Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan’s attack on Judge Michael Nachmanoff over something he never accused her of baffled the panel on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” Friday to the point where co-host Mika Brezezinski gasped, “Oh my gosh.”
Halligan, who is under fire for bungling the case against Trump administration critic and former FBI Director James Comey, is facing a possible dismissal of the indictment for a multitude of reasons — and the judge has been critical of her performance.
In retaliation, Halligan, who has never prosecuted a criminal case, gave an interview to the New York Post where she accused the judge of calling her a “puppet” by misrepresenting his words in court.
“Personal attacks — like Judge Nachmanoff referring to me as a ‘puppet’ — don’t change the facts or the law,” she asserted. “The Judicial Canons require judges to be ‘patient, dignified, respectful, and courteous to litigants, jurors, witnesses, lawyers, and others with whom the judge deals in an official capacity’ … and to ‘act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.’”
What did transpire was the judge asking Comey’s lawyer Michael Dreeben, “So your view is that Ms. Halligan is a stalking horse or a puppet, for want of a better word, doing the president’s bidding,” to which the lawyer demurred with, ”Well, I don’t want to use language about Ms. Halligan that suggests anything other than she did what she was told to do.”
After her comments were read on MS NOW, co-host Joe Scarborough sarcastically exclaimed, “Oh, that always helps!”
Pointing out that the Donald Trump appointee claimed, “Personal attacks like Judge Nachmanoff referring to me as a puppet. Don't change the facts or the law,” Brzezinski added, “Oh my gosh.”
“She should be so lucky that statements could change the facts or the law, Jonathan [Lemire], because they all work against her. They all work against the Department of Justice and they all work for James Comey here,” Scarborough suggested.
“Yeah,” Lemire replied. “I mean, it was a really — just embarrassing to watch. We talked today — I think the [New York] Times characterized it as an excruciating session there in the courtroom. And she, they, made mistake after mistake after mistake yesterday."
“We're seeing some pushback here, some attempting to get the case back on track but we've talked to legal experts all week long who have said, ‘Look, this is, these are gifts for the Comey defense here.’”
“And to the broader point, just the sloppiness that has suddenly permeated the Trump administration, where for the first, you know, six-ish months, they largely enacted what they wanted to do,” he added. “People disagreed with some of the legality of it, but they had their agenda, Project 2025 infused, and they got a lot done that seems to be careening off the rails and rapidly,” he added. “And he's the president, as someone put it to me, is acting like he's in his final months of his term as opposed to still year one. And I think the pressure there seems to be building because of this — all of these things going wrong at once.”
“He's seeing the midterm slip away. He knows how hard his life would get,” Lemire predicted.
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