What About All the Mistakes Lindsey Halligan DIDN'T Make?
Why are we focusing on the negative?
This week, a federal judge issued a remarkable opinion regarding US attorney Lindsey Halligan’s prosecution of James Comey. Halligan, you may remember, was driving the beer cart on the back nine at Mar-a-Lago before Trump made her U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.1 Halligan immediately filed an indictment against Comey that her predecessor had resigned rather than bring, and did so in a way that is what you’d expect if there was a Dick Wolf legal procedural starring The Three Stooges.2 On the day of the filing, Halligan reportedly entered the wrong room, stood on the wrong side of the judge, filed two contradictory indictments, and attributed words to Comey that he didn’t say. It was the worst first day on the job for a federal employee since William Henry Harrison.3
But it turns out that Halligan’s filing was actually less competent that it first appeared. In his opinion, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick cited possible errors by Halligan including:
Mishandling information covered by attorney-client privilege;
Improperly using a search warrant;
Misrepresenting the Fifth Amendment to the grand jury;
Hinting at evidence not presented to the grand jury;
Signing two different indictments;
Sending an indictment to the court that was different from the one considered by the grand jury.