Fox News host Laura Ingraham blamed Pam Bondi’s Justice Department for the humiliating dismissal of charges against Donald Trump’s enemies—and not the president’s former personal attorney who botched the case.
Lindsey Halligan, a former beauty pageant contestant and insurance lawyer with no prior prosecutorial experience, took over as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in September.
Her predecessor, veteran prosecutor Erik Siebert, had been forced out over his refusal to charge New York state Attorney General Letitia James with mortgage fraud.
Within weeks of being sworn in, Halligan secured indictments against James and another Trump enemy, former FBI Director James Comey.
The indictments, however, were revealed in court to be deeply flawed, and the defendants filed motions challenging the validity of Halligan’s appointment. On Monday a federal judge threw out the case without prejudice—meaning James and Comey can be charged again—on the grounds that Halligan’s appointment was unlawful.
Speaking to Ingraham later that day, Trump’s former impeachment attorney David Schoen said the legal debacle was “avoidable.”
“Quite frankly, the Justice Department should have just put somebody in the room with Lindsey Halligan,” he said. “It would have taken away all the arguments for dismissal.”
Ingraham later endorsed that view on social media, sharing a clip of the interview and writing in a post on X, “An avoidable BLUNDER — and DOJ knew it.”
Halligan, however, had reportedly blindsided Bondi by seeking the indictment against James without first telling the attorney general.
Earlier this month, Bondi tried to shore up Halligan’s position by claiming to retroactively appoint her as a “special attorney” and “ratify” her actions before the grand juries in the cases of Comey and James.
The move—which was apparently unsuccessful—came after federal judges had already disqualified three other Trump-appointed U.S. attorneys who, like Halligan, were not confirmed by the Senate.
Their cases, however, were also signed by other prosecutors.
“I give Lindsey Halligan great credit and she showed great courage,” Schoen said. “She was put in this position and she should have had more support than she was given.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the DOJ for comment.
His statements, however, glossed over the difficulties the department has faced in finding other attorneys willing to sign on to the indictments against Trump’s political enemies, which the defendants have argued are vindictive.
In September, the president inadvertently published a private Truth Social message intended only for Bondi calling for the prosecutions of Comey, James, and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California.
“Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, ‘same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,’” he wrote.
Trump had long called for them to be prosecuted after James led a successful civil fraud case against Trump in New York and Comey oversaw a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Schiff, who served 12 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives before running for Senate, led the House’s 2020 impeachment of Trump.
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