newrepublic.com - Trump prosecutor halligan attacks judge puppet comey

Trump Prosecutor Attacks Judge After He Questions if She’s a “Puppet”
Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan is attacking a sitting judge as the Comey case moves forward.

Drama continues to follow interim U.S. Attorney and former Trump defense lawyer Lindsey Halligan, as she had a heated exchange with a federal judge who suggested she may be the president’s “puppet.”

Halligan spoke to the New York Post exclusively about the spat, which occurred during a hearing for former FBI Director and Trump administration legal target James Comey.

“Personal attacks—like Judge Nachmanoff referring to me as a ‘puppet’—don’t change the facts or the law,” she said. “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.’”

For what it’s worth, Judge Michael Nachmanoff never called her a puppet, and was asking the defense for clarification on their argument.

“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,” he said, according to court files.

“Well, I don’t want to use language about Ms. Halligan that suggests anything other than she did what she was told to do,” the defense lawyer replied. Nachmanoff did not object.

Still, that was enough to set Halligan off, leading her to do a sit-down with a right-wing newspaper to speak directly about the judge presiding over the case she was actively prosecuting.

“Never have I ever … seen a sitting U.S. Attorney give an interview and make extrajudicial statements about a pending case,” Reuters’s Sarah Lynch wrote on X. “This is not customary for federal prosecutors. Usually DOJ only speaks through court filings.”

This isn’t the first issue Halligan has faced in the early days of her prosecution of Comey. On Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick said she made two “fundamental misstatements of law” to the grand jury, putting the entire case in jeopardy. And on Wednesday, Halligan told the court that only two grand jurors reviewed the Comey indictment before it was presented.

Aside from these flubs and unconventional media decisions, calling Halligan a “puppet,” even indirectly, isn’t too far off. The only reason the president’s former lawyer was awarded this position is because her predecessor, Erik Siebert, refused to indict Comey due to a lack of evidence.