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lindsey halligan
Prosecutor Handpicked to Go After Trump's Enemies Attacked Journalist in Bizarre Texts
Some observers speculated that US Attorney Lindsey Halligan may have violated federal law by sending "disappearing messages" about an ongoing case.
Oct 21, 2025
Lindsey Halligan, the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who was hand-picked by President Donald Trump to bring criminal charges against his political rivals, left a legal journalist befuddled earlier this month when she sent unsolicited text messages containing sensitive details about one of her highest-profile cases.
On Monday night, Anna Bower, a senior editor at Lawfare, published the full text message exchange, which pertained to the prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James, against whom Halligan brought charges for mortgage fraud earlier this month.
The case against James has been widely criticized as politically motivated, as James had previously brought a case against Trump for financial crimes, which resulted in a finding against him in a civil fraud trial in 2022.
The president appointed Halligan, a former insurance lawyer who has never prosecuted a criminal case but previously worked as a personal attorney for Trump, to take over for her predecessor, Erik Siebert, who was forced out for declining to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey on what he believed to be flimsy charges.
Halligan first messaged Bower on October 11, just two days after the indictment against James had been handed up by the Department of Justice (DOJ), accusing her of misrepresenting how she intended to use a rental property in Norfolk, Virginia, to secure a better mortgage rate in 2020, allegedly by claiming that it was for personal use as a "second home" when she was actually renting it to a family of three.
Even before Halligan's texts, Bower said she was "among the skeptics" of the case's merits, noting that the type of mortgage agreement signed by James not only allowed her to rent the property after a year, but that the indictment "provides scant details about the circumstances of the supposed rental arrangement" James supposedly made with clients in violation of her mortgage contract.
Her perception was bolstered by reporting from the New York Times, which revealed that since 2020, the home has been occupied by James' grand-niece, who does not pay rent on the property, and that James stays there several times per year.
In response to the report, Bower—an analyst who often provides commentary on legal stories that she did not herself report—posted on X that “this is important exculpatory evidence because the indictment accuses James of seeking a ‘second home’ mortgage when in reality she intended to use it as an ’investment’ home by renting it.”
This post apparently caught the attention of Halligan, who messaged Bower on Signal later that afternoon.
"Anna, Lindsey Halligan here," the first message read. "You are reporting things that are simply not true. Thought you should have a heads up."
Bower explained: "I assumed the exchange was a hoax because, while it is not unusual for lawyers to reach out to me about my reporting or commentary, it is highly unusual for a US attorney to do so regarding an ongoing prosecution—particularly in a high-profile case in which her conduct is already the subject of immense public scrutiny."
But she later confirmed it was Halligan, and asked what precisely her post had gotten wrong.
Halligan responded: "You're assuming exculpatory evidence without knowing what you're talking about. It's just bizarre to me. If you have any questions, before you report, feel free to reach out to me. But jumping to conclusions does your credibility no good."
Noting that she was not the person who reported the story, Bower asked if the Times report had gotten something wrong. Halligan brought the conversation back to Bower.
"Yes they did but you went with it!" she said. "Without even fact checking anything!!!!"
Halligan referred Bower to the DOJ's indictment of James, but Bower noted that the indictment's "odd and ambiguous" wording did not actually contradict the Times' reporting. When she asked for more clarification about what specific details were inaccurate, Halligan said "I can't tell you grand jury stuff," even though her discussion with Bower had already discussed grand jury materials.
When Bower explained that it was still "unclear" what the Times report had gotten wrong, Halligan began to launch into a personal attack against her.
"You're biased," Halligan wrote. "Your reporting isn't accurate. I'm the one handling the case and I'm telling you that. If you want to twist and torture the facts to fit your narrative, there's nothing I can do. Waste to even give you a heads up."
Bower again insisted that she'd be "happy to correct" any mistakes, but that she "can't do so without a sense of what I supposedly got wrong."
Halligan replied: "Continue to do what you have been and you'll be completely discredited when the evidence comes out."
Over the subsequent days, when Bower would continue to reach out to Halligan to ask about other aspects of the case, she was met with more insults and eventually silence.
When Bower reached out to the DOJ for comment, a spokesperson responded that Halligan was "attempting to point you to facts, not gossip, but when clarifying that she would adhere to the rule of the law and not disclose grand jury information, you threaten to leak an entire conversation."
"Good luck ever getting anyone to talk to you when you publish their texts," theDOJ added.
After sending the DOJ another set of follow-up questions on Monday in anticipation of the story's publication, Bower received another text from Halligan minutes before the story was to be posted. Bower described the exchange as follows:
"By the way—everything I ever sent you is off record. You're not a journalist so it's weird saying that but just letting you know."
I responded: "I'm sorry, but that's not how this works. You don't get to say that in retrospect."
Halligan was unpersuaded: "Yes I do. Off record."
"I am really sorry. I would have been happy to speak with you on an off the record basis had you asked," I said. "But you didn't ask, and I still haven't agreed to speak on that basis. Do you have any further comment for the story?
To my surprise, she kept going: "It's obvious the whole convo is off record. There's disappearing messages and it's on signal. What is your story? You never told me about a story."
Halligan has a bachelor's degree in politics and broadcast journalism from Regis University. And as Bower notes, she has frequently dealt with the press as a member of Trump's legal team.
"As anyone who professionally engages with the media as routinely as Halligan would know, the default assumption when a reporter speaks with a public official is that everything is 'on the record,' meaning that anything the source says can be printed with attribution," Bower wrote.
The saga is the latest in a series of gaffes that have called Halligan's credibility as a prosecutor into question.
Her indictment against Comey has been ridiculed by legal scholars for being "almost devoid of factual material," as Benjamin Wittes, the co-director of the Harvard Law School-Brookings Project on Law and Security, put it. While attempting to present charging documents to a magistrate judge, she mistakenly presented two inconsistent documents, which the judge said "has never happened before."
While attempting to have the case against Comey for allegedly making false statements thrown out of court, his attorneys argued that Halligan altered some of his testimony, including by claiming that he was speaking about “Hillary Clinton” when he was actually answering a question about “the Clinton administration.”
Following the reveal of her exchanges with Bower, Andrew Fleischman, a trial and appellate lawyer in Georgia, joked on social media that "Halligan has all the poise and butt-dialing capacity of a sober [Rudy] Giuliani."
Others, like Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, raised the possibility that Halligan’s use of “disappearing messages” on Signal could have violated federal law, which requires federal prosecutors to preserve evidence that may be favorable to the accused.
In a CNN interview with Kaitlan Collins on Monday night, following the release of the texts, Bower explained that she has spoken to other legal reporters and prosecutors in the days since her conversation with Halligan.
Her sources in the legal profession, she said, "have never quite seen an exchange like this.”
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'What Tyranny Looks Like': Democracy Defenders Slam Trump DOJ's Indictment of NY AG James
"This isn't justice," said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. "It's revenge. And it should horrify every American who believes no one is above the law.”
Oct 09, 2025
Critics sounded the alarm Thursday after the US Department of Justice indicted Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James—who successfully prosecuted President Donald Trump for financial crimes—for alleged bank fraud in what democracy defenders called the president's latest weaponization of the DOJ against a political foe.
Days after another prosecutor in Virginia resisted intense pressure from Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi and declined to pursue charges against James, US Attorney of the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan—a former personal attorney for Trump whom the president appointed to her lifetime seat despite having never prosecuted a case—indicted James for allegedly defrauding a bank and making false statements to a financial institution.
"This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system," James said in response to the news. "I am not fearful—I am fearless. We will fight these baseless charges aggressively, and my office will continue to fiercely protect New Yorkers and their rights."
This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.I am not fearful — I am fearless. We will fight these baseless charges aggressively, and my office will continue to fiercely protect New Yorkers and their rights..
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— New York Attorney General Letitia James (@newyorkstateag.bsky.social) October 9, 2025 at 2:36 PM
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in response to the indictment: "This is what tyranny looks like. President Trump is using the Justice Department as his personal attack dog, targeting Attorney General Tish James for the ‘crime’ of prosecuting him for fraud—and winning."
“One US attorney already refused this case," Schumer added. "So, Trump handpicked an unqualified hack that would go after another political enemy. This isn't justice. It's revenge. And it should horrify every American who believes no one is above the law.”
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) said on social media that the Trump administration is targeting James "for one reason: She had the courage to hold Donald Trump accountable."
"This is political weaponization of our courts, plain and simple—and proof that when you stand up to corruption, they come for you," she added. "I stand with Attorney General Letitia James. This attack won’t silence the truth."
Trump Wants the Nobel Peace Prize for War, Insurrection, and Indicting Letitia James with @mehdirhasan.bsky.social A desperate Trump is attempting to distract from the Epstein Files by indicting Letitia James and declaring war on American critics.thelefthook.substack.com/p/trump-want...
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— Wajahat Ali (@wajali.bsky.social) October 9, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Politico reported that James' case has been assigned to Judge Jamar Walker, an appointee of former President Joe Biden.
Halligan recently filed criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey—who oversaw investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential ties to Trump's campaign—for allegedly making a false statement to Congress and obstruction of a congressional proceeding.
Critics accuse Trump of signaling to Bondi his wish for her to go after some of his political enemies, who in addition to James and Comey include Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who led the first House impeachment trial of the president. Following Comey's indictment, Trump vowed that "there'll be others."
Trump forced out Erik Siebert, Halligan’s predecessor, amid his refusal to indict Comey or file charges against James, who in 2022 filed a civil lawsuit against the then-former president, his two eldest sons, and the Trump Organization for business fraud. Trump and his organization were found liable for fraud and ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties, although an appeals court later overturned the fine while upholding the fraud findings.
Last month, the DOJ subpoenaed James as part of a probe into whether she violated Trump’s civil rights by suing him, his sons, and his business.
In addition to Democratic lawmakers, pro-democracy campaigners also slammed Thursday's indictment, with Stand Up America executive director Christina Harvey contending that "this is revenge and another dangerous abuse of power."
"Just days after prosecuting James Comey, Trump’s Justice Department pursued charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James in a thinly veiled act of retaliation for defeating Trump in court," Harvey added. “Americans do not want our president using taxpayer-funded prosecutors and law enforcement to exact revenge. If prosecutors can't even do their jobs without facing prosecution themselves, none of us are safe from Trump's overreach.”
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement:
Yet again, the vengeful Donald Trump has demanded the perversion of justice, this time with the vindictive charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James. Yet again, career prosecutors have recommended against bringing criminal charges. Yet again, only an interim US attorney who previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer was willing to seek the indictment.
Attorney General James will defend herself from these unjust charges and continue to do her job. But this prosecution is directed not only against Letitia James, but all Americans. No one should fear criminal prosecution because they stand up to Donald Trump.
“The government should be for the people," Gilbert added. "It should serve justice and law and regular Americans. It should not be distorted to serve the vindictive revenge effort of a single man. Even if that man is the president and the president thinks he is a king.”
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Dementia President: Could It Be That Trump Has Truly Lost His Mind?
Given his behavior, it could very well be that the President of the United States is going nuts.
Sep 29, 2025
Over the weekend, on his Truth Social, Trump shared a video purporting to be a segment on Fox News — it wasn’t — in which an AI-generated, deepfaked version of himself sat in the White House and promised that “every American will soon receive their own MedBed card” that will grant them access to new “MedBed hospitals.”
What?
Believers in the “MedBed” conspiracy theory think certain hospital beds are loaded with futuristic technology that can reverse any disease, regenerate limbs, and de-age people. No one has an actual photo of these beds because they don’t exist.
Trump also posted (again, without any basis in fact) that the FBI “secretly placed … 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during” the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, during which they were “probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists.”
Trump added that this “is different from what Director Christopher Wray stated, over and over again!” and went on: “Christopher Wray, the then Director of the FBI, has some major explaining to do. That’s two in a row, Comey and Wray, who got caught LYING.”
In fact, the Department of Justice’s inspector general reported that there were no undercover FBI agents at the January 6 riots. (FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that the few FBI agents present on January 6 were there on “a crowd control mission after the riot was declared.”)
Trump also announced Saturday that he intends to send the U.S. military to Portland, Oregon, authorizing “Full Force, if necessary” to “protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”
Hello? Although protesters have been camping on the sidewalks outside the ICE office for months, the demonstration has dwindled to almost nothing. Of the 29 related arrests, 22 happened on or before July 4, when the protests were at their peak.
What’s been the media’s response to Trump’s bonkers postings and announcements this weekend? Nada. The media either ignored them, mentioned them as part of Trump’s “strategy,” or assumed Trump was just being Trump.
But there’s another explanation.
Trump is showing growing signs of dementia. He’s increasingly unhinged. He’s 79 years old with a family history of dementia. He could well be going nuts.
You might think this would be covered in the news, but he isn’t facing anything like the scrutiny for dementia that Joe Biden did.
Perhaps the most telling evidence of Trump’s growing dementia is his paranoid thirst for revenge, on which he is centering much of his presidency.
The paranoia was becoming evident in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. On November 11, 2023, he pledged to a crowd of supporters in Claremont, New Hampshire, that:
“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible — they’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”
Most media commentators chalked this up to overheated campaign rhetoric.
But since occupying the Oval Office, Trump has demanded that his attorney general target political opponents, urged the head of his FCC to threaten a major network for allowing a late-night comedian to say things Trump disliked, suggested that the government revoke TV licenses of network broadcasters that allow criticism of him, and pulled government security clearances from former officials whom he deems his enemies.
Less than two weeks ago, he demanded that the Justice Department prosecute a handful of named political opponents “now!” — including James Comey, whom Trump fired from his post in 2017 after Comey oversaw the FBI’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election; Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, who indicted Trump; and Adam Schiff, U.S. senator from California, who played an active role in the House hearings on January 6, 2021.
On September 19, Erik Siebert, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (initially selected for the position by Trump) resigned after Trump told reporters “I want him out.” Siebert had concerns about the strength of the evidence against both Comey and James.
The following day, Trump posted a message to his attorney general, Pam Bondi. “Pam,” it began, “Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’”
He said he was promoting Lindsey Halligan, one of his former personal attorneys, to take Siebert’s place, and fumed: “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!!!”
On September 22, three days after Halligan assumed office, she secured a simple, two-count indictment against Comey for allegedly lying to Congress and for allegedly obstructing justice.
“JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey,” Trump exalted on social media following the indictment. “He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation.”
The Comey indictment was a blip in the weekly news cycle. The media appeared to shrug: Yes, of course Trump is vindictive, so what else is new?
But wait. Are his acts those of a sane person? Or of an aging paranoid megalomaniac?
Even if it’s unclear to which category Trump belongs, shouldn’t this question be central to the coverage of his presidency? At the very least, shouldn’t the media be actively investigating?
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