New York Attorney General Letitia James was arraigned this morning in Norfolk on charges of mortgage fraud. This should have been a triumphant day for Lindsey Halligan, the insurance lawyer turned US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. This is, after all, what she was hired to do. But we’re guessing it wasn’t as fun as she’d hoped.
Darn you, Anna Bower!
3 Ways Lawyers Are Finding New Efficiencies With AI
Those who’ve adopted legal-specific systems are seeing big benefits.
Halligan’s Signal messages hectoring Lawfare editor Anna Bower for posting a New York Times story that appears to undercut Halligan’s case against James made national news earlier this week, along with her belated realization that she needed to say “off the record” first.
Last night, those texts reappeared in a Motion to Enforce Rules Prohibiting the Government’s Extrajudicial Disclosures filed by James’s lawyer, the ubiquitous Abbe Lowell along with local counsel Andrew Bosse. Calling the messages a “stunning disclosure of internal government information,” the motion notes that the exchange appears to violate FRCrP 6(e), 28 C.F.R. § 50.2, EDVA Local Criminal Rule 57.1, ABA Model Rule 3.8 laying out the Special Responsibilities of a Prosecutor, and the Justice Manual.
“Attorney General James is not at this time formally moving for relief pursuant to FRCrP 6(e),” the lawyers coughed delicately in one footnote. In another they observe that auto-deleting messages violates federal records laws, and promise that “Attorney General James will pursue this apparent violation of the law with the appropriate offices.”
Chrometa: Turning Time Into Billable Value For Modern Lawyers
Adoption of Chrometa represents more than a technological upgrade; it reflects a professional philosophy that values accuracy, transparency, and efficiency.
It’s a helluva way to start the initial appearance!
James requested that the court order the prosecution to knock off the extrajudicial disclosures, preserve all communications, and “maintain a log of all contact between any government attorney or agent on this case and any member of the news media or press concerning this case.” They also noticed their intent to move to disqualify “purported interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan” based on her unlawful appointment.
Halligan was already facing one such motion from former FBI director Jim Comey, which was referred to Senior Judge Cameron Currie of the District of South Carolina. Lowell suggests that, “for judicial economy, the two motions should likely be consolidated.” So Halligan will only have to explain once that, when the Constitution says the president has to get advice and consent of the Senate to appoint US Attorneys, it actually means he’s entitled to make an unlimited number of interim appointments and not even bother to nominate someone for the job.
On the plus side, she finally got an actual prosecutor to ride along with her on this madcap expedition, although she had to go all the way to Missouri to find one. As in the Comey prosecution, not a single lawyer in EDVA will get near this shitpile of a case. And so, on Wednesday — after the Bower story dropped! — Roger A. Keller, an AUSA from the Eastern District of Missouri, entered his appearance.
And meanwhile, ABC confirmed the Times’s reporting this morning. While Halligan groused that reports about James’s great-niece living in the house without paying rent were incorrect, ABC says that “prosecutors found no record of James collecting rent from her niece beyond $1,350 that James reported on her 2020 tax return, which was said to cover the cost of utilities.” That would comport with James’s 2020 financial disclosure in which she claimed $1,000-5,000 in “investment” income, likely the utility bills paid by her niece.
After James pleaded not guilty, Judge Jamar Walker set a trial date of January 26. Welcome to the rocket docket, Roger Walker! Looks like there may be some turbulence ahead.
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.