Lindsey Halligan, the insurance lawyer elevated to run the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, has managed to run face first into a professional wood chipper over and over during her short and almost assuredly illegal tenure.
Thrust into the job because no one with any prosecutorial experience would sign off on criminal cases against former FBI Director James “8647” Comey and current NY Attorney General Letitia James — cases that make no sense — Halligan approached the task at hand in a manner befitting a graduate of the Dunning Kruger School of Law, digging the government into successively deeper holes at every turn. Last week, she finally appeared in court to explain herself and it did not go well.
But last week, we thought the dumbest part of Halligan’s bogus cases would be signing off on indictments without a trace of authority. As it turns out, it’s so much worse! Halligan took Comey to court even though the grand jury never saw, much less voted on the operative indictment.
Questions about the indictment swirled from jump, when the court wondered why they’d received two different indictments, confusingly at odds over the number of charges. The government never offered much of a satisfactory explanation for this, and ultimately the Magistrate ordered the DOJ to turn over grand jury material to Comey’s lawyers. Halligan fought this, and now we know why: she had, in fact, royally screwed up the grand jury process.
Anna Bower lays out the full timeline, but the short version is that the grand jury heard three charges and rejected count one. The Justice Department then drafted a new indictment that listed only the two counts that the grand jury had enough votes to approve and — without sending this document to the grand jury — just had the foreperson sign it.
This is why it’s a bad idea to drive all the experienced prosecutors out of your office. But, remember, they all had to go because they all knew this case was frivolous. Not that the DOJ will admit that…
Todd Blanche is ordering prosecutors not to answer questions from the judge at the same time we’re learning that the government submitted a vibe-backed indictment? Cool, cool, cool.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
The post Lindsey Halligan Officially More Stupid Than You Imagined appeared first on Above the Law.