order instructed officials to ‘remove improper ideology’ from the Smithsonian museums.

‘We should be able to take our kids, our students, through the Smithsonian and feel proud when we leave,’ Halligan told the Washington Post.

‘There’s a lot of history to our country, both positive and negative, but we need to keep moving forward. We can’t just keep focusing on the negative, all it does is divide us.’

In the order she was designated with three titles – Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, the Special Assistant to the President, and Senior Associate Staff Secretary.

She now becomes U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after her predecessor Erik Siebert was ousted last week.

Siebert’s office led a criminal probe involving Comey and his role in the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s 2016 campaign.

He privately told Justice Department officials he lacked strong evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump said: ‘I fired him (Siebert), and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so.’

Prosecutors have been evaluating whether Comey lied to lawmakers during his congressional testimony on September 30, 2020 related to the investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The five-year statute of limitations for bringing a case against Comey would be next Tuesday.

But prosecutors, now led by Halligan, are expected to seek an indictment before a grand jury prior to the legal deadline.

Comey’s lawyer declined to comment and said he had not heard any updates from the Justice Department.

Comey was fired as FBI director by Trump months into his first administration and has long been a top target for the president.

On Truth Social at the weekend the president complained to Attorney General Pam Bondi that ‘nothing is being done’ against Comey and urged her to install Halligan.

‘Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot,’ he wrote.

He said Bondi ‘needs a tough prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia, like my recommendation, Lindsey Halligan, to get things moving.’

Halligan was sworn in as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia on Monday.

That means she will be in place for 120 days, but the president said he would aim to make it permanent.

He described Halligan as a ‘tough, smart, and loyal attorney.’

‘This is an extremely dangerous development,’ said Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches law at George Washington University.

‘President Trump is making no secret of his desire to use the criminal justice system to seek retribution and punish his opponents, without regard to the merits of any potential prosecutions.’

Another former federal prosecutor, Jason Manning, said Halligan’s lack of experience as a prosecutor could hamper her in the role. ‘She is being thrust into this role in which she will be under extraordinary political pressure to bring charges against the president’s political opponents, and she will not have any of her own prosecutorial experience to rely on when evaluating whether the charges are meritorious,’ Manning said.

But the White House defended the choice of Halligan.

A White House spokeswoman said: ‘Lindsey Halligan is exceptionally qualified to serve as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. She has a proven track record of success and will serve the country with honor and distinction.’