On Wednesday, Politico was first to report that cosplay US Lawyer Lindsey Halligan obtained no-billed again in her pursuit of Letitia James.
Since Decide Cameron Currie dismissed the unique indictment of the New York Lawyer Common together with costs in opposition to Jim Comey, prosecutors on the Jap District of Virginia have tried twice to safe a brand new indictment. The primary presentation in Norfolk, the place the supposed mortgage fraud happened, fell flat. And final week as comparable effort ran aground in Alexandria. However as with a lot that Halligan touches, this too went sideways in methods nobody may have anticipated.
For causes not solely clear from the file, no legal professional from EDVA was current on December 11 when the grand jury returned the no true invoice to the Justice of the Peace in open courtroom. It was not till the twelfth that the federal government moved to seal the failed indictment. By then it had already been reported by a number of information shops, and so Justice of the Peace Decide William Porter rejected the request.
Hilariously, the federal government argued that the proceedings should be sealed to additional the general public coverage objective of defending “the person accused of a criminal offense from the expense of standing trial the place there was no likelihood of guilt.” Decide Porter famous an “vital corollary” is the general public curiosity in vindicating the fame of an individual beforehand indicted on bogus costs.
“The Courtroom is not going to speculate why the grand jury disclosed the no invoice in open courtroom,” he wrote, however added that “The grand jury’s choice to make this no invoice public serves the curiosity of transparency when a person has already suffered the stigma of public prison costs.”
Regardless of the jury’s pondering, placing the no bill on the general public docket reveals the evolution of the federal government’s place. The primary time round, Halligan introduced the case herself and secured an indictment for mortgage fraud based mostly on a principle that James falsely claimed she was shopping for a home in Roanoke as a second house, when actually she supposed to make use of it as a rental property. The federal government claimed that James netted “hundreds” of {dollars} in rental earnings. Halligan, who continues to be presenting herself as a US Lawyer, even texted reporter Anna Bower of Lawfare to insist that the New York Times report that James’s niece had all the time lived there and didn’t pay lease was unsuitable.
Now the federal government has modified its tune. This time they are saying James’s crime was telling the mortgage firm that she was shopping for the property as a second house when actually she “supposed to buy a house for a member of the family who wouldn’t in any other case qualify for a mortgage mortgage on her personal and that member of the family repeatedly occupied the [] property after JAMES bought it.” The speculation is that James obtained a decrease rate of interest than she would have if she’d admitted she was shopping for the home for her niece, though the federal government makes no illustration that she truly saved any cash on the mortgage. The one point out of “lease” is the federal government’s declare that James declared the property as a rental on her federal earnings taxes and mentioned she occupied the property zero nights.
This would seem to concede that your complete first case was bullshit. It additionally means that Roger Keller, the assistant US Lawyer on mortgage from the Jap District of Missouri, had qualms about presenting a principle of the case that Halligan didn’t. Particularly, Halligan could have secured an indictment with out telling grand jurors in Alexandria that James’s niece testified to a grand jury in Norfolk that she by no means paid lease, as reported by the Occasions. If that’s the case, it’s not a method Keller was prepared to repeat.
However Halligan could need to enter the sector once more if she hopes to safe an indictment of Trump’s enemies. CNN studies that on Wednesday, AUSA Keller was again in Missouri, the place he informed a decide that he’d “only recently returned from a six-week element on the federal government’s behalf in Virginia.”
If there are to be extra no payments, it received’t be his identify on ’em.
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore the place she produces the Regulation and Chaos substack and podcast.
