Oops

"I was a soldier for Donald Trump, and all I got in return was this lousy disbarment!"

On Saturday, September 20th, Donald Trump put his foot on Attorney General Pam Biondi’s neck by sending her this message:

When Trump said “NOW!!!,” he meant “NOW!!!,” because the statute of limitations on the desired charge against his arch-enemy and former head of the FBI James Comey—lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee in September of 2020—was going to run out in only ten days.

Trump thought he was sending a private, direct message to Bondi, and so he was surprised, the White House confessed later, the next morning when he saw it mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. Trump had accidentally used his public Truth Social account to ring Biondi’s bell. Not surprisingly, Biondi let Trump know that she was upset with his post, and an hour later Trump sent out a Truth Social make-up message praising Biondi for doing “a GREAT job.”

The same day the WSJ mentioned Trump’s post, another of the President’s many arch=enemies, Hillary Clinton issued this statement: “Imagine if Richard Nixon had just tweeted out the Watergate scandal rather than putting it on secret tapes. That’s what this is.” Prophetic words, as it turns out.

Several news outlets predicted that Comey’s defense lawyers would almost certainly use Trump’s post to make the case that Comey’s indictment was politically motivated. More prophetic words.

The “Woke RINO” Trump referred to in his post was Earl Seibert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, whom Trump had recently fired after Seibert and other DOJ prosecutors wrote up a long memo that concluded that a criminal case against Comey would be doomed due to the unreliability of the chief witness against him.

The Lindsey Halligan mentioned in Trump’s post was a lawyer and former third runner-up to the Miss Colorado crown had spent her entire eleven-year legal career defending insurance companies. After meeting Trump at his golf club—she will rue that day—in 2021, Trump named Halligan to his personal legal team. She was present when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago looking for classified documents, and she helped Trump fight his subsequent indictment in that case. Halligan also filed a defamation lawsuit against CNN on Trump’s behalf that was eventually dismissed. When Trump sent Pam Biondi his “NOW!!!” post, Halligan was working as White House senior associate staff secretary and as a special assistant to the President. It was Halligan, apparently, who persuaded Trump to take action against exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution that she saw as unpatriotic.

Three hours after the “NOW!!!” post, Trump announced that he was appointing Halligan, despite her total lack of prosecutorial experience, to replace Seibert as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Although the New York Times reported that Halligan was appointed over the objections of Biondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche (who are also former personal attorneys of Trump’s), Biondi immediately assigned Halligan to the Comey case, just as Trump had asked her to do.

Halligan worked at warp speed to come up with documentation supporting a proposed indictment of Comey on three counts. She finally convened a grand jury to decide on the indictments on September 25th—she had only five days in which to present evidence to a grand jury, get the grand jury to approve and indictment, and formally charge Comey.

Halligan accomplished all that in just twenty-four hours.

The grand jury met. Halligan—who, oddly, was the only lawyer present—made her case for each of the three indictments. which all centered on the Halligan’s claim that Comey had lied when he told the Senate committee in 2020 that he had not authorized anyone at the FBI to serve as an anonymous source for news reports related to an FBI investigation.

According to court documents, a majority of the grand jury voted against charging Comey with one of three counts presented by Halligan. Comey was indicted on the two other counts (making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding) after a slim majority (14 out of 23) of jurors voted in favor.

Halligan formally announced Comey’s indictment just hours later. She had beaten the statute of limitations by four days. Champagne corks must have popped that evening in the White House.

The Comey case was assigned to Judge Michael Nachmanoff, U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia and a Biden appointee. At Nachmanoff’s first hearing on the case on October 8, Comey pleaded not guilty and his lawyers submitted a motion to dismiss the case on the basis that the charges were politically motivated and that there were irregularities during the grand jury proceedings. Nachmanoff scheduled a multi-day hearing to discuss that complicated motion for yesterday, November 18.

Yesterday’s hearing on motions, which was held before Nachmanoff’s magistrate judge William Fitzpatrick, did not go well for Halligan and the DOJ.

Judge Fitzpatrick declared that the case showed a “disturbing pattern of missteps” by the prosecutors and then rattled off a long list of them, including that Halligan had:

• Told the grand jury that any inconsistency in testimony could qualify as a criminal false statement, when in fact the law requires proof that the statement was materially false and knowingly made.

• Mischaracterized the obstruction of Congress charge by telling the grand jury that Comey’s actions could amount to obstruction even if they did not actually impede Congress’s ability to carry out its investigation, when the law says that prosecutors must prove a link.

• Perhaps improperly used information protected by attorney-client privilege in preparing her case for the grand jury.

• Told the grand jury, falsely, that Comey might not have protection against testifying under the Fifth Amendment.

• That Halligan had told the grand jury that she would introduce stronger evidence at trial that she had shared with them.

Comey’s defense formally asked yesterday for dismissal of the indictment on grounds of vindictive and selective prosecution. That requires a district judge’s ruling, which is why today’s hearing was done in front of chief judge Michael Nachmanoff.

In a long session today that the New York Times aptly described as “excruciatingly awkward,” the DOJ managed to torpedo its own indictment.

The first self-inflicted wound to the DOPJ’s case was inflicted by one of its own prosecutors, Tyler Lemons, during questioning by Judge Nachmanoff. Grand jury indictments require the signatures of all grand jurors, but Lemons was forced to admit that after the grand jury had rejected one of the three original counts, Halligan had simply redrafted the indictment to reflect that rejection. She had never, admitted Lemons, shown the revised, two-count version of the indictment to all of the grand jurors as required by law, but had only shared it with the grand jury foreperson.

Stunned, Judge Nachmanoff turned to Halligan.

“You’re counsel of record. You can address the court,” he told her, and she took the stand. In testimony that took less than a minute, Halligan told the judge that only the foreperson and one other grand juror were presented with the revised indictment. Nachmanoff thanked her and told her to take a seat. According to people who were there today, there was a long period of silence in the courtroom.

Oops.

Comey’s lawyer Michael Dreeben finally rose and declared that “There is no indictment” and contended that, because no legitimate indictment had been filed by September 30, his client could not be prosecuted.

Nachmanoff moved on to another critical topic—whether career prosecutors at the DOJ had initially filed a “declination memo” that had recommended against charging Comey. (The existence of such a memo had been reported in the press.) If this were true, it would help Comey’s contention that he was charged as an act of political revenge by Trump.

Lemons responded that any such memo would be a “work product” and not subject to disclosure.

Rachmanoff asked a series of questions about the existence of a declination memo, and Lemon repeatedly declined to answer them. Finally, after some persistent browbeating, a frustrated Lemons admitted that he had seen drafts of internal DOJ memos analyzing the merits of charging Comey.

Nachmanoff persisted, and Lemons then offered that his superiors at the DOJ had told him not to disclose any information in court about any declination memo. The judge demanded that Lemons reveal specifically who had told him that, and the thoroughly wrung-out Lemons revealed that those instructions came from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office.

The hearing also included a long discussion by both sides about whether the case against Comey was legitimate or whether it had been spawned by the President’s desire for political revenge.

Dreeben cited a seemingly endless series of social media posts by Trump in which the President called for Comey’s indictment and, for good measure, called Judge Nachmanoff “crooked.”

Lemons countered that Comey had been indicted by an apolitical grand jury who only considered the facts of the case.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Nachmanoff declined to issue a ruling from the bench on Mr. Comey’s claims that the case was inspired by political motives, but some observers left feeling that he was listing in that direction. It may not take long. Nachmanoff gave the DOJ until 5 p.m. today to respond in writing to Dreeben’s request that the indictment be thrown out.

I haven’t even addressed a separate-but-also-critical piece of the case against Comey. Comey’s attorneys have filed a motion challenging the legitimacy of Lindsey Halligan’s appointment as interim U.S. Attorney because she was installed directly by Trump without Senate confirmation, which Comey’s lawyers say violates constitutional norms.

After today, it doesn’t look like Comey will even need to win that point in order to have the DOJ’s bullet-riddled indictment thrown out.

Once that happens, Lindsey Halligan will almost certainly be thrown under the nearest ICE SUV by her boss Bondi. Multiple watchdog groups had called for Halligan’s disbarment even before this week’s hearing, and those calls will only increase in number and in volume after today. Bondi, Blanche and Lemons will also no doubt have to defend themselves against similar disbarment actions.

Trump will continue with his revenge indictments—no doubt on charges of mortgage fraud, which seems to be a Democratic disease—against Adam Schiff, Letitia James, Eric Swalwell, John Brennan, and many others, since he cares less about actually convicting his foes than he does about bankrupting them. But, after today, those folks may be looking forward to their show trials against the best that the DOJ has to offer.

Which is not much.