The Daily Beast reports President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is subcontracting out the prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey as interim U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan “struggles to find staff within her office willing to present the charges.” Citing ABC News, the Daily Beast reported that Halligan recruited two assistant U.S. attorneys from the Eastern District of North Carolina ahead of Comey’s Wednesday arraignment in Virginia. The Beast added that the staffing move “highlights the bind" facing Halligan — who on Wednesday was serving her 13th day as a prosecutor, according to CNN. Halligan brought the charges against Comey days after Trump publicly pressed his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to act “now” against Comey and other perceived enemies. According to the Beast, Halligan “triggered upheaval” soon after she replaced former interim U.S. attorney Erik Siebert after Siebert declined to bring charges against Comey before a grand jury. Within days, Halligan allegedly carried out “revenge firings” of two senior prosecutors, which “smashed morale in a district that handles sensitive national security matters.” Halligan is one more of Trump’s personal attorneys that the president has elevated to federal positions, according to the Beast. She served Trump during the initial investigation into whether the then-ex-president illegally stole classified documents and was keeping them in his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump was losing that case until one of his appointed judges, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, dismissed the indictments, “bucking decades of legal precedent by finding that special counsel Jack Smith had been unconstitutionally appointed,” according to ABC News. Smith appealed Cannon's decision but was ultimately forced to drop the appeal against Trump after he was reelected last November, due to a Department of Justice policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president. Prior to serving as Trump’s latest pick for U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Halligan was tasked with rooting out “woke” ideology at the Smithsonian — including references to the nation’s long history with slavery. “We should be able to take our kids, our students, through the Smithsonian and feel proud when we leave,” Halligan told Fox News. “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.” Read the full Daily Beast report at this link (subscription required).

A decision is not expected to be imminent, one source said, but debate within the administration has shifted recently to more deeply exploring how and when the act might be invoked.