A former Trump White House lawyer says the Justice Department’s latest major screw-up in the prosecution of James Comey is grounds for Pam Bondi and Lindsey Halligan’s disbarment.
Ty Cobb, who worked in the first Trump administration for less than a year during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, said it was “shocking” how the full grand jury that indicted Comey never actually saw the final version of the indictment. Instead, the inexperienced Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, 36, brought an alternate version that the foreperson signed.
That has led Comey’s lawyer to tell the judge that “there is no indictment.”
Cobb agreed.
“This is an indictment…that doesn’t really have to be dismissed. It doesn’t really exist. It was never properly returned,” the lawyer told MS Now anchor Chris Jansing.
“I think what we heard today—shocking, never occurred before in American jurisprudence. I think it will be dispositive. But on the other hand, there’s so many dispositive issues here, including her illegal appointment.”
Comey’s team has also argued that Halligan’s appointment, which occurred after seasoned prosecutors said there wasn’t enough evidence to bring charges against Comey, was illegal. They have also contended that the prosecution, which alleges Comey lied to Congress, is politically motivated.
“I do think that both Halligan and Bondi should be disbarred,” Cobb, 74, continued. The attorney general, 60, “has twice submitted affirmations to this court about the propriety of Lindsay Halligan’s grand jury presentation. She knew this. There’s no way she could not have known this. And that just means that she lied, or that she’s equally incompetent, but more likely that she lied.”
And as for Halligan, Cobb was equally critical. “You couldn’t find a high school stock boy at Home Depot who could’ve handled this more ineptly” than her, he said.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
The case against Comey brought by Halligan, a former beauty pageant contestant and Trump personal attorney who had never tried a case before her appointment, has been plagued with issues.
On Monday, a federal judge said the Justice Department was making a “disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps.”
Halligan, according to U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick, appeared to make “fundamental misstatements of law” to the grand jury, for instance, by seeming to suggest that Comey may have to testify to prove his innocence, and that jurors could just assume the prosecution had more evidence than what they were showing.
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