Getting disqualified as US Legal professional for the Jap District of Virginia is the very best factor that might occur to Lindsey Halligan. The Florida insurance coverage lawyer at the moment LARP-ing as a federal prosecutor was put in on a statutory foundation that’s been rejected by three courts already. A fourth courtroom is now contemplating motions in addition her filed by former FBI director Jim Comey and New York Legal professional Common Letitia James. No different lawyer at EDVA would contact the Comey and James instances, Halligan introduced them herself to the grand jury, and her title is the one one on the indictments. So if she’s out, then these prosecutions are seemingly DOA.
That may be a kindness, if solely as a result of it might spare Halligan the ignominy of watching the humiliating implosion of each high-profile instances.
Three motions filed yesterday by Comey’s authorized group illustrate the deadly flaw within the prosecution. The barebones indictment — only a web page and a half stating in conclusory vogue that Comey lied to Congress again in 2020 — is so imprecise that it may apply to 2 alternate theories of the case. Was Halligan saying that Comey lied about authorizing his former deputy Andrew McCabe to talk to the Wall Avenue Journal? Or was she suggesting that he lied about dispatching his good friend and lawyer Daniel Richman, to talk to the New York Instances?
Comey’s lawyer Pat Fitzgerald mentioned that he himself solely discovered that “PERSON 3” was Richman the day earlier than the arraignment.
Neither principle of the case makes a lot sense, however the Richman plot appears virtually comically ridiculous, because the testimony in query very clearly pertained to McCabe solely.
The primary motion requests a invoice of particulars laying out particularly how Halligan thinks this crime went down. When and the way did this authorization happen? What did Comey order Richman to leak? What was the Senate inquiry he “corruptly” influenced? Which assertion in Comey’s testimony was false? Inquiring minds — and Jim Comey — wish to know!
The second motion requests the disclosure of the grand jury transcripts for all the explanations: Halligan was put in as US Legal professional after the president pushed out her predecessor, a profession prosecutor, for refusing to indict Comey and James. 4 days later, in her very first look earlier than a grand jury, she secured the moment indictment — after first getting no-billed, after which holding the jurors over till virtually 7 p.m. No line attorneys have been keen to place their names on the indictment, and the one legal professionals keen to affiliate themselves with the prosecution needed to be imported from North Carolina. The idea of the case is so imprecise that it suggests an inexperienced prosecutor (who could or could not have been illegally appointed) might need fudged the main points. And, on prime of all that, Comey says that an FBI investigator who testified earlier than the grand jury was seemingly tainted by publicity to privileged supplies. Whoopsie doodle!
The third submitting was a Bronston motion to dismiss primarily based on the literal fact of Comey’s solutions to Ted Cruz’s ambiguous questions. In the course of the trade, the senator fired off a sequence of accusations, characterizing prior statements by Comey and McCabe as diametrically opposed, and scarcely offering room for Comey to answer.
CRUZ: Now, as you already know, Mr. McCabe, who works for you, has publicly and repeatedly said that he leaked data to the Wall Avenue Journal and that you just have been straight conscious of it and that you just straight licensed it. Now, what Mr. McCabe is saying and what you testified to this committee can’t each be true. One or the opposite is fake. Who’s telling the reality?
COMEY: I can solely communicate to my testimony. I stand by the testimony you summarized that I gave in Might of 2017.
CRUZ: So your testimony is you’ve by no means licensed anybody to leak? And Mr. McCabe, if he says opposite, isn’t telling the reality, is that right?
COMEY: Once more, I’m not going to characterize Andy’s testimony, however mine is identical right now.
Because the movement factors out, this hectoring was not a cautious deposition designed to elicit clear responses, however slightly an train of political rhetoric. And saying “I stand by my testimony” is principally a non-response to an inchoate shouting. It’s actually true, and the shortage of context within the indictment, which claims that he “falsely stat[ed] to a U.S. Senator throughout a Senate Judiciary Committee listening to that he, JAMES B. COMEY JR., had not ‘licensed another person on the FBI to be an nameless supply in information reviews’ relating to an FBI investigation,” strongly means that Halligan painted an incomplete image for the jurors.
If Comey does handle to get his fingers on these grand jury transcripts, he’ll clearly be supplementing the Bronston movement. However it seemingly received’t come to that, because of Decide Cameron McGowan Currie, the senior choose from South Carolina designated to listen to the disqualification movement. If she agrees with courts in New Jersey, Nevada, and California that 28 USC § 546 permits the president one, and just one, 120-day interim appointment, then Halligan’s set up was extremely vires and prosecutions she alone secured are seemingly a nullity. Decide Currie has additionally ordered Halligan to show over “all paperwork referring to the indictment signer’s participation within the grand jury proceedings, together with full grand jury transcripts” in order that she could “decide the extent of the indictment signer’s involvement within the grand jury proceedings.” It ought to make for fascinating studying.
US v. Comey [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore the place she produces the Regulation and Chaos substack and podcast.
