Getting disqualified as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia is the best thing that could happen to Lindsey Halligan. The Florida insurance lawyer currently LARP-ing as a federal prosecutor was installed on a statutory basis that’s been rejected by three courts already. A fourth court is now considering motions to boot her filed by former FBI director Jim Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. No other lawyer at EDVA would touch the Comey and James cases, Halligan presented them herself to the grand jury, and her name is the only one on the indictments. So if she’s out, then those prosecutions are likely DOA.
That would be a kindness, if only because it would spare Halligan the ignominy of watching the humiliating implosion of both high-profile cases.
Three motions filed yesterday by Comey’s legal team illustrate the fatal flaw in the prosecution. The barebones indictment — just a page and a half stating in conclusory fashion that Comey lied to Congress back in 2020 — is so vague that it could apply to two alternate theories of the case. Was Halligan saying that Comey lied about authorizing his former deputy Andrew McCabe to speak to the Wall Street Journal? Or was she suggesting that he lied about dispatching his friend and lawyer Daniel Richman, to speak to the New York Times?
Comey’s lawyer Pat Fitzgerald said that he himself only learned that “PERSON 3” was Richman the day before the arraignment.
Neither theory of the case makes much sense, but the Richman plot seems almost comically ridiculous, since the testimony in question very clearly pertained to McCabe only.
The first motion requests a bill of particulars laying out specifically how Halligan thinks this crime went down. When and how did this authorization take place? What did Comey order Richman to leak? What was the Senate inquiry he “corruptly” influenced? Which statement in Comey’s testimony was false? Inquiring minds — and Jim Comey — want to know!
The second motion requests the disclosure of the grand jury transcripts for all the reasons: Halligan was installed as US Attorney after the president pushed out her predecessor, a career prosecutor, for refusing to indict Comey and James. Four days later, in her very first appearance before a grand jury, she secured the instant indictment — after first getting no-billed, and then holding the jurors over until almost 7 p.m. No line attorneys were willing to put their names on the indictment, and the only lawyers willing to associate themselves with the prosecution had to be imported from North Carolina. The theory of the case is so vague that it suggests an inexperienced prosecutor (who may or may not have been illegally appointed) might have fudged the details. And, on top of all that, Comey says that an FBI investigator who testified before the grand jury was likely tainted by exposure to privileged materials. Whoopsie doodle!
The third filing was a Bronston motion to dismiss based on the literal truth of Comey’s answers to Ted Cruz’s ambiguous questions. During the exchange, the senator fired off a series of accusations, characterizing prior statements by Comey and McCabe as diametrically opposed, and scarcely providing room for Comey to reply.
CRUZ: Now, as you know, Mr. McCabe, who works for you, has publicly and repeatedly stated that he leaked information to the Wall Street Journal and that you were directly aware of it and that you directly authorized it. Now, what Mr. McCabe is saying and what you testified to this committee cannot both be true. One or the other is false. Who’s telling the truth?
COMEY: I can only speak to my testimony. I stand by the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of 2017.
CRUZ: So your testimony is you’ve never authorized anyone to leak? And Mr. McCabe, if he says contrary, is not telling the truth, is that correct?
COMEY: Again, I’m not going to characterize Andy’s testimony, but mine is the same today.
As the motion points out, this hectoring was not a careful deposition designed to elicit clear responses, but rather an exercise of political rhetoric. And saying “I stand by my testimony” is basically a non-response to an inchoate shouting. It is literally true, and the lack of context in the indictment, which claims that he “falsely stat[ed] to a U.S. Senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he, JAMES B. COMEY JR., had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation,” strongly suggests that Halligan painted an incomplete picture for the jurors.
If Comey does manage to get his hands on those grand jury transcripts, he’ll obviously be supplementing the Bronston motion. But it likely won’t come to that, thanks to Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, the senior judge from South Carolina designated to hear the disqualification motion. If she agrees with courts in New Jersey, Nevada, and California that 28 USC § 546 permits the president one, and only one, 120-day interim appointment, then Halligan’s installation was ultra vires and prosecutions she alone secured are likely a nullity. Judge Currie has also ordered Halligan to turn over “all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts” so that she may “determine the extent of the indictment signer’s involvement in the grand jury proceedings.” It should make for fascinating reading.
US v. Comey [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
The post Comey Files Motions To Dismiss For MA’AM DO YOU EVEN LAW? appeared first on Above the Law.
Getting disqualified as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia is the best thing that could happen to Lindsey Halligan. The Florida insurance lawyer currently LARP-ing as a federal prosecutor was installed on a statutory basis that’s been rejected by three courts already. A fourth court is now considering motions to boot her filed by former FBI director Jim Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. No other lawyer at EDVA would touch the Comey and James cases, Halligan presented them herself to the grand jury, and her name is the only one on the indictments. So if she’s out, then those prosecutions are likely DOA.
That would be a kindness, if only because it would spare Halligan the ignominy of watching the humiliating implosion of both high-profile cases.
Three motions filed yesterday by Comey’s legal team illustrate the fatal flaw in the prosecution. The barebones indictment — just a page and a half stating in conclusory fashion that Comey lied to Congress back in 2020 — is so vague that it could apply to two alternate theories of the case. Was Halligan saying that Comey lied about authorizing his former deputy Andrew McCabe to speak to the Wall Street Journal? Or was she suggesting that he lied about dispatching his friend and lawyer Daniel Richman, to speak to the New York Times?
Comey’s lawyer Pat Fitzgerald said that he himself only learned that “PERSON 3” was Richman the day before the arraignment.
Neither theory of the case makes much sense, but the Richman plot seems almost comically ridiculous, since the testimony in question very clearly pertained to McCabe only.
The first motion requests a bill of particulars laying out specifically how Halligan thinks this crime went down. When and how did this authorization take place? What did Comey order Richman to leak? What was the Senate inquiry he “corruptly” influenced? Which statement in Comey’s testimony was false? Inquiring minds — and Jim Comey — want to know!
The second motion requests the disclosure of the grand jury transcripts for all the reasons: Halligan was installed as US Attorney after the president pushed out her predecessor, a career prosecutor, for refusing to indict Comey and James. Four days later, in her very first appearance before a grand jury, she secured the instant indictment — after first getting no-billed, and then holding the jurors over until almost 7 p.m. No line attorneys were willing to put their names on the indictment, and the only lawyers willing to associate themselves with the prosecution had to be imported from North Carolina. The theory of the case is so vague that it suggests an inexperienced prosecutor (who may or may not have been illegally appointed) might have fudged the details. And, on top of all that, Comey says that an FBI investigator who testified before the grand jury was likely tainted by exposure to privileged materials. Whoopsie doodle!
The third filing was a Bronston motion to dismiss based on the literal truth of Comey’s answers to Ted Cruz’s ambiguous questions. During the exchange, the senator fired off a series of accusations, characterizing prior statements by Comey and McCabe as diametrically opposed, and scarcely providing room for Comey to reply.
CRUZ: Now, as you know, Mr. McCabe, who works for you, has publicly and repeatedly stated that he leaked information to the Wall Street Journal and that you were directly aware of it and that you directly authorized it. Now, what Mr. McCabe is saying and what you testified to this committee cannot both be true. One or the other is false. Who’s telling the truth?
COMEY: I can only speak to my testimony. I stand by the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of 2017.
CRUZ: So your testimony is you’ve never authorized anyone to leak? And Mr. McCabe, if he says contrary, is not telling the truth, is that correct?
COMEY: Again, I’m not going to characterize Andy’s testimony, but mine is the same today.
As the motion points out, this hectoring was not a careful deposition designed to elicit clear responses, but rather an exercise of political rhetoric. And saying “I stand by my testimony” is basically a non-response to an inchoate shouting. It is literally true, and the lack of context in the indictment, which claims that he “falsely stat[ed] to a U.S. Senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he, JAMES B. COMEY JR., had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation,” strongly suggests that Halligan painted an incomplete picture for the jurors.
If Comey does manage to get his hands on those grand jury transcripts, he’ll obviously be supplementing the Bronston motion. But it likely won’t come to that, thanks to Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, the senior judge from South Carolina designated to hear the disqualification motion. If she agrees with courts in New Jersey, Nevada, and California that 28 USC § 546 permits the president one, and only one, 120-day interim appointment, then Halligan’s installation was ultra vires and prosecutions she alone secured are likely a nullity. Judge Currie has also ordered Halligan to turn over “all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts” so that she may “determine the extent of the indictment signer’s involvement in the grand jury proceedings.” It should make for fascinating reading.
US v. Comey [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
