Reacting to a report that newly-appointed U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan took it upon herself to randomly text a reporter about the prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James, which has been limited to grand jury proceedings, the panel on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” was both shocked and amused on Tuesday morning.
Late Monday, journalist Anna Bower published a text chain Halligan began about the James prosecution, confirming some details about grand jury testimony about mortgage fraud — then testily demanded afterward that what she had written was “off the record.”
That led the MSNBC panel to pile on the controversial Halligan, who has never prosecuted a criminal case, and suggest the James case is about to collapse.
MSNBC’s Jonathan Lemire reported, “A couple of things here. First of all, another example of the administration being just entirely too online. I mean, responding to social media posts from a reporter that the interim U.S. attorney barely knew, potentially revealing things she that could lead to, you know, that might not be well received by a judge or in court.”
“But more than that, it just shows, again, this overarching campaign of retribution where they're going to defy whatever norms, frankly, maybe laws, in order to carry out President Trump's wishes.”
MSNBC regular Mara Gay, of the New York Times, responded, “Well, it's disturbing. But it also tells us something about the kind of process that is at work. So we've gotten a look behind the scenes at the prosecution that is clearly politically motivated, clearly a campaign of retribution.”
“And what better to show that than a completely out of the ordinary and inappropriate, you know, kind of outreach, I would say, from Lindsey Halligan who, by the way, is not a prosecutor by training at all. So there's a question of competence here. There's a question of due process experience for State Attorney General Letitia James.”
“And it's also just embarrassing,” she admitted. “You even just wonder if she even knew to say, if Lindsey Halligan even knew to say, this is off the record. I mean, amateur hour. I mean, that's something, by the way, that local officials, how embarrassing, know that they are on the record unless they say otherwise. So I'm glad that this came out. And honestly, it's probably good news for Tish James.”
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