Lindsey Halligan, the U.S. attorney that President Trump selected to bring a lawsuit against James Comey, had to admit in court Wednesday that the indictment she gave the judge was never seen by the entire jury: only the foreman saw it.
Trump picked the former insurance lawyer because “an experienced prosecutor … refused to indict the Comey case because there wasn’t evidence to support it.”
The case is rife with mistakes (misconduct?).
At one point, Ms. Halligan admitted that she had never shown the second — and final — version of the Comey indictment to the full grand jury before the foreperson signed the charging document. Mr. Comey’s lawyers immediately seized on that irregularity, calling it another reason to dismiss the case entirely.
At another point, one of Ms. Halligan’s subordinates, Tyler Lemons, acknowledged that someone in the deputy attorney general’s office had instructed him not to discuss in open court whether his predecessors had — or had not — written a memo laying out their reasons for not bringing charges, because that was privileged information…
The spectacle, which played out over nearly 90 minutes of tense courtroom colloquy, drove home just how slapdash the prosecution of Mr. Comey appeared to have been from its inception. Judge Nachmanoff declined to issue a ruling from the bench on Mr. Comey’s claims that the case was brought vindictively. But he appeared to be leaning in that direction. Given the other revelations of the day, he could now have more reasons to throw out the charges.
In an “extraordinary” move, Judge William E. Fitzpatrick has ordered the release of the full grand jury files to the defense. The first paragraph explains:
This matter is before the Court to address the narrow issue of whether there are particularized and factually based grounds to justify the disclosure of grand jury materials to the defense pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e)(3)(E)(ii). For the reasons set forth below, the Court finds the record in this case requires the full disclosure of grand jury materials. In so finding, the Court recognizes this is an extraordinary remedy, but given the factually based challenges the defense has raised to the government’s conduct and the prospect that government misconduct may have tainted the grand jury proceedings, disclosure of grand jury materials under these unique circumstances is necessary to fully protect the rights of the accused (emphasis added).
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