"Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer," President Donald Trump said when he publicly ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey. That assessment seemed doubtful five days later, when Halligan delivered the indictment that the president had demanded.
Halligan, a former Trump defense lawyer with no prosecutorial experience, had taken office as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia just three days earlier, replacing Erik Siebert, who did not think the case against Comey was worth pursuing. Halligan was much more eager to do the president's bidding, and she managed, just barely, to obtain an indictment before the charges would have been barred by the statute of limitations. In fact, she seemed to have obtained two indictments that contradicted each other, which ultimately raised an issue that, judging from a hearing on Wednesday, could sink the government's case.
