Halligan was so indignant that she docketed three filings attesting to her fitness \u2014 twice.<\/em><\/p>\n Or perhaps she did it to correct this embarrassing typo in the first batch<\/a>.<\/p>\n Simply stated, inability to proofread is the least of the problems here. Halligan\u2019s appointment as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was almost certainly illegal. And even if Halligan was<\/em> legally appointed, her own incompetence and missteps might well doom this case anyway.<\/p>\n Initially Halligan tried to secure a three-count indictment charging the former FBI director with: 1) false statements under questioning by Senator Lindsey Graham; 2) false statements under questioning by Senator Ted Cruz; and 3) obstruction of Congress. The jurors rejected the first charge, but indicted on the second and third. And then things went totally sideways.<\/p>\n As Empty Wheel\u2019s Marcy Wheeler notes<\/a>, there are at least three signed versions of the Comey indictment. The first<\/a> contains three counts, labeled Count 1, Count 2, and Count 2. The second<\/a> labels them as Counts 1, 2, and 3. And the third<\/a> correctly states that the jury returned charges on just two counts.<\/p>\n Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, who was seconded from South Carolina to hear the disqualification motion, signaled that something went awry when either Halligan or her first assistant Maggie Cleary was negotiating to get a clean \u201ctrue bill.\u201d After first ordering<\/a> the government to produce the grand jury record on October 28, the judge issued a second order<\/a> calling the prior production incomplete and directing Halligan to produce everything, including \u201cstatements made prior to and after the testimony of the witness and during the presentation of the three-count and subsequent two-count indictments.\u201d<\/p>\n At the hearing on Thursday, she suggested that the record still contained a 139-minute gap. According to Politico<\/a>, \u201cCurrie said that it appeared at about 4:28 p.m. on the day the indictment was returned in September, there was no court reporter in the room to transcribe the proceedings, leaving no record of the final minutes of the grand jury\u2019s session.\u201d<\/p>\n Many observers interpreted this as indicating that Halligan presented the case without a court reporter present \u2014 an almost insane level of incompetence (or malice). The DOJ rushed out a statement denying it, and on Friday, Halligan docketed a declaration insisting that \u201cthe period in question consisted solely of the grand jury\u2019s private deliberations, during which no prosecutor, court reporter, or other person may be present pursuant to Rule 6(d) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n She says she concluded her presentment at 4:28pm and then wandered off to do very serious prosecutor stuff<\/em> until:<\/p>\n Approximately two hours later, at 06:40 PM, I was notified by then-First Assistant United States Attorney Maggie Cleary that the grand jury had returned a true bill as to the presented Count Two and Count Three of the indictment and that the grand jury had not returned a true bill as to the presented Count One. I then proceeded to the courtroom for the return of the indictment in front of the magistrate judge.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Good to know that she took the court reporter in there for her case in chief! And yet \u2026 this does not explain how she came to have three signed copies of the same indictment.<\/p>\n My “I then proceeded to the courtroom for the return of the indictment” T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my\u2026<\/p>\n \u2014 P. Andrew Torrez (@andrewtorrez.bsky.social)<\/a> 2025-11-14T22:25:08.357Z<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n There are a lot of ways that this could have gone down, but that\u2019s not one of \u2018em. Some sort of way, someone<\/em> went back to the jury foreperson and got another signature.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how the Washington Post<\/a> said it happened:<\/p>\n [Halligan] and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary M. \u201cMaggie\u201d Cleary were in the Alexandria courtroom when the indictment was delivered to U.S. Magistrate Judge Lindsey R. Vaala on Thursday evening. [\u2026] The grand jury foreperson told Vaala that the panel had rejected one of three counts in the originally submitted indictment. Prosecutors then presented a revised indictment, the foreperson said,<\/strong> containing only the two counts that the grand jury had agreed on and with which Comey was eventually charged.<\/p>\n The judge received both indictments Thursday evening and noted she was puzzled by the outcome.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has never happened before. I\u2019ve been handed two documents \u2026 with a discrepancy,\u201d Vaala said. \u201cI\u2019m a little confused why I was handed two things \u2026 that were inconsistent.\u201d<\/p>\n Halligan said at the lectern she hadn\u2019t seen the first indictment that was rejected, but Vaala noted Halligan appeared to have signed that original document. [Emphasis added.]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In her declaration, Halligan insists that \u201cDuring the intermediary time, between concluding my presentation and being notified of the grand jury\u2019s return, I had no interaction whatsoever with any members of the grand jury.\u201d That might well be true. And it might also be true that \u201cAt every moment I was in front of the grand jury, the court reporter was also present.\u201d<\/p>\n But that still leaves a hole in the record, and that hole has other implications for the case.<\/p>\n Judge Currie was assigned from South Carolina to hear the motion to dismiss based on Halligan\u2019s unlawful appointment as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. During his second term, Trump has largely ignored his statutory and constitutional obligation to get Senate approval for US Attorneys. Instead, Bondi does a sort of three-hat dance<\/a> to ensure that Trump\u2019s preferred prosecutors can exercise the power of the office past the 120-day interim term set out in 28 USC \u00a7 546.<\/p>\n First she appoints the crony under \u00a7 546; then she purports to make the crony their own first assistant, so that they are automatically promoted to acting US Attorney when the 120 days expires; and then for good measure, she designates the crony as a special counsel under 28 USC \u00a7 515.<\/p>\n Bondi\u2019s relied on this gambit since July, when she first used it for John Sarcone, III in the Northern District of New York. And even when courts ruled that the crony can\u2019t hold the position of US Attorney, the office\u2019s prosecutions have survived. But for whatever reason, on September 22 Bondi appointed Halligan based on \u00a7 546 alone. And she\u2019s been trying to undo the damage ever since.<\/p>\n On Halloween, Bondi attempted to clean up the mess by ratifying<\/a> the indictment and retroactively installing Halligan as special attorney under \u00a7 515 as of September 22. Trick or treat!<\/p>\n There are several problems with this stratagem. First of all, that\u2019s not how linear time works, Pam! Second, by this logic, any rando off the street could present a case to a grand jury \u2014 which is more or less what happened here \u2014 and it would be fine<\/em> as long as the AG blessed it after the fact. Why bother to nominate a US attorney at all?<\/p>\n At Thursday\u2019s hearing last week, Judge Currie suggested Bondi could not have ratified the indictment (or indictments) on October 31 because she hadn\u2019t seen the full presentment to the grand jury.<\/p>\n \u201cIt became obvious to me that the attorney general could not have reviewed those portions of the transcript presented by Ms. Halligan,\u201d the judge said, according to Politico<\/a>.<\/p>\n By the government\u2019s own admission the DOJ did not request a transcript of the \u201centire recording\u201d until after being ordered to do so in Judge Currie\u2019s second order<\/a> on November 4. And so, on Friday Bondi submitted yet another declaration<\/a> purporting to re-ratify the indictment based on a review of the \u201cfull\u201d record.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the avoidance of doubt, I have reviewed the entirety of the record now available to the government and confirm my knowledge of the material facts associated with the grand jury proceedings,\u201d she wrote \u201cBased on that knowledge, I hereby exercise the authority vested in the Attorney General by law, including 28 U.S.C. \u00a7 509, 510, and 518(b), to ratify Ms. Halligan\u2019s actions before the grand jury and her signature on the indictment returned by the grand jury.\u201d<\/p>\n Bondi: “The Comey indictment is going to be just fine. I’ve also signed onto that backing up what Lindsey Halligan did. She’s doing a great job.”<\/p>\n \u2014 Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com)<\/a> 2025-11-14T02:53:05.169Z<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Which is all well and good if the court accepts that the attorney general can ratify an illegally obtained indictment post facto. And that she can retroactively appoint someone as a special counsel. And that there really are no more \u201cgaps\u201d in the record.<\/p>\n If not \u2026 this indictment is DOA.<\/p>\n Oh, and PS, Cleary was\u00a0fired<\/a>\u00a0two weeks later. Prolly just a coincidence, right?<\/p>\n Aaaaaaand right on time, Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick ordered<\/a> the government to release the grand jury transcripts to Comey based on a mere 11 independent grounds.<\/p>\n Subscribe to read more at Law and Chaos\u2026.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Liz Dye<\/a>\u00a0produces the Law and Chaos\u00a0Substack\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0podcast<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0You can subscribe by clicking the logo:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The post Lindsey Halligan\u2019s Math Ain\u2019t Mathin\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n On Friday afternoon, cosplay US Attorney Lindsey Halligan defended her A-plus prosecuting chops.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are no missing minutes, contrary to the suggestion raised by the court,\u201d she huffed<\/a>, insisting that there was definitely no gap in the record of her presentation to the grand jury that indicted Jim Comey.<\/p>\n Halligan was so indignant that she docketed three filings attesting to her fitness \u2014 twice.<\/em><\/p>\n Or perhaps she did it to correct this embarrassing typo in the first batch<\/a>.<\/p>\n Simply stated, inability to proofread is the least of the problems here. Halligan\u2019s appointment as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was almost certainly illegal. And even if Halligan was<\/em> legally appointed, her own incompetence and missteps might well doom this case anyway.<\/p>\n Initially Halligan tried to secure a three-count indictment charging the former FBI director with: 1) false statements under questioning by Senator Lindsey Graham; 2) false statements under questioning by Senator Ted Cruz; and 3) obstruction of Congress. The jurors rejected the first charge, but indicted on the second and third. And then things went totally sideways.<\/p>\n As Empty Wheel\u2019s Marcy Wheeler notes<\/a>, there are at least three signed versions of the Comey indictment. The first<\/a> contains three counts, labeled Count 1, Count 2, and Count 2. The second<\/a> labels them as Counts 1, 2, and 3. And the third<\/a> correctly states that the jury returned charges on just two counts.<\/p>\n Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, who was seconded from South Carolina to hear the disqualification motion, signaled that something went awry when either Halligan or her first assistant Maggie Cleary was negotiating to get a clean \u201ctrue bill.\u201d After first ordering<\/a> the government to produce the grand jury record on October 28, the judge issued a second order<\/a> calling the prior production incomplete and directing Halligan to produce everything, including \u201cstatements made prior to and after the testimony of the witness and during the presentation of the three-count and subsequent two-count indictments.\u201d<\/p>\n At the hearing on Thursday, she suggested that the record still contained a 139-minute gap. According to Politico<\/a>, \u201cCurrie said that it appeared at about 4:28 p.m. on the day the indictment was returned in September, there was no court reporter in the room to transcribe the proceedings, leaving no record of the final minutes of the grand jury\u2019s session.\u201d<\/p>\n Many observers interpreted this as indicating that Halligan presented the case without a court reporter present \u2014 an almost insane level of incompetence (or malice). The DOJ rushed out a statement denying it, and on Friday, Halligan docketed a declaration insisting that \u201cthe period in question consisted solely of the grand jury\u2019s private deliberations, during which no prosecutor, court reporter, or other person may be present pursuant to Rule 6(d) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n She says she concluded her presentment at 4:28pm and then wandered off to do very serious prosecutor stuff<\/em> until:<\/p>\n Approximately two hours later, at 06:40 PM, I was notified by then-First Assistant United States Attorney Maggie Cleary that the grand jury had returned a true bill as to the presented Count Two and Count Three of the indictment and that the grand jury had not returned a true bill as to the presented Count One. I then proceeded to the courtroom for the return of the indictment in front of the magistrate judge.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Good to know that she took the court reporter in there for her case in chief! And yet \u2026 this does not explain how she came to have three signed copies of the same indictment.<\/p>\n My “I then proceeded to the courtroom for the return of the indictment” T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my\u2026<\/p>\n \u2014 P. Andrew Torrez (@andrewtorrez.bsky.social)<\/a> 2025-11-14T22:25:08.357Z<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n There are a lot of ways that this could have gone down, but that\u2019s not one of \u2018em. Some sort of way, someone<\/em> went back to the jury foreperson and got another signature.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how the Washington Post<\/a> said it happened:<\/p>\n [Halligan] and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary M. \u201cMaggie\u201d Cleary were in the Alexandria courtroom when the indictment was delivered to U.S. Magistrate Judge Lindsey R. Vaala on Thursday evening. [\u2026] The grand jury foreperson told Vaala that the panel had rejected one of three counts in the originally submitted indictment. Prosecutors then presented a revised indictment, the foreperson said,<\/strong> containing only the two counts that the grand jury had agreed on and with which Comey was eventually charged.<\/p>\n The judge received both indictments Thursday evening and noted she was puzzled by the outcome.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has never happened before. I\u2019ve been handed two documents \u2026 with a discrepancy,\u201d Vaala said. \u201cI\u2019m a little confused why I was handed two things \u2026 that were inconsistent.\u201d<\/p>\n Halligan said at the lectern she hadn\u2019t seen the first indictment that was rejected, but Vaala noted Halligan appeared to have signed that original document. [Emphasis added.]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In her declaration, Halligan insists that \u201cDuring the intermediary time, between concluding my presentation and being notified of the grand jury\u2019s return, I had no interaction whatsoever with any members of the grand jury.\u201d That might well be true. And it might also be true that \u201cAt every moment I was in front of the grand jury, the court reporter was also present.\u201d<\/p>\n But that still leaves a hole in the record, and that hole has other implications for the case.<\/p>\n Judge Currie was assigned from South Carolina to hear the motion to dismiss based on Halligan\u2019s unlawful appointment as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. During his second term, Trump has largely ignored his statutory and constitutional obligation to get Senate approval for US Attorneys. Instead, Bondi does a sort of three-hat dance<\/a> to ensure that Trump\u2019s preferred prosecutors can exercise the power of the office past the 120-day interim term set out in 28 USC \u00a7 546.<\/p>\n First she appoints the crony under \u00a7 546; then she purports to make the crony their own first assistant, so that they are automatically promoted to acting US Attorney when the 120 days expires; and then for good measure, she designates the crony as a special counsel under 28 USC \u00a7 515.<\/p>\n Bondi\u2019s relied on this gambit since July, when she first used it for John Sarcone, III in the Northern District of New York. And even when courts ruled that the crony can\u2019t hold the position of US Attorney, the office\u2019s prosecutions have survived. But for whatever reason, on September 22 Bondi appointed Halligan based on \u00a7 546 alone. And she\u2019s been trying to undo the damage ever since.<\/p>\n On Halloween, Bondi attempted to clean up the mess by ratifying<\/a> the indictment and retroactively installing Halligan as special attorney under \u00a7 515 as of September 22. Trick or treat!<\/p>\n There are several problems with this stratagem. First of all, that\u2019s not how linear time works, Pam! Second, by this logic, any rando off the street could present a case to a grand jury \u2014 which is more or less what happened here \u2014 and it would be fine<\/em> as long as the AG blessed it after the fact. Why bother to nominate a US attorney at all?<\/p>\n At Thursday\u2019s hearing last week, Judge Currie suggested Bondi could not have ratified the indictment (or indictments) on October 31 because she hadn\u2019t seen the full presentment to the grand jury.<\/p>\n \u201cIt became obvious to me that the attorney general could not have reviewed those portions of the transcript presented by Ms. Halligan,\u201d the judge said, according to Politico<\/a>.<\/p>\n By the government\u2019s own admission the DOJ did not request a transcript of the \u201centire recording\u201d until after being ordered to do so in Judge Currie\u2019s second order<\/a> on November 4. And so, on Friday Bondi submitted yet another declaration<\/a> purporting to re-ratify the indictment based on a review of the \u201cfull\u201d record.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the avoidance of doubt, I have reviewed the entirety of the record now available to the government and confirm my knowledge of the material facts associated with the grand jury proceedings,\u201d she wrote \u201cBased on that knowledge, I hereby exercise the authority vested in the Attorney General by law, including 28 U.S.C. \u00a7 509, 510, and 518(b), to ratify Ms. Halligan\u2019s actions before the grand jury and her signature on the indictment returned by the grand jury.\u201d<\/p>\n Bondi: “The Comey indictment is going to be just fine. I’ve also signed onto that backing up what Lindsey Halligan did. She’s doing a great job.”<\/p>\n \u2014 Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com)<\/a> 2025-11-14T02:53:05.169Z<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Which is all well and good if the court accepts that the attorney general can ratify an illegally obtained indictment post facto. And that she can retroactively appoint someone as a special counsel. And that there really are no more \u201cgaps\u201d in the record.<\/p>\n If not \u2026 this indictment is DOA.<\/p>\n Oh, and PS, Cleary was\u00a0fired<\/a>\u00a0two weeks later. Prolly just a coincidence, right?<\/p>\n Aaaaaaand right on time, Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick ordered<\/a> the government to release the grand jury transcripts to Comey based on a mere 11 independent grounds.<\/p>\n Subscribe to read more at Law and Chaos\u2026.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Liz Dye<\/a>\u00a0produces the Law and Chaos\u00a0Substack\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0podcast<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0You can subscribe by clicking the logo:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The post Lindsey Halligan\u2019s Math Ain\u2019t Mathin\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Friday afternoon, cosplay US Attorney Lindsey Halligan defended her A-plus prosecuting chops. \u201cThere are no missing minutes, contrary to the suggestion raised by the court,\u201d she huffed, insisting that there was definitely no gap in the record of her presentation to the grand jury that indicted Jim Comey. Halligan was so indignant that she […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":137007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/law-and-chaos-logo-liz-dye-300x153-rkghzC.jpg?fit=300%2C153&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2025\/11\/Screenshot-2025-11-16-at-2.37.58-PM-1024x418.png?resize=1024%2C418&ssl=1\" "\\"\\"")
Mind the gap<\/h2>\n
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Lipstick on a pig<\/h2>\n
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<\/a>Mind the gap<\/h2>\n
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Lipstick on a pig<\/h2>\n
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\n<\/a>