It is a sad but unsurprising fact that in these degenerate times under Trump, almost any federal government office may be filled with clownish impostors.
And nowhere is this more nakedly on display than in the halls of justice now being defiled by Lindsey Halligan, the latest hand-picked stooge of the Banana Republican-in-Chief.
Ms. Halligan, a 36-year-old former Colorado beauty queen and now, miraculously, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, seems to have confused the federal bench with a pageant stage. More on that in a moment.
A few weeks ago on Newsmax, Halligan spoke about the Trump White House assault on the Smithsonian.
She boldly declared, “I think, uh, it should reflect, uh, the values of the American people, instead of pushing ideology that over, uh, Americans overwhelmingly uh, do not support, and uh.”
Halligan would have served herself better to state a Miss Congeniality cliché, “world peace.”
Yet now, Halligan has turned her beauty queen syntax and blank gaze to something more ambitious: the criminal prosecution of a former FBI Director.
James Comey—the man who gave the world both Hillary Clinton’s October Surprise and Donald Trump’s swan dive into legal hell—is now the target of a Halligan’s prosecution.
A case so threadbare, so sloppily constructed, and so legally bankrupt, it makes the Salem witch trials look like a model of judicial restraint. The indictment Halligan cobbled together is a symphony of both farce and incompetence.
Presented to a grand jury (over the objections of every career-line prosecutor in Halligan’s office), the case was so shaky it couldn’t even secure a unanimous return on all counts.
Then came the real comedy.
The filing of two separate charging documents. One stating that the grand jury indicted Comey on two counts and refused a third, and another stating they refused all three.
When confronted by a federal judge, who judging by the transcript seemed torn between confusion and contempt, Halligan offered a series of increasingly incoherent answers:
She hadn’t seen the contradictory filing, she said. Didn’t sign it. Didn’t know where it came from.
Then the judge pointed out, ever so politely, that her signature was on the very document she disclaimed. Ms. Halligan responded the way any third-rate intern might when caught forging a time sheet: “Okay, well...”
Let it be noted, correctly submitting grand jury paperwork is not rocket science. It is not even law school material.
It is the sort of procedural bread-and-butter that even the greenest assistant U.S. attorney handles with the sleepy confidence of a DMV clerk.
Yet here we have the top federal prosecutor serving in one of the most important jurisdictions in the nation, standing before a judge like a game-show contestant who buzzed in without knowing the answer.
And all of it—the bungled indictment, the legal fictions, the disregard for professional standards—serves a single tawdry purpose. Appeasing the orange idol who appointed her.
Trump, still raging over Comey’s perceived betrayal, needed a scalp. What he got instead is a flaming embarrassment.
He has a prosecutor no one respects, launching a case no one believes in, with evidence no one has seen.
Even Fox News legal analyst Andrew McCarthy is calling Halligan’s prosecution unserious, a tissue of conjecture and fantasy unfit for courtroom air.
He says the case should be dismissed outright, but that it won’t be. Because, in his words, the judge may be too afraid of the political blowback and threats that would follow a public rejection of Trump’s latest fever dream.
That’s where we are as a society at this moment. Let that sink in.
A federal judge might let this mockery of justice stumble its way to trial not because it has merit.
But because the Judge fears the torch-wielding MAGA hordes that follow Donald Trump. The ones who act like he’s the second coming of Andrew Jackson…with a social media account.
There was a time in this country when U.S. Attorneys were serious men and women—prosecutors with iron stomachs and sharp minds who revered the law more than party loyalty.
Ms. Halligan, in contrast, appears to believe her job is to manufacture crimes as personal favors for her political benefactor. She is a prosecutor in title only.
In reality Halligan’s a glorified PR stunt in heels and hairspray busy fumbling through one of the most consequential federal prosecutions in recent memory. Like a tourist lost in a law library.
And yet, I find myself perversely hoping the case does go to trial.
Not because I think Comey is guilty—the record shows quite the opposite — but because the public deserves to see the Trump Justice Department publicly humiliated.
James Comey’s defense attorney is former special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald.
Years ago, in the CIA leak/Plame-gate investigation, Fitzgerald got convictions against Dick Cheney’s chief of staff Scooter Libby. I witnessed those proceedings.
Fitzgerald is as strong and skilled a courtroom advocate as you will ever find. And he will be going against…Lindsey Halligan.
Even if Halligan had any evidence against Comey, hadn’t gotten his Congressional testimony wrong, and could leverage even a modicum of courtroom experience, she would get eviscerated.
So, I say let a jury of twelve citizens, armed with nothing but common sense and contempt for government overreach, deliver the resounding acquittal that will shame this travesty into the annals of failed political vendettas.
When the verdict is read, Comey will be exonerated, Halligan’s name will become a punchline whispered in DOJ elevators and across D.C. cocktail parties.
Then perhaps we will remember that in American politics, as in life, the most dangerous thing you can give a fool, like Trump, is power.
And the second most dangerous is a pen.
Let Halligan keep talking. Let Trump keep scheming. Let the transcripts keep coming.
This is no longer a legal proceeding—it is an absurd and putrid farce. And we are all sitting ringside, watching the Trump circus cannibalize itself.
Well done, sir.
Indeed!