In good times, it appears that the prosecutor presenting at the Grand Jury was Lindsey Halligan, all by herself. Maybe this has already been covered, so sorry if I missed it. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/us/politics/trump-retribution-comey-indictment.html Although Ms. Halligan had not been fully briefed on the Comey case before arriving and despite an energetic effort by the career professionals under her to dissuade her from bringing charges, she did exactly that. In a highly unusual move for a top federal prosecutor, she personally presented the case against Mr. Comey to the grand jury, according to two people familiar with the matter. And it seems she did this alone. What will be interesting is if this actually goes before a judge. Halligan has zero trial experience, so she couldn't possibly be the one to appear. Or maybe she could. This is an administration of incompetence. Related. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/ju...curity-prosecutor-comey-indictment-rcna235161 A top national security prosecutor in a key federal office was fired Wednesday after a pro-Trump writer, without evidence, linked him to internal pushback over the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey last week. Michael Ben’Ary, a veteran prosecutor who was serving as chief of the national security unit for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, was fired on Wednesday, three sources familiar with the situation told NBC News. The firing came hours after Julie Kelly, a writer who advocated for Jan. 6 defendants and is deeply connected to the Trump administration, had written on X that the public “can only assume” that Ben-Ary “was a big part of the internal resistance” to indicting Comey.
Guilty until proven innocent? So some guy loses his job because some hack made a post on Xitter suggesting we "can only assume" wrongdoing? Good times!
They also fired a long-time FBI employee because they had a Pride flag and previously did diversity work.
Accidentally posted this in the wrong thread... Marcy Wheeler with some good stuff. https://www.emptywheel.net/2025/10/02/lindsey-halligan-even-failed-failing/ (Skip the Todd Blanche stuff, even though it's good.) Basically, Wheeler thinks Halligan is being set up to fail. Good stuff on incompetence and chaos. And then there is this, on the high standards Halligan possess. https://www.motherjones.com/politic...er-trump-just-named-to-prosecute-his-enemies/ Halligan was at Mar-a-Lago during the FBI’s 2022 raid of the club. And she went on to represent Trump in a civil suit related to the raid. According to court records, it was the first time she had represented a client in federal litigation. At the start of the case in August 2022, District Judge Aileen Cannon rejected two filings Halligan submitted for failing to comply with local procedures. The judge directed Halligan to the court’s website for instructions on how to file the documents correctly. The greatest jurist in all the land, Aileen Cannon, rejected Halligan...twice. If this all wasn't so serious, Comey would be laughing himself in a coma.
Preet suspects Halligan misled the grand jury and this intel that she worked direct with the FBI would strengthen that view. It's obvious why no one at DOJ would want to work on this.
One of the agents who was assigned to be part of Comey’s surrender to the authorities refused to participate. He has been disciplined. At least there’s a little bit of morality.
Surely, if she did, that would be a criminal offence, wouldn't it? I just hope that, if we do manage to grab the reins of power at some point, all that sort of stuff will be charged. None of this 'heal the country' Biden-style shite.
At some point it’s going to dawn on these people that 1)Trump has immunity and 2)they’re gonna need to have something of value to offer a post president trump in order to guarantee a pardon. I hope I’m still alive to witness the mad scramble, begging, and panic setting in when they realize they don’t matter enough to warrant one.
Well, yes... you'd like to think so But if by 'misled' we mean 'lied to', isn't it the same as lying to a grand jury for anyone else appearing before them? Actually, just checked professor google's AI and when asked, 'If an attorney trying to obtain an indictment, lies before a grand jury, is it perjury?' It responds... 'Yes, an attorney who lies before a grand jury while under oath is committing perjury. Perjury is a criminal offense that occurs when a person willfully makes a false statement, which they know to be false or do not believe to be true, in a judicial proceeding. I tried swapping the words around but they all end up at the same place. ANYONE telling porkies to a grand jury is committing perjury Also, presumably, as officers of the court, (over here anyway... I assume it's the same over there), they're held to HIGHER standards than Joe Schmo, so any punishment would be harsher, I assume.
I think a lot of them are really buying the idea that there is going to be at least a generation-long Republican rule. I've seen a lot of MAGA bragging how "the democrats can never be allowed to gain power again" and "the democrat party is falling apart, haha, they'll never win again". They are already planning for a two-term Vance presidency. I would bet this mindset is common not just among the low-level MAGA rubes, but also among the regime's enforcers. That is why I expect rigging attempts both in 2026 and 2028. All those involved in this dictatorial spree know they can be held accountable if they lose power.
I hope too. But denazification-type processes often let small and medium-sized fishes escape. Because the imperatives of national reconciliation and the restoration of civil peace prevail over those of justice.
The mistake that Biden made after the attempted coup was he did the opposite of the de-nazification after the war. They went after the big fish and hanged or imprisoned them but the vast bulk of the minor figures went untouched. Biden went after the small fry but totally ignored the ring-leaders.
Can we at least agree that this was Garlands approach? At worst Biden can be blamed for not interfering in the DoJ and Garland’s monumentally disastrous strategy….but we’re seeing now why politicization of the DoJ is a bad idea. Actually….at second worst. First worst was choosing Garland in the first place where the only way it was even in the realm of possibility for Garland to be “a-political” was bending over backwards to avoid prosecuting prominent republicans.
Yes and no----sort of, just to give you weasel-worded attorney trifecta. A USatty or a state prosecutor or even defense attorneys has taken an "oath" as officers of the court in which they practice. But during a grand jury hearing or other court proceedings they're not "under oath" in the same way a witness on the stand is. And trial court judges typically give counsel a lot of leeway when they're making arguments based on the facts---even allowing hyperbolic statements, etc., etc. In fact, for that reason, a trial court will typically instruct (or charge) a jury both pre-trial and at the close of trial that "what counsel says is not evidence...." That being said, blatant misrepresentations of the facts can get you in big trouble with a judge. Even if such doesn't result in disciplinary proceedings (or criminal ones in very extreme cases), if a judge thinks you're dishonest, they can make your life miserable with unfavorable rulings, never giving your arguments credibility, etc. And when that happens, the jury absolutely picks up on that vibe even if the judge tries to be circumspect in its admonishments.
Well, Trump was going to do this "politicization of the DOJ" regardless of what the Democrats did. This whole shtick "we must rigorously stick to the norms because otherwise the fascists are going to use such precedents against us" is foolish. Especially when there are actual crimes to prosecute. The fascists are going to do whatever they want to do anyway: turning a blind eye to their misdeeds in the hope that they are going to discover a conscience once they are in power is absurd.
January 6th was a historically horrific day in American history, for American democracy and the rule of law. Treating it like ABSCAM or some sort of political corruption was moronic. And we're paying for that now. The ringleaders should've been tried, convicted & locked up by 2021/early 2022.
That's why I raise the use of the word 'misled' as that seems to imply deliberately lying, not just hyperbole or exaggeration.
True. But keep in mind how ********ing abnormal it would have been, pre Trump admittedly, for a president to interfere and fire an AG over disagreements on approach to an investigation and prosecution. Which is why he should never have chosen garland in the first place..:and he certainly should have gave it a second thought while witnessing January 6th and not announced it on the 7th.