Dan Koh, former Deputy Assistant to President Joe Biden and Deputy Director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, criticized President Donald Trump‘s pick for U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsey Halligan, after Halligan won two grand jury indictments against former FBI Director James Comey, a longtime Trump opponent.
[Halligan replaced Erik Siebert, who after opting not to bring a case against Comey, resigned under public pressure from the President.]
In an appearance on MSNBC, Koh contended that Trump is appointing people not based on their qualifications but strictly on loyalty to him and their willingness to do his bidding, an assertion that Halligan’s actions appear to support.
Acknowledging the frustration and the high temperatures at the Department of Justice under Trump loyalist Pam Bondi, Koh begged career prosecutors at the DOJ to not quit as a result of Trump’s appointments.
Koh said of Halligan, who has reportedly never prosecuted a case in her legal career: “She was an associate staff secretary in the White House. I do not mean any disrespect to my former colleagues in the White House but that’s literally like taking a high school pitcher and making him the starter for the Red Sox in game one of the World Series.”
Lindsey Halligan becoming U.S. Attorney is like handing Game 1 of the World Series to a high school pitcher.
She’s absurdly unqualified.
We desperately need career prosecutors to hold the line — and do everything possible to minimize the damage.
It’s all hands on deck. pic.twitter.com/GWwTiB6wdI
— Dan Koh (@dank) September 26, 2025
Koh added: “It’s just an absurd, absurd thing to do, and she will not know a lot of stuff and so it’s up to these career people to actually stand up for the right things and to orient her in a way that has some semblance of rationality. That could be our only hope. So we can’t have them quit.”
Koh, the son of Howard Koh, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health appointed by President Barack Obama, added: “I desperately beg — and I think the American people should desperately beg — these incredible career public servants who have already been through so much to stay there.”
Koh joined a general outcry from Democrats hammering the Trump administration for “weaponizing” the DOJ. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) issued a statement that was indicative of the response across the party after the Comey indictment, writing:
“This is yet another instance of President Trump abusing power, this time by firing and forcing professional prosecutors to try and put one of his perceived enemies in jail. He is seeking vengeance to settle a personal grudge. We are supposed to be a nation of laws in which criminal investigations are conducted impartially. The law must be applied equally and fairly to everyone without any political bias. I have little faith that this prosecution meets that standard. At the same time, I do have faith that a judge and jury will follow the law and the evidence and that justice will run its course.”
In a post proclaiming his innocence and asserting that Trump was using fear — the “tool of the tyrant” — to intimidate, Comey said: “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice.”