During a discussion of the James Comey indictment that it threatened with dismissal for multiple errors, missteps and misrepresentations, MS NOW legal analyst Lisa Rubin battered Department of Justice officials for making matters for embattled prosecutor Lindsey Halligan even worse.
Describing the turn of events on Wednesday, when Halligan was forced to admit to U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff that a second indictment filed against James Comey was never shown to the entire grand jury after a first one was rejected, Rubin singled out DOJ officials for partial blame.
As CBS News reported, “Halligan's presentation before the grand jury and her handling of the indictments have puzzled not only Nachmanoff, but two other judges who have presided over different aspects of Comey's criminal case, which remains in its early stages.”
Appearing on “Morning Joe,” Rubin suggested that, in their haste to get an indictment after he first one was shut down, DOJ officials cut corners — which has now put the prosecution of the former FBI director in peril.
“According to lots of case law, you're supposed to start over and make sure that every member of the grand jury has an opportunity to see the charges before them and vote on what that charging instrument should look like,” Rubin said. “And instead, according to a footnote in a brief that they returned last night, they had a deputy criminal chief consult with a grand jury coordinator and basically do a cut-and-paste job where they produced a new charging document with just the two counts the grand jury liked.”
“And then, instead of presenting it to the full grand jury, they just sort of rushed in to a magistrate judge, presented it with the foreperson and the deputy foreperson and Lindsey Halligan there,” she elaborated.
“But Lindsey Halligan herself was so confused about what had happened that if you read the transcript of that exchange that night, the night that Jim Comey was indicted, the magistrate judge says to her, Miss Halligan, ‘I have two charging documents before me. One has three counts, one has two counts. And your signatures on both. Can you explain to me what happened?’”
“And she can't even represent with a straight face that her signature's on both," she reported. “Oh, did I sign them both? Oh, my signature's on both?’”