Lindsey Halligan had one other unhealthy week at her fake job as US Legal professional for the Japanese District of Virginia.
First Halligan bought no-billed for the third time when she tried to re-indict New York Legal professional Normal Letitia James. The week earlier than, a grand jury in Norfolk bounced an try to cost James with mortgage fraud. This time round, a grand jury in Alexandria did the honors.
Then Choose Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in DC reamed Halligan’s workplace out for its inexcusably shoddy — to not say unconstitutional! — work, earlier than locking her out of the proof she was counting on to re-indict former FBI Director James Comey.
It’s sufficient to make a pretend prosecutor wish to quit and go get an actual job.
The case that received’t die
The Comey investigation was a Frankenstein’s monster of illegality which probably would have collapsed underneath its personal weight even when Halligan had been lawfully appointed. One of the vital evident defects was its reliance on proof seized from Comey’s pal and someday lawyer, Daniel Richman.
In 2019 and 2020, the FBI executed 4 separate search warrants for his varied e-mail, laborious drive, and iCloud accounts, primarily seizing Richman’s complete digital life. Failing to search out proof that Comey had leaked labeled data to Richman again in 2017, the FBI closed that investigation in 2021. The information was then tossed in a locker, the place it sat till 2025, when Halligan pulled it out and began rummaging via it in the hunt for proof that Comey lied to Congress in 2020.
A reliable prosecutor would have sought a brand new warrant earlier than accessing the Richman supplies. Choose Kollar-Kotelly and Justice of the Peace Choose William Fitzpatrick, who was tasked with adjudicating discovery disputes within the Comey case, each expressed astonishment that nobody bothered to get a courtroom to bless their use of proof collected six years in the past in a wholly completely different case. Whether or not this was as a result of incompetence or the necessity to indict Comey earlier than the statute of limitations elapsed was by no means defined. However that procedural omission might become pricey.
On November 26, Richman filed a movement for return of property underneath Federal Rule of Prison Process 41(g). He argued that the federal government violated his Fourth Modification rights by retaining non-responsive data from the unique warrant, failing to destroy it when the leak investigation was closed in 2021, and re-using that dataset in 2025 with out a warrant.
After 9 days with no look by attorneys the federal government, Richman moved for a short lived restraining order. Noting that DOJ seemed to be taking part in video games, avoiding assigning a lawyer to the case in an effort to maintain utilizing Richman’s recordsdata, Choose Kollar-Kotelly granted the TRO and ordered the DOJ to enter an look. After no small quantity of rigamarole, Halligan and her deputy Robert McBride lastly complied.
The very best protection is an efficient … yeah, not that one both
Halligan signed the response to Richman’s movement as US Legal professional for the Japanese District of Virginia, regardless of conceding within the submitting that the Comey case was “dismissed after the courtroom discovered that Lindsey Halligan, who offered the proposed indictment to the grand jury, had been improperly appointed as Interim U.S. Legal professional in violation of the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Structure and 28 U.S.C. § 546.”
Halligan barely bothered to defend her workplace’s conduct, as an alternative arguing that Choose Kollar-Kotelly ought to dismiss the case due to Richman’s improper motive.
“Petitioner’s movement is a collateral (and untimely) movement to suppress proof in one other legal continuing, masquerading as a movement for return of property underneath Federal Rule 41(g),” she insisted. “It’s impermissible for a courtroom to enjoin a legal investigation and potential prosecution in one other district by restraining use of proof to learn a 3rd occasion.”
Halligan argued that the federal government can retain and scrutinize Richman’s recordsdata eternally — or a minimum of till she manages to persuade one other grand jury to indict James Comey. At that time Comey — however not Richman! — can file a suppression movement. As for Richman’s curiosity in his personal knowledge, Halligan sneered in a footnote that he “plainly has an satisfactory treatment at regulation—he might carry a Bivens motion.”
That’s a patently foolish argument. People can certainly file Bivens actions in restricted circumstances when their rights have been violated by federal officers, however these actions are for damages — i.e., cash — and never for the return of property.
This case was in all probability at all times going to be a loser for the federal government. However Halligan’s flippant temporary nearly definitely made it worse.
Give it up already
Just a few days later, on Friday, Choose Kollar-Kotelly granted Richman’s movement for the return of his property, ordering the Division of Justice to destroy the copies of his knowledge in its possession.
“[T]his Courtroom agrees with Petitioner Richman that the Authorities’s retention and use of his recordsdata has violated his Fourth Modification rights,” she wrote, including that Halligan’s determination to rummage via Richman’s recordsdata in 2025 with out getting a brand new search warrant was “a outstanding breach of protocol” that clearly mirrored a “callous disregard” for Richman’s constitutional rights.
As for the federal government’s insistent that Richman’s Rule 41(g) movement was really an improper collateral movement to suppress proof in Comey’s case, Choose Kollar-Kotelly brushed that apart in a little bit over two paragraphs, dryly noting that Halligan’s temporary “misses the mark” by citing “inapposite” circumstances.
Choose Kollar-Kotelly did throw the federal government a bone of types by ordering it to deposit a single copy of the fabric seized from Richman with the district courtroom within the Japanese District of Virginia. That preserves the supplies within the occasion that Halligan’s workplace manages to (lastly) play by the principles and search a brand new search warrant in reference to its ongoing investigation of James Comey.
And though Choose Kollar-Kotelly was well mannered sufficient to not level out that Halligan is inappropriately attempting to go herself off because the US Legal professional, her ruling however explicitly adopted Justice of the Peace Choose Fitzpatrick’s findings from the prior Comey litigation that uncovered Halligan’s incompetence, together with his conclusion that the unconstitutional search was carried out “apparently with the concurrence of” the US Legal professional’s Workplace for the Japanese District of Virginia.
If Halligan had been able to disgrace, that may be humiliating. However it’ll in all probability take a minimum of a pair extra no-bills earlier than she wanders again to Washington to de-woke-ify the Smithsonian.
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