"Dismissed with prejudice"

Getting a handle on the particulars of U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan's professionalism in building a criminal case against former FBI director James Comey is made easier by visiting her historic presentation of the indictment — no, wait, make that two indictments — before a federal court Thursday night.

Averse, as I am, to burying ledes, I'll just say this now: Our mission's findings permit a pretty good grasp of why career prosecutors in newest-kid-on-the-block Halligan's U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of Virginia, counseled time and again that a) she'd make a fool of herself in presenting any such Comey indictment, because b) the indictment most assuredly would, in a court of law, die the death of a thousand laughs.

Credit to U.S. Magistrate Judge Vaala, who, after reading the two submitted indictments that should have been one, nonetheless mustered enough sober decorum to let loose not pitiless guffaws but gentle wonder. "So this has never happened before. I've been handed two documents that are in the Mr. Comey case that are inconsistent with one another," said the judge to the new kid.

"There seems to be a discrepancy" — Vaala's seems, a feminine softening of what a hardass man-judge most likely would have ripped as an unmistakable, inexcusable howler of a prosecutorial screw-up. Which is what, in fact and matters of law, it was.

"They're both signed by the [grand jury] foreperson," continued the judge. "The one that says it's a failure to concur in an indictment; it doesn't say with respect to one count. It looks like they failed to concur across all three counts. So I'm a little confused as to why" — man-judge: really pissed off because — "I was handed two things with the same case number that are inconsistent."

Halligan's explanation of this seeming irregularity was akin to a baseball game's teenager explaining to a homeowner that he had no idea as to the origin of the ball that just smashed through the homeowner's front window. "So I only reviewed the one with the two counts that our office redrafted when we found out about the two — two counts that were true billed, and I signed that one," said Halligan. "I did not see the other one. I don't know where that came from."

Vaala: "You didn't see it?" Halligan: "I did not see that one." Vaala: "So your office didn't prepare the indictment that they ..." Halligan: "No, no, no, I, no, I prepared three counts. I only signed the one — the two-count [indictment]. I don't know which one with three counts you have in your hands." Vaala: "Okay. It has your signature on it." Halligan: "Okay. Well."

Well, Ms. U.S. Attorney and volunteer combatant in Trump's war on the rule of law, evidently you also didn't know what any One-L student knows: that indicting prosecutors appearing before a federal judge unprepared, disorganized and ignominiously clueless are pursuing a criminal case that is every bit as ignominious in its ill-conception — and appropriately, impeccably doomed.  

Here's merely one example of Halligan's stupendous shoddiness. In the indictment, the false statement charge quotes Comey testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020 that in 2017 he never "authorized someone else at the F.B.I. to be an anonymous source in news reports" about an in-progress investigation. But those words were spoken by the committee's Ted Cruz, not Comey.

What's more, the misattributed "false statement" charge has already encountered its limiting statute, yet here's Halligan indicting Comey for confirming in 2020 a batch of now-unindictable 2017 words he never uttered under oath to begin with.

In addition, the original question put to Comey centered on an inspector general's report, not the director's authorization of a leak, which, at any rate, and just to top off Halligan's bungling, would have been Comey's authorizing a leak whose leaker — deputy director Andrew McCabe — had independent leaking authority. Add to that the plain fact that McCabe never said Comey authorized the leak; he said he informed him of it.

As for the indictment's second charge of obstructing a congressional proceeding, let us not bother; it's an even greater unintelligibility.

I can already hear, as I imagine James Comey and his defense team can, the arraigning judge's announcement: Dismissed with prejudice. And so Halligan's case — and legal career — dead, floating in the forever swamp of Trump's busted retribution campaign.

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This piece is cross-posted in Substack.