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Tag: Lindsey Halligan

  • Trump-appointed prosecutor who pursued indictments against the president’s foes is leaving post – WTOP News

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    Lindsey Halligan, who as a top Justice Department prosecutor pursued indictments against a pair of President Donald Trump’s adversaries, is leaving her position as her months-long tenure has now concluded, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday night.

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Lindsey Halligan, who, as a hastily appointed Justice Department prosecutor, pursued indictments against a pair of President Donald Trump’s adversaries, is leaving her position as her months-long tenure has now concluded, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday night.

    Halligan’s departure from the role of interim United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia came as multiple judges were casting doubt on her ability to remain in the job legally following a court ruling two months ago that declared her appointment illegal. She was appointed in September to a 120-day stint, which concluded Tuesday.

    “The circumstances that led to this outcome are deeply misguided,” Bondi said in a social media post on X announcing Halligan’s exit. “We are living in a time when a democratically elected President’s ability to staff key law enforcement positions faces serious obstacles. The Department of Justice will continue to seek review of decisions like this that hinder our ability to keep the American people safe.”

    The move brings an end to a brief but tumultuous tenure. Trump tapped Halligan, a White House aide who had served as his personal lawyer but had no prior experience as a federal prosecutor, to lead one of the Justice Department’s most important and prestigious offices. She quickly succeeded in securing indictments at Trump’s urging against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. But a judge later concluded that her appointment was unlawful and that the two indictments must therefore be dismissed.

    The Trump administration had kept Halligan in place despite that ruling, but on Tuesday, two judges made clear that they believed it was time for her tenure to end. Hours later, Halligan became the latest Trump ally to give up her title amid scrutiny from judges about the administration’s maneuvering to install the president’s loyalists in key posts. Last month, for instance, another of Trump’s former personal attorneys, Alina Habba, resigned after an appeals court said she, too, had been serving in her position unlawfully.

    It was not immediately clear who would now lead the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, which has been buffeted by resignations and leadership turnover since last September when the Trump administration effectively forced out the veteran prosecutor who had been leading the office, Erik Siebert, and replaced him with Halligan.

    Halligan’s departure followed orders Tuesday from separate judges that marked a dramatic new front in an ongoing clash between the Trump administration and the federal court over the legitimacy of her appointment.

    In one order, M. Hannah Lauck, the chief judge of the Eastern District of Virginia and a nominee of President Barack Obama, directed a clerk to publish a vacancy announcement on the court’s website and said she was “soliciting expressions of interest in serving in that position.”

    In a separate order, U.S. District Judge David Novak said he was striking the words “United States Attorney” from the signature block of an indictment in a case that was before him as well as barring Halligan from continuing to present herself with that title. He said he would initiate disciplinary proceedings against Halligan if she violated his order and persisted in identifying herself in court filings as a U.S. attorney, and said other signatories could be subject to discipline as well.

    “No matter all of her machinations, Ms. Halligan has no legal basis to represent to this Court that she holds the position. And any such representation going forward can only be described as a false statement made in direct defiance of valid court orders,” Novak wrote. “In short, this charade of Ms. Halligan masquerading as the United States Attorney for this District in direct defiance of binding court orders must come to an end.”

    Novak, who was appointed to the bench by Trump during the Republican president’s first term in office, chided Justice Department leadership for what he suggested was an improperly antagonistic defense of Halligan by Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in an earlier court filing.

    “Ms. Halligan’s response, in which she was joined by both the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, contains a level of vitriol more appropriate for a cable news talk show and falls far beneath the level of advocacy expected from litigants in this Court, particularly the Department of Justice,” Novak wrote.

    “The Court will not engage in a similar tit-for-tat and will instead analyze the few points that Ms. Halligan offers to justify her continued identification of her position as United States Attorney before the Court,” he added.

    Halligan was thrust into the position amid pressure by Trump to charge Comey and James, two of his longtime perceived adversaries. Trump made his desire for indictments clear in a Truth Social post in which he implored Bondi to act swiftly.

    Halligan secured the indictments, but the win was short-lived. In November, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled that Halligan had been illegally appointed and dismissed both cases. The Justice Department has appealed that ruling.

    In her own statement, Halligan acknowledged that her 120-day tenure had come to an end on Tuesday. She also lamented the legal limbo she said she had been left in by Currie’s opinion, noting that judges in the district over the last two months had “repeatedly treated my appointment as disqualifying” without actually removing her from the role.

    “The court’s remedy did not match its rhetoric. It treated me as though I had been removed from office — declaring my appointment unlawful and striking my name from filings — while never taking the single step Judge Currie identified as the consequence of that conclusion: appointing a replacement U.S. attorney,” she said.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

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    © 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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    WTOP Staff

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  • Give Thanks for Incompetence Destroying Trump’s Second Term

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    Photo: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg/Getty Images

    A funny thing happened to Donald Trump in the past month. After spending much of the year on a sort of revanchist blitzkrieg that terrified the left and convinced many that his second term would far outpace his first, Trump has begun to genuinely fail. And the failure, for those who followed the last time closely, is familiar: Rising autocracy is headed off by rank incompetence.

    The collapse of the indictments of James Comey and Letitia James speak to the rot at the heart of the Trump administration. Lindsey Halligan, predictably, was found to be appointed illegally after her predecessor was driven out of office after rightly concluding that the cases did not have legal merit. The Senate never confirmed Halligan, and her interim appointment couldn’t be indefinite as a matter of law. In a fascist society, where the rule of law means nothing, it would not have mattered that the deeply underqualified Halligan was illegally appointed or that the cases were incredibly weak. The dictator decrees his political enemies must go to prison, and they are marched off. MAGA was plainly hoping, on some level, this was true now. Trump would get his glorious revenge for his own state and federal indictments, cowing all the Democrats who dared to resist him.

    But Comey and James are not going anywhere. Trump is free to pressure his sycophantic attorney general, Pam Bondi, to bring indictments against anyone he so chooses. He can prosecute through Truth Social posts. What he’s not entitled to, though, is actual legal victory. We do have judges in his country and we do have juries. If Halligan’s cases against Comey and James somehow reached the trial stage, it’s hard to fathom how she’d win. For all the talk, sometimes justified, of college-educated liberals living in their own bubbles, MAGA is plainly worse. What sophisticated political movement would try to attack its enemies this way? Compare the ham-fisted Halligan saga to how the late Dick Cheney ran roughshod over his opposition.

    Trump’s second term has been less internally chaotic than his first, with fewer resignations so far or leaks. Trump has retained one chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and one press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. The infighting that so characterized Trump’s early years in office is mostly absent. The administration seems united around the goals of punishing immigrants, imposing tariffs, and slashing the social safety net. Trump even wised up to the political damage Elon Musk was doing to his administration and drove him out. DOGE hollowed out the government, but Musk is no longer the face of this hollowing. Trump was able to get Musk to fade from view, which is no small feat.

    Old habits, though, die hard. Trump is thirsty for revenge, and he has thrown off the guardrails of the first term during which plenty of conventional Republicans still functioned within his orbit. John Kelly, his chief of staff from 2017 to ’19, and William Barr, his attorney general in ’19 and ’20, were two powerful members of his administration who openly defied him. Those days are gone. The Justice Department completely belongs to Trump. This is unsettling and has brought back all the predictions of American democracy’s imminent collapse. Trump is certainly behaving like a strongman, and the law to him is merely a suggestion. If there’s strength to be found in this approach — the Republican Party is fully MAGA controlled — the weaknesses are now being made plain.

    With no one, at all, to discipline Trump, half-baked cases against his political enemies are concocted. For years, his supporters and critics have treated him like a public-relations Svengali with every controversy distracting, successfully, from some other matter and his popularity remaining durable. Sometimes, though, a failure is a failure. Trump gains nothing by having his indictments blow up in his face. His margin for error is also much smaller than it was in the past. He’s a lame-duck, second-term president now. His approval rating has fallen close to 40 percent. Americans are angry that he hasn’t tamed inflation. Republican politicians themselves, while still unstintingly loyal, are starting to consider their futures. Trump will turn 80 next year. The odds of him violating the Constitution to seek a third term are remote and even if he did, it’s difficult to see how a four-time GOP nominee in his 80s with an underwater approval rating could defeat a standard Democrat who has triumphed in a primary. In the first term, Trump could always bounce back because there was the promise of tomorrow — another term, another campaign. That’s all gone now. Trump is in twilight.

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    Ross Barkan

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  • Turns Out Prosecuting People Purely out of Rage Isn’t a Good Legal Strategy

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    Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

    Beyond ineptitude and bad faith, one element connecting the Trump administration’s political prosecutions against James Comey and Letitia James is animus. Indeed, the word animus appears dozens of times in Comey’s and James’s respective motions to dismiss their indictments as vindictive and selective, standards reserved for prosecutions that can be explained by nothing else but the government’s hatred of its targets. Because they lack a legitimate official purpose, these kinds of prosecutions tend to be riddled with errors and irregularities, such as the resignation of upstanding government officials who refuse to bring trumped-up charges, the refusal of career attorneys to sign their names to otherwise routine charging documents, and the search for lackeys who may be willing to bring the charges before a grand jury anyway.

    Lindsay Halligan, the inexperienced insurance lawyer President Donald Trump handpicked to carry out his campaign of political retribution against two of his highest-profile targets, is not a typical United States attorney that went through Senate confirmation. Instead, under orders from the president, who had already declared on Truth Social that Comey and James were “guilty as hell,” Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed her as interim U.S. Attorney under a law allowing that whenever there is a vacancy. That vacancy was of Trump’s own making, having arisen when the validly appointed U.S. Attorney Erik Seibert resigned, unwilling to prosecute cases he independently determined had little merit. To remove all doubt, once the Comey and James indictments were challenged in court, Bondi attempted to retroactively give Halligan the title of “special attorney,” hoping to cure any defects in the initial appointment.

    The gambit didn’t work. Surveying the dizzying timeline of events — which included Halligan’s own bumbling performance before the grand jury in the Comey case — as well as the text and the history of the statute Bondi invoked to appoint her, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie found that the Trump administration violated both federal law and the Constitution in its rush to indict. “I conclude that the Attorney General’s attempt to install Ms. Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was invalid and that Ms. Halligan has been unlawfully serving in that role since September 22, 2025.”

    As if to anticipate that her ruling may be headed for higher heights, Currie’s back-to-back dismissals of the prosecutions of Comey and James depends heavily on the Supreme Court’s pronouncements regarding the proper appointment of “officers of the United States.” The key language governing these officers is found in the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, which sets out mechanisms for presidential appointments with the advice and consent of the Senate, or else for positions “established by law.” As the judge who invalidated the appointment of U.S. Attorney Alina Habba earlier this year observed, whenever “an appointment violates the Appointments Clause from the jump,” everything that flows from it is likewise void ab initio — illegal from the start.

    Save for the facts of each prosecution, the opinions in the Comey and James dismissals are nearly identical; in their core legal analyses, the judge simply switches the defendants’ names but the wording remains the same. Currie seems to be aware that we live in a world where the current Supreme Court considers unlawful appointments of inferior officers an affront to individual liberty; she cites approvingly language to this effect from the likes of Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and even Judge Aileen Cannon, who last year dismissed special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump over his unlawful retention of classified documents. “There is simply ‘no alternative course to cure the unconstitutional problem’” other than dismissal, Currie writes, quoting language by Cannon, the controversial Trump appointee.

    “In light of these principles,” Currie adds, “I conclude that all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment, including securing and signing Mr. Comey’s indictment, constitute unlawful exercises of executive power and must be set aside.” In reaching her conclusion, Currie worried that an ex post facto ratification of Halligan’s conduct, as Bondi attempted, might lead to an “extraordinary” scenario in which someone wholly unqualified to prosecute offenses against the United States could be tapped for the job in the future, so long as the attorney general signed the correct forms down the road. “It would mean the Government could send any private citizen off the street — attorney or not — into the grand jury room to secure an indictment so long as the Attorney General gives her approval after the fact,” Currie writes. “That cannot be the law.”

    Currie dismissed the two prosecutions “without prejudice,” which in the regular course means the Justice Department would be free to refile them once a proper U.S. Attorney is in place. That might work in the case of James, since the allegations of mortgage fraud against her remain within the statute of limitations. But will it work for Comey? As the judge noted, the statute of limitations for his charged offense of making false statements to Congress expired on September 30. Under normal circumstances, a valid indictment would freeze the statute of limitations and could be refiled if dismissed for other reasons. But in a footnote, Currie pointed to language from other courts, though not the Supreme Court, suggesting that when an indictment is invalid, the invalidity “cannot serve to block the door of limitations as it swings closed.”

    That may explain why Comey is taking a victory lap, decrying the prosecution as “based on malevolence and incompetence.” And it may explain why White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking to Fox News, said that the Justice Department would appeal its loss rather than attempt to re-indict the former FBI director. “We believe the attorney in this case, Lindsay Halligan, is not only extremely qualified for this position but she was, in fact, legally appointed,” Leavitt said. “And I know the Department of Justice will be appealing this in very short order.” (The department is pursuing a similar appeal in the case of Habba, who is part of a growing list of invalidly appointed U.S. Attorneys who have nonetheless been allowed to remain on the job.)

    One piece of unfinished business in Currie’s two decisions is what to do with Comey’s and James’s contention that the prosecutions against them were vindictive and selective. Now that their cases are dismissed, their motions to that effect are effectively moot — that is, Currie cannot grant them because there’s no prosecution left in either case. Unless and until the Justice Department decides to once again seek fresh indictments in these cases — this time by a properly appointed U.S. Attorney — we won’t know for sure how the judge will proceed on that question. But we may get an answer in a different case: Last month, the federal judge handling the political prosecution of Kilmar Ábrego García found that there is a “realistic likelihood of vindictiveness” that entitles his lawyers to seek answers from the government — and maybe even put Deputy Attorney General Todd Blance on the stand to be cross-examined. A hearing in that case is scheduled for next month.

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    Cristian Farias

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  • New York Attorney General Letitia James indicted for alleged mortgage fraud

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    This two-count indictment of New York attorney General Letitia James accuses her of bank fraud and of making false statements to *** financial institution. Specifically, it alleges that she intentionally misrepresented *** rental property as her secondary residence to obtain better mortgage terms. James is *** longtime foe of President Donald Trump. Last year she won *** civil lawsuit alleging that the president and his company overstated real estate values. Now the president has publicly urged the Justice Department to prosecute James and other political opponents. In *** video message yesterday, James said this indictment is part of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system. These charges are baseless. And the president’s own public statements make clear. That his only goal is political retribution at any cost. Lindsay Halligan, US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, wrote in *** statement, quote, No one is above the law. The charges, as alleged in this case, represent intentional criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust, unquote. Now if convicted, James faces up to 30 years in prison per count. She’s expected to make her first appearance in federal court on October 24th at the White House, I’m Jackie DeFusco.

    New York Attorney General Letitia James indicted for alleged mortgage fraud

    New York Attorney General Letitia James is the latest political foe of President Donald Trump to face federal charges.

    Updated: 8:01 AM EDT Oct 10, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    New York Attorney General Letitia James is the latest political foe of President Donald Trump to face federal charges. A federal grand jury indicted James on charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. The indictment accuses her of intentionally misrepresenting an investment property in Norfolk, Virginia, as her secondary residence to obtain better mortgage terms.In a video statement on Thursday, James said the indictment is part of the president’s “desperate weaponization of our justice system.””These charges are baseless. And the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost,” James said. Trump has publicly urged the Justice Department to prosecute James and other political opponents. In a Truth Social post last month that was directed at Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump alleged his opponents are “guilty as hell” and complained “nothing is being done.” Trump said, “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”Last year, James won a civil lawsuit against the president, alleging that Trump and his companies artificially inflated real estate values. An appeals court later overturned the staggering fine, which had grown to more than half a billion dollars with interest, but upheld the lower court’s finding that Trump committed fraud. Lindsey Halligan, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement Thursday, “No one is above the law. The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust.”The statement noted that James faces up to 30 years in prison per count if convicted. Her first court appearance is scheduled for Oct. 24.Halligan, who previously served as a White House aide and Trump’s personal lawyer, is also spearheading the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. She was appointed to the job after the Trump administration removed Erik Siebert, the veteran prosecutor who had overseen both investigations for months and resisted pressure to file charges. On social media last month, Trump wrote, “I withdrew the Nomination of Erik Siebert as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, when I was informed that he received the UNUSUALLY STRONG support of the two absolutely terrible, sleazebag Democrat Senators, from the Great State of Virginia. He didn’t quit, I fired him!”James specifically cited the shakeup as evidence that her prosecution is politically motivated. “His decision to fire a United States attorney who refused to bring charges against me and replaced them with someone who was blindly loyal, not to the law but to the president, is antithetical to the bedrock principles of our country,” James said. Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

    WASHINGTON —

    New York Attorney General Letitia James is the latest political foe of President Donald Trump to face federal charges.

    A federal grand jury indicted James on charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. The indictment accuses her of intentionally misrepresenting an investment property in Norfolk, Virginia, as her secondary residence to obtain better mortgage terms.

    In a video statement on Thursday, James said the indictment is part of the president’s “desperate weaponization of our justice system.”

    “These charges are baseless. And the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost,” James said.

    Trump has publicly urged the Justice Department to prosecute James and other political opponents. In a Truth Social post last month that was directed at Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump alleged his opponents are “guilty as hell” and complained “nothing is being done.”

    Trump said, “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

    Last year, James won a civil lawsuit against the president, alleging that Trump and his companies artificially inflated real estate values. An appeals court later overturned the staggering fine, which had grown to more than half a billion dollars with interest, but upheld the lower court’s finding that Trump committed fraud.

    Lindsey Halligan, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement Thursday, “No one is above the law. The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust.”

    The statement noted that James faces up to 30 years in prison per count if convicted. Her first court appearance is scheduled for Oct. 24.

    Halligan, who previously served as a White House aide and Trump’s personal lawyer, is also spearheading the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. She was appointed to the job after the Trump administration removed Erik Siebert, the veteran prosecutor who had overseen both investigations for months and resisted pressure to file charges.

    On social media last month, Trump wrote, “I withdrew the Nomination of Erik Siebert as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, when I was informed that he received the UNUSUALLY STRONG support of the two absolutely terrible, sleazebag Democrat Senators, from the Great State of Virginia. He didn’t quit, I fired him!”

    James specifically cited the shakeup as evidence that her prosecution is politically motivated.

    “His decision to fire a United States attorney who refused to bring charges against me and replaced them with someone who was blindly loyal, not to the law but to the president, is antithetical to the bedrock principles of our country,” James said.

    Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

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  • Letitia James, the New York attorney general who defeated Trump in court, indicted by Justice Department

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    (CNN) — New York Attorney General Letitia James was indicted Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia, as President Donald Trump’s Justice Department continues to pursue charges against his political opponents.

    James has been under investigation since May over a 2023 mortgage she took out to buy a home in Norfolk, Virginia. Thursday’s indictment focused on a 2020 mortgage for a different property in Norfolk.

    The grand jury returned two felony charges: bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. James’ first court appearance is scheduled for October 24 in Norfolk.

    According to the indictment, James claimed on mortgage paperwork that a home she purchased in Norfolk would be her second residence. That claim allowed her to get favorable loan terms not available for investment properties, prosecutors say.

    But, prosecutors allege, James did not use the house and instead rented the property to a family of three. They allege she falsely stated in loan applications that the residence would be a secondary home when they allege James knew she would use it as an investment property.

    According to the indictment, James received a lower mortgage rate on the property as a secondary mortgage than she would have had it been treated as an investment property. Prosecutors allege James received improper gains of $18,933 over the life of the loan.

    The charges come as Trump continues to call for his enemies to be prosecuted in court. Former FBI Director James Comey pleaded not guilty Wednesday to allegedly making a false statement in a congressional proceeding. The Justice Department has also opened investigation into former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, and others.

    “This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system,” James said in a statement.

    “These charges are baseless, and the president’s own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost,” she added. “The president’s actions are a grave violation of our Constitutional order and have drawn sharp criticism from members of both parties.”

    James’ relationship with Trump has been adversarial for years as James campaigned on promises to investigate Trump and ultimately won a civil fraud case against Trump, his adult sons and his real estate business. A judge found them liable for fraud for inflating the value of their properties, and ordered Trump to pay $355 million in penalties.

    Attorney General Letitia James sits in the courtroom during the civil fraud trial of former U.S. President Donald Trump at New York Supreme Court in January 2024 in New York City. Credit: Seth Wenig/Pool / Getty Images/File via CNN Newsource

    A New York appeals court tossed the penalties and Trump has appealed the verdict.

    During the 11-week trial, Trump’s anger toward James was palpable. He railed against her in the courthouse hallways and from the witness stand. Trump testified as James sat across from him in the courtroom galley.

    “This is a political witch hunt and I think she should be ashamed of herself,” Trump testified. “You believe this political hack back there and that’s unfortunate.”

    James often punched back outside of the courtroom, on social media or in video statements.

    Last month CNN reported that Justice Department prosecutors in Virginia, led at the time by Erik Siebert, interviewed dozens of witnesses and did not believe they gathered enough evidence to support criminal charges against James.

    Under pressure by Trump to bring charges against Comey and James, Siebert resigned and was replaced as US attorney by Trump’s former personal attorney Lindsey Halligan.

    “No one is above the law. The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust,” Halligan said in a statement. “The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served.”

    Ed Martin, Trump’s Justice Department weaponization chief, posted on social media after the charges were announced: “Promises made, Promises kept.”

    Martin previously posed for photos outside of James’ Brooklyn home in August and called on her to resign in a letter to her attorney.

    Mortgage fraud investigation

    The investigation had focused on a mortgage obtained in 2023 for a property in Norfolk.

    Her attorneys provided a document to the Justice Department in April to push back on what they called “threadbare” allegations.

    They said that one document in the mortgage application “mistakenly” said the property would be James’ primary residence. But they submitted other documents to argue there was no fraud.

    In one document, James writes in an email to her loan originator, “this property WILL NOT be my primary residence.”

    That property in question, however, was unrelated to the underlying charges in the indictment, according to a source familiar.

    CNN’s Casey Gannon and Devan Cole contributed to this report.

    This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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    Kristen Holmes, Hannah Rabinowitz, Kara Scannell and CNN

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  • Lindsey Halligan is already making mistakes prosecuting James Comey

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    Lindsey Halligan’s debut as a federal prosecutor has drawn close scrutiny after a series of early errors surfaced in court filings related to the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.

    Halligan, previously known as a private attorney and one of Donald Trump’s personal lawyers, assumed the role of U.S. Attorney only recently and has never prosecuted a case before.

    Newsweek contacted the DOJ for comment via email outside of normal office hours on Monday.

    Why It Matters

    The missteps go beyond clerical slips: they test the strength and fairness of the government’s case and the credibility of the Justice Department itself.

    Procedural errors can delay or weaken a prosecution, giving defense lawyers leverage to argue overreach. They also risk reinforcing criticism that this politically charged indictment—announced soon after Donald Trump publicly urged charges against political opponents—is more about pressure than law.

    How Halligan recovers from these mistakes could shape not just the outcome of the Comey case but public trust in the department’s independence and competence.

    What To Know

    Problems in Halligan’s initial filings, including duplicate case numbers and clerical errors such as misspellings in official documents have been flagged.

    A widely shared social media post on X noted she “doesn’t know the difference between a bedrock principle and a bedrock ‘principal’.”

    The difference between the two is about word meaning—and in legal writing, it’s important:

    • Principle (with “le” at the end) means a fundamental truth, rule, or concept.
      Example: “Due process is a bedrock principle of American law.”
    • Principal (with “al” at the end) means a leader or main person (like a school principal) or can mean “main” or “primary.”
      Example: “The principal reason for dismissal was lack of evidence.”

    So “bedrock principle” is correct when you mean a foundational idea or standard. “Bedrock principal” would incorrectly suggest a foundational person or primary figure, which doesn’t make sense in legal filings.

    While U.S. Magistrate Judge Vaala was also described on X September 28, 2025, as “trying to untangle Lindsey Halligan’s first adventure in indicting someone.”

    Some social media commentary veered into personal territory—mentioning Halligan’s past role as Donald Trump’s lawyer—but the concerns raised publicly are framed around prosecutorial competence and case management.

    Questions about Halligan’s preparedness intensified when The Washington Post reported she “presented the Comey indictment all by herself to the grand jury,” citing people familiar with the matter.

    Legal Debate Over The Charges

    The case accuses Comey of misleading investigators about authorizing leaks during his tenure at the FBI.

    The prosecution’s path will not be straightforward. To convict under 18 U.S.C. §1001(a) (2), prosecutors must prove the statements were false, that Comey knew they were false when made, and that they were material to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s inquiry. Proving intent—showing deliberate deception rather than mistake or faulty memory—has historically been difficult with senior officials and complex testimony.

    And the legal theory behind the indictment is contested, including by some who have criticized Comey previously.

    Fox News legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy said on Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street that the charges appear weak. “Well, I don’t think there’s a case,” McCarthy told Bartiromo on September 26.

    He said the indictment seems “premised on something that’s not true, which is that [Andrew] McCabe said that Comey authorized him to leak to the Wall Street Journal. … McCabe said that he directed the leak, and he told Comey about it after the fact. So, it’s true that Comey never authorized it in the sense of OK’ing it before it happened. So, I don’t see how they can make that case.”

    McCarthy also noted: “If you were talking about the information that was provided to the FISA court … that’s not what this case is about,” underscoring that the indictment focuses narrowly on a single disclosure.

    Not The First DOJ Misstep — But Unusual At This Level

    Filing mistakes are not unheard of in federal litigation, but they rarely surface repeatedly in a high-profile case led by a U.S. Attorney.

    In 2017, the Justice Department briefly misspelled then–acting Attorney General Sally Yates’s name in a filing, and in 2020 a DOJ motion in the Michael Flynn case cited the wrong date for a judge’s order; both were corrected quickly and drew little attention.

    Halligan, 36, the newly installed U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia—one of the most consequential federal prosecutorial offices in the country—spent most of her career in Florida insurance litigation before joining Trump’s legal team during the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation.

    Court records indicate she has participated in only three federal cases prior to this appointment.

    What stands out with Halligan’s early work is the combination of multiple procedural errors—including duplicate case numbers and the “principle/principal” slip — and her lack of prior prosecutorial experience while serving in one of the department’s most senior roles.

    What People Are Saying

    Carol Leonnig and Vaughn Hillyard added September 26, on X that “Lindsey Halligan, the newly installed U.S. Attorney who has never prosecuted a case, presented the Comey indictment all by herself to the grand jury … She may have a problem finding a prosecutor in office to work on the case.”

    What Happens Next

    The case now moves into pretrial motions, where Comey’s lawyers will challenge the charges and cite early filing errors. Halligan can correct those mistakes and may add experienced prosecutors, though support is uncertain.

    If the case survives, discovery will test the evidence that Comey authorized leaks as political scrutiny grows. Judges often allow technical fixes, but repeated missteps could damage the prosecution’s credibility and shape views of Halligan’s leadership.

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  • John Roberts Wrote Trump a Permission Slip to Indict Comey

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    Photo: Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times/Redux

    The criminal indictment against former FBI director James Comey will be parsed on the law, the facts, and the question of whether the Trump administration’s decision to indict a person on Donald Trump’s enemies’ list in the first place amounted to a vindictive and selective prosecution. All of those analyses have their place, and Comey has already indicated that he has “great confidence in the federal judicial system” such that he is willing to proceed with a public trial to clear his name.

    Yet the reason he finds himself in the president’s crosshairs, apart from the subservience of a newly appointed U.S. attorney in Virginia with no experience in criminal law, and an attorney general who can’t even bring herself to refer to Comey by name on the day of his indictment, can be traced to the federal judicial system itself. It is the Supreme Court of the United States, led by a chief justice who has done more than most to empower a presidency unbound by law, that is responsible for giving Trump the unlimited freedom to lean on the Justice Department to prosecute anyone he wants, even when the only evidence to predicate those investigations and prosecutions is the president’s feelings and not much else.

    Yesterday was James Comey’s turn. Tomorrow may be Letitia James. Kilmar Ábrego García, though not formally a public enemy of the president, is now the subject of a political prosecution where the White House, the Justice Department, and the Department of Homeland Security are all acting in concert to demonize, criminalize, and ultimately deport him to a country not his own.

    In all of these cases, sooner or later, the Trump administration can be expected to seek refuge in the work of Chief Justice John Roberts, whose maximalist language in Trump v. United States not only granted Trump a shield from criminal investigation and prosecution, but also handed him a sword to order criminal investigations and prosecutions—even sham ones. The so-called immunity decision, in which Roberts led his conservative supermajority to endow Trump with broad immunity over his official acts leading up to the insurrection at the Capitol, is about far more than presidential impunity over a failed plot to remain in power. The ruling, in ways that are irrelevant to its bottom line, contains breathtaking language that categorically places the president in direct control of the attorney general, her Justice Department, and any other federal prosecutor down the chain of command.

    Re-reading the decision, which was supposed to be fashioned as “a rule for the ages,” shows how ill-considered the rule was to start. In the part of the decree where Roberts analyzes special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment accusing Trump of subverting “the Justice Department’s power and authority to convince certain States” to engage in a fake electors scheme—by all accounts, an illegitimate use of the department’s functions—the chief justice spends little time in the scheme itself. (As a result, Smith was forced to drop these allegations from his case.) Instead, he offers a rose-colored view of a president’s authority over the Executive branch, how he “may discuss potential investigations and prosecutions with his Attorney General and other Justice Department officials,” and how even threatening to fire an acting attorney general for disobeying unlawful orders falls within the “conclusive and preclusive” authority of the nation’s chief executive. That is, neither courts nor Congress may second guess any of these actions with proceedings or laws authorizing a criminal prosecution.

    Not even investigations that are considered a “sham,” Roberts writes, “divest the President of exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the Justice Department and its officials.” As a result, he adds, “the President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority.”

    Absolute immunity over that course of conduct is bad enough. Yet the Trump administration, at this very moment, is running with this and related language in Roberts’ opinion to justify other presidential overreach in the lower courts and before the Supreme Court itself. The highest-profile example is ripe for a decision: Any moment now, the justices are expected to rule on an emergency request from the Justice Department to green-light the president’s chaotic and pretextual attempt to fire Lisa Cook from the board of governors of the Federal Reserve—the first such attempt to fire a sitting governor in the board’s 111-year history. A who’s who of former Federal Reserve members, Treasury secretaries, economic advisers, and other high-ranking Republican appointees have warned the Supreme Court not to play ball—unless the justices want to invite chaos and destabilize the nation’s economy and people’s retirement portfolios.

    Solicitor General D. John Sauer—as it happens, the former personal lawyer who argued and won the immunity case last year—leans hard on the ruling he helped generate, and he does so in a way that would shut the door to any judge ever scrutinizing a president’s firing decision. According to Trump v. United States, he writes, Article II of the Constitution “creates ‘an energetic, independent Executive’”—not a president who is “subservient” or who “must follow judicially invented procedures even when exercising core executive power.” Again quoting from the Roberts opinion, Sauer adds that a “president’s removal power is ‘conclusive and preclusive,’ meaning that exercises of that power ‘may not be regulated by Congress or reviewed by the courts.’”

    Then comes this kicker, entirely lifted from the immunity decision: “Any inquiry ‘into the President’s motives’ ‘would risk exposing’ the President’s actions ‘to judicial examination on the mere allegation of improper purpose’—an outcome that would ‘seriously cripple the proper and effective administration of public affairs.’”

    Which is Sauer’s lawyerly way of saying: Thank you, John Roberts. Your own lofty vision of presidential authority prevents the judicial branch from even second-guessing a president ordering the Justice Department to prosecute a former FBI director, simply because he can. Under this vision, judges cannot assess the legality of firing a high-ranking official whom the law insulates from being dismissed on a whim, or as a result of a questionable criminal referral from a loyalist. And there’s no judicial recourse against the president if the Justice Department decides, as reported on Thursday, to deputize more than a half dozen U.S. attorney’s offices to investigate and possibly charge the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundations. And other than fighting the charges in court, the same goes for the as-yet-uncharged Letitia James.

    The list of culprits for destroying the Justice Department and the politically driven prosecutions of the second Trump administration must include John Roberts, their chief enabler. And unless and until the Supreme Court reverses the damage done, the judiciary that Comey believes in will have to work hard to abide by the law as it stands—going through the motions of an arraignment, a trial, appeals, and other proceedings that should’ve never been set in motion. Worse still, judges will have to pretend this abuse of official power, which we’re told the Constitution doesn’t allow them to question, is nothing more than a president taking care that the laws are being faithfully executed.


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    Cristian Farias

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  • Trump says he expects charges for other adversaries after Comey indictment

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    Donald Trump said on Friday that he expected more people whom he considers his political enemies to face criminal charges, a day after the justice department indicted former FBI director James Comey and faced a torrent of criticism for enacting the president’s campaign of retribution.

    “It’s not a list, but I think there’ll be others,” Trump said as he departed the White House to travel to the Ryder Cup golf tournament. “I mean, they’re corrupt. They were corrupt radical left Democrats.”

    Related: Who has Trump targeted so far besides Comey in his retribution campaign?

    Trump’s blunt remarks underscored the perilous moment for his political adversaries, given that the justice department pressed ahead with criminal charges against Comey, even though it was widely seen – inside and outside the administration – to be a weak case.

    The indictment against Comey, filed in federal district court on Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia, alleged that he misled lawmakers in September 2020 when he stood by his previous testimony to Congress claiming he had never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak to reporters.

    Prosecutors alleged that statement was not true and that Comey had authorized his friend and Columbia law school professor Dan Richman to leak to reporters about an investigation into Hilary Clinton, when Richman worked for a short time as a special government employee at the FBI.

    But the underlying evidence against Comey, which remains unclear from the two-page indictment, was considered to be insufficient for a conviction. The issues were laid out in a memo and Erik Siebert, the then interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, declined to bring charges.

    Trump fired Siebert within days and replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, most recently a White House aide with no prosecutorial experience. Halligan was briefed on the problems with the case but pressed forward with charges anyway, presenting the case herself to the grand jury.

    The grand jury returned an indictment on two counts but declined to approve a third. Even then, only 14 out of 23 grand jurors voted to bring the false statement charge, barely more than the 12-person threshold, court documents show.

    The fraught nature of the Comey indictment raised fresh fears that Trump’s political appointees at justice department headquarters in Washington and at its field offices elsewhere will feel emboldened to pursue criminal cases against the president’s other adversaries.

    Among other people, Trump has fixated in recent weeks on criminal investigations against the New York attorney general Letitia James and Democratic senator Adam Schiff over mortgage fraud allegations. James brought a civil fraud case against Trump last year and Schiff led the first impeachment trial.

    Last weekend, before Comey’s indictment, Trump called on his attorney general Pam Bondi to pursue Comey, James and Schiff. “They impeached me twice and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

    The administration also launched a criminal investigation into former CIA director John Brennan, who Trump despises for his role in the US intelligence community’s assessment in 2016 about Russian malign influence operations aimed at helping the Trump campaign.

    Last month, the FBI also searched the home and office of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser turned critic, over allegations he mishandled classified documents. The FBI recovered documents with classification markings but Bolton’s lawyer claimed they had been declassified.

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  • ‘I’m not afraid’: Former FBI director responds after being indicted

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    This indictment filed overnight does not specifically mention the Russia investigation, but it does accuse Comey of making *** false statement and obstructing *** congressional proceeding. Comey’s accused of lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the investigation into Russia meddling with the 2016 election and whether he authorized *** leak to the press. Now timing is everything. Last week, the chief prosecutor who worked in the same office that filed the case against Comey resigned after President Trump pressured him to bring charges against the New York attorney General. Social media post, the president asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to do something about Comey. The president then nominated US Attorney Lindsay Halligan, former personal attorney to the president. Halligan quickly moved forward to present the Comey case to *** grand jury shortly after charges were filed. Comey responded, My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I’m innocent. So let’s have *** trial. And keep the faith. Overnight, President Trump posted on social media saying that Comey has been bad for the country and is being held responsible for his crimes against the nation. If Comey is convicted, he faces up to 5 years in prison at the White House. I’m Rachel Horzheimer.

    ‘I’m not afraid’: Former FBI Director responds to indictment

    Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted for allegedly lying to Congress about the Russia investigation, prompting a response from Comey expressing confidence in the judicial system.

    Updated: 7:52 AM EDT Sep 26, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted for allegedly making false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding related to his testimony in 2020 about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.The indictment, filed Thursday night, does not specifically mention the Russia investigation but outlines charges against Comey for lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the investigation and whether he authorized a leak to the press. Last week, Erik Siebert, the chief prosecutor who worked in the same office that filed the case against Comey, resigned after President Donald Trump pressured him to bring charges against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, in a mortgage fraud investigation.In a social media post, the president asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to do something about Comey, James, and Trump’s other political enemies, writing to Bondi, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” President Trump then nominated U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a former personal attorney to the president, who quickly moved forward to present the Comey case to a grand jury.Halligan rushed to present the case to a grand jury because prosecutors had until Tuesday to bring a case before the five-year statute of limitations expired.Shortly after the charges were filed, Comey responded in a video posted on his social media, saying, “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith.” Overnight, President Trump posted on social media, calling Comey “one of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to” and saying Comey is “being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation.”Trump continued by posting early Friday morning, “JAMES COMEY IS A DIRTY COP.”If convicted, Comey faces up to five years in prison.Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:

    WASHINGTON —

    Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted for allegedly making false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding related to his testimony in 2020 about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

    The indictment, filed Thursday night, does not specifically mention the Russia investigation but outlines charges against Comey for lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the investigation and whether he authorized a leak to the press.

    Last week, Erik Siebert, the chief prosecutor who worked in the same office that filed the case against Comey, resigned after President Donald Trump pressured him to bring charges against the New York attorney general, Letitia James, in a mortgage fraud investigation.

    In a social media post, the president asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to do something about Comey, James, and Trump’s other political enemies, writing to Bondi, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” President Trump then nominated U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a former personal attorney to the president, who quickly moved forward to present the Comey case to a grand jury.

    Halligan rushed to present the case to a grand jury because prosecutors had until Tuesday to bring a case before the five-year statute of limitations expired.

    Shortly after the charges were filed, Comey responded in a video posted on his social media, saying, “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system, and I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith.”

    Overnight, President Trump posted on social media, calling Comey “one of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to” and saying Comey is “being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation.”

    Trump continued by posting early Friday morning, “JAMES COMEY IS A DIRTY COP.”

    If convicted, Comey faces up to five years in prison.

    Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:


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  • Fact Check: Trump U.S. Attorney Nominee Lindsey Halligan Is NOT The Beauty Pageant Contestant In Viral 2007 Video

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    Is Lindsey Halligan, the lawyer chosen by President Trump to be the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, the same woman made infamous by a viral video of her answer to a question in a 2007 beauty pageant? No, that’s not true: Lauren Caitlin Upton is the woman who, as Miss South Carolina Teen USA, gave a rambling reply to a question onstage at the Miss Teen USA contest in 2007. Halligan competed in the Miss Colorado USA pageant in 2009 and 2010.

    The claim appeared in a post (archived here) shared on X on September 24, 2025. It featured the video of Upton’s viral clip next to Halligan answering a reporter’s question at the White House. The caption read:

    Donald Trump is going to have one of his former beauty pageant contestants indict his former FBI Director and the current NY Attorney General. I’m sure this is going to go well for her.

    This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:

    Source: screenshot of X.com by Lead Stories

    Halligan’s nomination to be the federal government’s top prosecutor in the judicial district adjacent to the nation’s capital has been criticized because of her lack of prosecutorial experience. She has been a lawyer for 12 years, but has focused on representing insurance companies in disputes with insured property owners before Donald Trump added her to his personal legal team in 2022.

    She was a semi-finalist in 2009 and the third runner-up in the Miss Colorado USA (archived here) competitions, which is a preliminary event to the Miss USA pageant that Trump owned at the time. There is no evidence she knew Trump before meeting him at one of his golf clubs in 2021, according to the Washington Post.

    The video of Upton was used by JD Vance during the 2024 presidential campaign to mock Vice President Kamala Harris.

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  • Trump nominates replacement for acting U.S. attorney in office probing Letitia James

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    President Trump said Saturday that he would be nominating senior White House aide Lindsey Halligan to serve as the top federal prosecutor for the Virginia office that was thrown into turmoil when its U.S. attorney, Erik Siebert, abruptly left on Friday.

    In a social media post just after he departed the White House for an event at Mount Vernon, Mr. Trump wrote he would be nominating Halligan as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, writing that she “will be Fair, Smart, and will provide, desperately needed, JUSTICE FOR ALL!”

    Mr. Trump’s selection of Halligan came just hours after another conservative lawyer, Mary “Maggie” Cleary, said in an email to staff that was obtained by CBS News that she had been named acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

    “While this appointment was unexpected, I am humbled to be joining your ranks,” Cleary told employees in the email. “The Eastern District of Virginia has a distinguished legacy upon which we will build.” 

    CBS News has reached out to the White House for clarification on whether Cleary or Halligan will be leading the Eastern District of Virginia while Halligan’s Senate nomination process plays out.

    Halligan has been part of Mr. Trump’s legal orbit for the last several years, including serving as one of his attorneys in the early days of the FBI’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

    She has more recently been enlisted in a White House effort to remove what the administration contends is “improper ideology” from Smithsonian properties.

    Lindsey Halligan, senior White House aide for President Trump, holds ceremonial proclamations to be signed by Mr. Trump, not pictured, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 6, 2025. / Credit: Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images

    Siebert resigned amid pressure from Trump administration officials to bring criminal charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James in a mortgage fraud investigation. Multiple sources had told CBS News Friday that federal prosecutors for the district were concerned that Siebert could be removed for failing to prosecute James. 

    Mr. Trump did not push back on those concerns, saying Friday, “Yeah, I want him out.” 

    Halligan would take over an office in tumult over political pressure by administration officials to criminally charge James, a longtime foe of Mr. Trump. In May, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CBS News that the Justice Department had launched a criminal fraud probe targeting James.

    The investigation stems from allegations that James provided false information on mortgage applications to get better loan rates for a home in Virginia.

    The Justice Department has spent months conducting the investigation but has yet to bring charges, and there’s been no indication that prosecutors have managed to uncover any degree of incriminating evidence necessary to secure an indictment. James’ lawyers have vigorously denied any allegations and characterized the investigation as an act of political revenge.

    In 2022, James sued Mr. Trump for years of alleged financial fraud, claiming Mr. Trump and his family participated in a conspiracy to inflate his net worth by billions of dollars in order to secure better loan rates, among other things. A judge found them liable and ultimately ruled Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization must pay $354 million in fines, though the actual total recently climbed to above $500 million due to interest amid the appeals process. In August, a New York appellate court threw out the half-billion-dollar penalty, ruling that the fine was “excessive,” while saying they were divided on the merits of the case.

    While Siebert said in an email to colleagues Friday evening that he had submitted his resignation, Trump wrote in a social media post: “He didn’t quit, I fired him!”

    Mr. Trump wrote Friday that he “withdrew” Siebert’s nomination for U.S. attorney when he “was informed” that Siebert had “received the UNUSUALLY STRONG support” of Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia. Both senators had expressed support for Siebert’s nomination back in May.

    “What is Trump focused on?” the two senators wrote in a joint statement Friday. “Threatening to pull anyone who criticizes him on TV off the air. And now, pushing out the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia that we recommended and he himself nominated because Erik Siebert is an ethical prosecutor who refused to bring criminal charges against Trump’s perceived enemies when the facts wouldn’t support it.”

    The president reiterated his statement that he fired Siebert in follow-up Truth Social post Saturday, writing that Siebert “lied to the media and said he quit, and that we had no case. No, I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so.”

    In that follow-up post, Mr. Trump also praised Halligan as a “really good lawyer.” A little over one hour later, he announced that he would be nominating her to lead the Eastern District of Virginia.

    Cleary recently rejoined the Justice Department as a senior counsel in the criminal division after working as a prosecutor in the Culpepper Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office. She also worked as deputy secretary of public safety in Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration and later served in Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares’ office.

    Cleary wrote in an article for The Spectator World earlier this year about being wrongly identified in a photo which allegedly placed her on Capitol grounds during the Jan. 6 riot. Cleary, who at the time was working as a federal prosecutor in the Western District of Virginia, wrote: “Everyone knew I was a conservative. It was all over my resume. I was in leadership in my local Republican Committee. But I had not gone to the Capitol that day.”

    She described being placed on administrative leave and interviewed by agents before later being cleared to return to work.

    “In the last four years, I’ve been somewhat cautious about sharing my experience, but now, while Donald Trump is president, I feel emboldened to finally tell how, I, too, was targeted politically,” Cleary wrote.

    At the time the article was published in May, she was interviewing to serve as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia. Cleary said she wanted that job “to end this type of treatment.”

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