The state bars of Florida and Virginia are under increased pressure to investigate Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who is overseeing the federal prosecutions of a former FBI director and New York’s attorney general.
Campaign for Accountability, a left-leaning legal watchdog group, filed a complaint on Tuesday accusing Halligan of violating the Virginia State Bar’s ethical rules for lawyers in her handling of the criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Halligan is President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney. In September, Trump nominated her to be a U.S. attorney in Virginia, putting her in a position to investigate James’s alleged mortgage fraud in the state. Halligan is also leading the government’s prosecution of Comey, who is facing accusations of lying during Senate testimony about the FBI’s handling of the Trump-Russia investigation in 2020 and obstructing a congressional proceeding.
Aspects of the Campaign for Accountability’s complaint, first reported by CBS News, mirror accusations from James’s legal team, which state that Halligan was unlawfully appointed. Trump installed Halligan after U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert was pressured into resigning from the position.
“The evidence appears to demonstrate that, absent President Trump’s intervention, neither Mr. Comey nor Ms. James would have been indicted,” the complaint says.
“Ms. Halligan was well aware President Trump had installed her as Interim U.S. Attorney specifically to indict Mr. Comey and Ms. James and, within just a few days of joining the office, she did just that — despite career officials having found the cases insupportable,” the complaint continues.
Comey was indicted days after Halligan’s appointment by a federal grand jury on one count of making false statements and one count of obstruction of justice. Halligan’s team last week submitted filings further stating that a series of emails proves Comey lied when he testified before Congress that he and his associates did not speak with reporters about sensitive investigations into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s classified emails and the alleged Trump-Russia collusion.
James was indicted in early October on a single charge of bank fraud, after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte sparked an investigation into the attorney general in April due to concerns that she had committed mortgage fraud.
James has denied wrongdoing. Her legal team has sought to have the case dismissed based on arguments that Trump unlawfully appointed Halligan to oversee the case.
Her lawyer, Abbe Lowell, called Trump’s firing of Siebert “illegal” earlier this fall.
LETITIA JAMES FACES CRIMINAL REFERRAL BY TRUMP ADMINISTRATION FOR ALLEGED MORTGAGE FRAUD
“Punishing this prosecutor, a Trump appointee, for doing his job sends a clear and chilling message that anyone who dares uphold the law over politics will face the same fate,” Lowell said.
The complaint filed Tuesday also accuses Halligan of breaking rules that require lawyers to provide “competent representation” to clients, avoid making certain out-of-court statements, and avoid any “deliberately wrongful act that reflects adversely on the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness, or fitness to practice law.”