'A very, very big deal': Legal expert flags Trump DOJ move as the 'height of misconduct'

MS NOW's Lisa Rubin reacted to interim U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan's stunning admission that could blow up the case against former FBI Director James Comey and identified additional questions about the prosecution.

President Donald Trump's hand-picked federal prosecutor admitted the full grand jury had not seen the indictment before it was handed up against Comey, and she flagged additional evidence that called into question the validity of the charges in the case.

"This is a very, very big deal," Rubin told host Ana Cabrera. "We knew that something had goneawry with respect to thepresentation to the grand jury,based on Judge [William] Fitzpatrick'sdecision the other day, you andI were talking this morningabout the fact that Judge Fitzpatrick had sort of saidthere were three categories ofirregularities. One had to dowith the use of evidence fromold search warrants. One had todo with misstatements of thelaw that Lindsey Halligan hadapparently made when she wasbefore the grand jury, and thethird had to do with the way inwhich the indictment was handeddown and a gap in recordings ofthe grand jury proceedingsthemselves."

"What Judge Fitzpatrick had said at thattime was there were only sevenminutes between when Lindsey Halligan said in an affidavitthat she was handing the three-count indictment, that thegrand jury refused to return atrue bill on, meaning they hadrefused one of the counts," Rubin added.

The judge found that Halligan had returned with an amended indictment far too quickly for it to have been properly corrected.

"When the hearing started beforeanother magistrate judge in thedistrict, Lindsey Vaala, atwhich the grand jury presentedthe two-count indictment withwhich Jim Comey has beencharged, and Judge Fitzpatricksaid in his decision, somethinghere doesn't add up either," Rubin said. "Miss Halligan is mistaken as tothe timing, or something wentawry in the grand jury, becauseseven minutes is not enoughtime to present an indictmentall over again to a grand jury,meaning if they refuse thefirst indictment, you don'thave enough time in sevenminutes to then present thesecond indictment, the one thatwas returned, the one that wascharged against Comey toeveryone here."

Halligan admitted during Wednesday's hearing that only two grand jurors saw the three-count indictment that was ultimately handed up.

"We now know the answer tothat mystery, which was thatthe full grand jury never sawthat indictment," Rubin said. "That is theheight of prosecutorialmisconduct. It is a basis inand of itself for the dismissalof this case. There is a reasonthat there was stunned silencein the courtroom."

Comey's team had filed a motion to dismiss the case as "selective and vindictive," and Rubin said Halligan's admission gave even more powerful evidence to end the prosecution.

"Thequestion about grand jurymisconduct is a motion thathasn't even been made yet by Jim Comey's legal team," Rubin said. "Why?Because up until a couple ofdays ago, they were evenfighting for the evidence tosupport that motion. They hadan instinct that something hadgone wrong in the grand jury.Where does that instinct comefrom? It comes from thetranscript of the return of theindictment in the first place.That is a transcript that weobtained, and it shows Lindsey Halligan handing simultaneouslyto that magistrate judge twosigned instruments, and themagistrate judge says to her,sort of which of these two isthe actual charging documenthere, and she says, 'Oh, Ididn't sign both of them.' Thatvery confusion was the tip-offto Jim Comey's team thatsomething had gone wrong andthey followed their instincts."

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