Left to right: FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington before the House Oversight Committee to explain his agency”s recommendation to not prosecute Hillary Clinton on July 7, 2016 (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File). Lindsey Halligan, special assistant to the president, speaks with a reporter outside of the White House, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin). U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks at a press briefing with U.S. President Donald Trump in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in the White House in Washington, DC on Friday, June 27, 2025 (Annabelle Gordon/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images). New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks during a press conference regarding former US President Donald Trump and his family’s financial fraud case on September 21, 2022 in New York (photo by YUKI IWAMURA/AFP via Getty Images).
Several days after a U.S. magistrate judge criticized U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department for an “indict first, investigate later” mentality in the prosecution of ex-FBI Director James Comey, a bar complaint has been filed against the controversially appointed rookie prosecutor who secured the indictment.
Left-leaning watchdog group Campaign for Accountability’s (CfA) bar complaint, filed Tuesday against interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan, accused the former defense attorney for President Donald Trump of violating the Rules of Professional Conduct, similar in approach to allegations that New York Attorney General Letitia James’ attorneys levied in recent weeks.
The group, which brought a complaint against a different Bondi “special attorney” in August, asserted that Halligan’s widely publicized berating of Lawfare’s Anna Bower on Signal about the pending James prosecution — and her decision to seek indictments against the NYAG and Comey when career prosecutors believed the evidence against Trump’s rivals was insufficient — together warrant the scrutiny of the Florida Bar and the Virginia Bar.
“Once in office, Ms. Halligan reportedly disregarded the conclusions of numerous experienced career prosecutors who had thoroughly investigated [Mr.] Comey’s statements and found prosecution unsupportable. She then rushed to indict Mr. Comey in just four days, apparently failing to properly analyze the testimony at issue, the result of which was that she failed to recognize Mr. Comey’s statements were literally true or at least not provably false,” the complaint said. “Similarly, it has been reported that Ms. Halligan disregarded the conclusions of numerous experienced career prosecutors who had thoroughly investigated Ms. James’s mortgage documents and found prosecution unsupportable. She nevertheless rushed to indict Ms. James soon after she was installed as Interim U.S. Attorney, again apparently failing to properly analyze the documents at issue[.]”
Questioning Halligan’s competency and candor, while also slamming her extrajudicial statements on Signal, the complaint quoted remarks U.S. Magistrate William Fitzpatrick made from the bench not even a week ago.
“At a November 5, 2025 hearing in the Comey case Federal Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick criticized prosecutors saying, ‘[r]ight now, we are in a bit of a feeling of indict first, investigate later,'” the complaint said.
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Fitzpatrick was not the first jurist to make a statement of the kind. In September, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui criticized the DOJ’s “many misfires,” reportedly describing the government as taking a “we’ll arrest people … then see what happens” approach to law enforcement.
The bar complaint alleged that Halligan did much the same by “proceeding with charges that career prosecutors, as well as, in Mr. Comey’s case, a special counsel appointed by President Trump, deemed unsupported by evidence,” apparently referring to former special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by ex-AG Bill Barr, not Trump.
Halligan, the complaint continued, “appears to have violated her additional responsibility as a prosecutor to refrain from prosecuting charges not supported by probable cause.”
“It is difficult to overstate the damage wrought by Ms. Halligan’s actions,” CfA said, before placing Halligan at the center of “[w]eaponizing the DOJ to prosecute the president’s enemies could destroy the democratic principles at the foundation of our Constitution.”
“Her conduct undermines the integrity of the DOJ, appears to have violated multiple provisions of the Virginia and Florida Rules of Professional Conduct, and undoubtedly will erode public trust in the legal system if permitted without consequence,” the complaint concluded.
Notably, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, as recently as Friday at an annual Federalist Society event for attorneys, responded directly to this very criticism.
“When I read now that we’re weaponizing, I feel like I’m being gaslit, because we’re doing exactly the opposite,” Blanche said, according to Politico. “I take umbrage at the idea that the work that our prosecutors are doing is weaponization, because I have receipts. I know what happened the past couple years. I’ve lived it.”
Blanche, the No. 2 official in the DOJ, like Halligan was a criminal defense attorney for Trump.
