This could be explosive. If true Trump would probably pardon Halligan for any criminal behavior but she can kiss her legal career goodbye. There’s not a jurisdiction in the land that would let her have a license to practice law. Yes, lawyers HATE discipling other lawyers but a prosecutor, especially a U.S. Attorney personally presenting a case ‘suggesting’ to a grand jury they weren’t going home until they by grab returned a ‘True Bill’ (and indictment) would force action. That’s part of what’s brought up in a filing from Comey to have his case dismissed.
The whole indictment stinks to high heaven. Career prosecutors including the U.S. Attorney Trump had put into the Eastern District of Virginia looked at the case and said there was nothing to prosecute. So Trump got rid of Seibert (who’d had a solid career and surprisingly actually qualified for the job) and found a lapdog who’d do what he wanted. Enter Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer who met Trumpty down in Florida and charmed him at Mar A Lago. He had her at the Smithsonian rewriting history to literally WHITEwash it. In her early thirties she’d never been in court for a case, much less prosecuted one but all of a sudden she became the interim U.S. Attorney in one of the most important jurisdictions in the country – one which routinely handles huge national security related cases!
With only days until the statute of limitations on Comey’s alleged ‘crime’ of lying to Ted Cruz (don’t get me started on the irony) Halligan couldn’t find anyone to present the case to a grand jury so she up and tried to do it herself. Credible reporting already existed that she was less than impressive and the grand jury flat-out rejected two attempts to indict Comey on the three charges she presented. Eventually, barely (with only fourteen votes from twenty-three of the grand jurors) she got a little of what she wanted.
As this article from Law and Crime tells us already reported talk that she shaded things, including using an FBI agent to do so she did something worse. Holding back exculpatory evidence is bad enough (enough to get her disbarred) because it’s required that prosecutors present it to grand juries. However this new allegation that she indicated no one was going anywhere until she got an indictment is, as I’ve indicated a bombshell.
There’s already a set of motions in the works to dismiss the case which is mentioned at the beginning of the linked article. I assume you’re already familiar with goings on to date but you can check it out for yourself. This newest 26 page motion to turn over grand jury testimony (normally secret) takes us into new territory. It’s not news anymore that Halligan and an FBI agent she called to testify were overly selective in what they presented. Or that they even potentially MIS-represented some things to the grand jurors.
What’s new according to the linked article is that the FBI agent in question had been (and therefore so is his testimony) by having had access to protected attorney/client information. That’s crazy bad of course both for Halligan and the agent. Even crazier though is that it seems Halligan pressured the grand jury – keeping them past the time they should have been allowed to go home. They’d already rejected two attempts from her to vote a True Bill (indict) and it’s suggested she hinted they wouldn’t be allowed to leave until they gave her something. What she got was the barely passed weak assed indictment now before the judge.
Normally juries, whether trial juries or grand juries work until the end of the business day and go home with the standard ‘don’t discuss the case with anyone until you’re all back together’ admonition. If a trial jury is close to a verdict they will sometimes send a note to the judge to that effect and ask the court to hold on and let them finish up, something that’s always allowed. However like anyone else they want to go home at the end of the day. That didn’t happen here:
Noting that the grand jury initially “no billed” a three-count indictment, Comey complained that instead of “leaving and reconvening on a later date,” Halligan tried again, securing the two-count indictment “by only a two-vote margin.”
The defense suggested that if U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff ordered the government to hand over grand jury details, those could reveal that Halligan sent a message that they couldn’t leave unless she got what she wanted.
The defense suggested that if U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff ordered the government to hand over grand jury details, those could reveal that Halligan sent a message that they couldn’t leave unless she got what she wanted.
“Undeterred by her initial failure, Ms. Halligan did not excuse the grand jury for the day. Instead, the grand jury remained at the courthouse into the evening hours to vote on a second indictment that was ultimately returned at 6:47 p.m.,” court documents continued. “That highly unusual decision could have sent the message that the grand jurors would not be permitted to leave unless and until they returned a true bill. And if Ms. Halligan used words to suggest that message, it would further support dismissing the indictment.”
sorry. but given this craven lot you didn’t even make me bat an eye.