Trump’s new favorite prosecutor is flubbing it big time

On Monday afternoon, former FBI Director James Comey dropped two motions to dismiss his criminal case. Both are related to, in part, the antics of one Lindsey Halligan, everyone’s favorite insurance lawyer turned interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. 

This likely made for a not-fun Monday afternoon for Halligan, but then her day got hilariously worse when Lawfare’s Anna Bower dropped her story that Halligan had texted her out of the blue, via Signal, about the prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Bower had tweeted about the Oct. 11 New York Times story revealing that James’s great-niece lives in the Virginia home that is the basis for the mortgage fraud case against James, and that she had testified to a different grand jury that she lived there for many years without paying rent. 

That seems to be what made Lindsey Halligan lose her mind and contact Bower to complain that “your reporting in particular is just way off.” 

New York Attorney General Letitia James, shown in 2019.

This was probably exceedingly confusing for Bower, who does not work for The New York Times, did not write the story, and was doing no reporting. Instead, Bower had merely tweeted about the story.

Nevertheless, every time Bower asked Halligan what was false about the story or her characterization of it, Halligan offered a grievance-fueled response like, “Continue to do what you have been and you’ll be completely discredited when the evidence comes out.” 

Just after Bower contacted the Department of Justice on Monday afternoon for a comment and to confirm the texts were authentic, Bower’s Signal flickered to life with Halligan saying, “By the way—everything I ever sent you is off record. You’re not a journalist so it’s weird saying that but just letting you know.” 

There’s so much to unpack here. 

Halligan referred to Bower as a reporter multiple times in their previous exchanges. More importantly, you can’t declare something off the record retrospectively, much less days after the fact. But when Bower explained this, Halligan came up with a different rationale: “It’s obvious the whole convo is off record. There’s disappearing messages and it’s on signal.”

It is gobsmackingly stupid to think that because you communicate on Signal and set your messages to disappear, it is off the record by default. Even setting that aside, there’s another big problem here: Halligan admitted she had set her phone to automatically delete messages that were official government communications, which are generally supposed to be preserved. (Also, hello? Ever heard of screenshots?)

Is this a good time to mention that Halligan studied broadcast journalism in college and could not feasibly have avoided learning what “off the record” means? Also, did she learn nothing from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal fiasco?

Actually, she probably did, which is that Hegseth suffered no consequences whatsoever. 

And Halligan likely won’t lose her job over this, because Trump actually loves this sort of petulant, aggressive weirdness. But she might lose her job over Comey’s motion to dismiss based on asserting that Halligan was unlawfully appointed. Not because Trump cares, but because the courts do.

Two of Trump’s other temporary U.S. attorney appointees, Alina Habba and Sigal Chattah, have already been disqualified because the administration’s attempts to string together temporary appointments to avoid the Senate confirmation process are, well, not legal. Halligan is running up against the same issue and could suffer the same fate. If she does, it could render the indictment against Comey void. If she’s not legally in the job, she can’t legally indict anyone. 

And yes, that would apply to the James case as well, should James go that route. 

Former FBI Director James Comey, shown in 2017.

Comey’s other motion wouldn’t result in Halligan losing her job, at least not as far as a court is concerned. Comey argues the indictment should be dismissed because he is being both vindictively and selectively prosecuted.   

Vindictive prosecution is exactly what it sounds like—that the prosecution is motivated by general animus toward the defendant. And Comey has everything he needs to make that argument. After all, Trump admitted that he fired U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert in favor of Halligan when Siebert wouldn’t bring charges, and then Trump celebrated the indictment on social media, making sure to thank Halligan and FBI Director Kash Patel. So thoughtful! 

To prove selective prosecution, Comey has to show that other similarly situated people were not prosecuted for the same actions. Fortunately for Comey, Trump has multiple past appointees who allegedly lied to Congress.

Let’s roll back to Trump’s first term. As noted in Comey’s motion, there was then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions allegedly making false statements to Congress about his communications with Russia. There was Trump’s then-head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, allegedly lying about his use of a personal email account while he was Oklahoma attorney general. Then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price allegedly fibbed to Congress when he denied getting a sweet discount on buying shares of stock. And remember Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin? He allegedly lied about whether OneWest Bank, where he had been chairman and CEO, had used robo-signing of foreclosure documents.  

It’s tough to get more similarly situated to Comey than these four are. They were all high-level political appointees, all accused of lying to Congress, but only Comey was charged. 

Halligan is wildly overmatched here, but judging by her interactions with Bower, she remains blissfully unaware of that. She clearly thinks she’s running circles around everyone else, that she’s a unique genius who figured out how to indict Trump’s enemies when no one else could. 

In reality, she has no idea what she’s doing and no business doing any of it, which means it will be a delight to see what her office manages to file in response to Comey.  

Musk’s big mouth, and the DOJ’s unlawful meme obsession

Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.

Last week was … a lot, legally speaking. While much of the Trump administration’s efforts have shifted to trying to get courts to agree that President Donald Trump can deploy troops from red states to bring blue cities to heel, there are still many other terrible developments. 

We’ve got a throwback to Elon Musk’s idiotic actions, the Fifth Circuit is likely going to decide it’s totally groovy to force religion into the classroom, James Comey’s attorney is taking a page from Trump’s playbook, and the Supreme Court looks primed to strike down conversion therapy bans—because why not hurt trans kids more. Oh and last—but never least—is the Department of Justice’s meme antics undermining its own case against Luigi Mangione. 

Musk and the Trump administration FAFO

Well, well, well. If it isn’t the consequences of Musk’s own actions. 

The New York Times recently prevailed in its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over the Trump administration’s refusal to provide a list of Musk’s security clearances when he was a government contractor prior to 2025. Now the administration will have to cough it up.

Elon Musk stands beside President Donald Trump.

They tried to say that it would violate Musk’s privacy, but the court noted that Musk bragged publicly of his “top secret clearance” in 2024, making it not really all that private to begin with. 

The Times did not request additional information—like Musk’s application for clearances or any investigative materials—but the government still claimed that it couldn’t provide the form because it would show whether clearances were subject to any conditions, even if the conditions themselves were redacted.

This is where Musk’s boasts about his ketamine use, his cringe-worthy blunt rotation with Joe Rogan, and his chats with Vladimir Putin came back to bite him. 

To grant a security clearance, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency must review foreign influences and drug use. The court said that, while Musk has not publicly discussed any conditions, he has publicly addressed his drug use and contacts with foreign leaders. And since the DCSA is supposed to consider those things, the public has an interest in the DCSA’s performance of its duties. 

You can expect the Trump administration to continue fighting this because it would likely crack open the door for FOIA requests about Musk’s clearances at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency—and they desperately don’t want that

The Fifth Circuit will keep hearing Ten Commandment cases until they get the desired result

In another horrible development, the Fifth Circuit has ordered a full court review of the three-judge panel decision in Roake v. Brumley—and it’s not an exaggeration to say that we should all be worried. 

Both the Louisiana lower court and the three-judge panel ruled that the law requiring public schools to permanently display the Ten Commandments was unconstitutional, because it so obviously is. 

The fact that they agreed to a review and requested new briefs and oral arguments is a sign that there’s an appetite to reverse it. This would mean getting a decision on the books holding that the government can force the display of the Ten Commandments—but only the Protestant version chosen by the state. 

Next stop will be the Supreme Court because, much like they did with abortion, states are going to keep passing objectively unconstitutional laws, shoving them up to the Supreme Court to bless them. Terrific system we have here.

Unlawful appointments giveth, but they may also taketh away

One of the challenges James Comey’s attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, has said he will raise—and file a motion to dismiss the case—is an unlawful appointment claim. 

Former FBI Director James Comey

Basically, that would be that Lindsey Halligan, installed as interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia for the sole purpose of indicting Trump’s enemies, is not legally allowed to be in her role. Her predecessor, Erik Siebert, served the limit of 120 days in the interim position, allowing the federal judges to appoint him

The issue is whether that created a new vacancy or not. If it did not, then that 120-day interim use is gone forever, which is why the court ruled that Alina Habba isn’t legally in her role in New Jersey. In that case, the Trump administration argued that the 120-day clock starts over with each interim appointment, but that would make the 120-day interim limit entirely useless. 

There would be a sort of grimly hilarious symmetry if the Comey prosecution falls apart because a judge decides that Halligan was not properly in her role. Trump hit a stroke of luck when his all-time favorite lower-court judge Aileen Cannon ruled, wildly incorrectly, that Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed and threw out the entire classified documents case. 

What’s good for the goose, etc.

SCOTUS tips its hand, and it’s not great

Tuesday’s oral argument in Chiles v. Salazar made it clear that the Supreme Court is going to strike down Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors. Doing so would also knock out similar laws throughout almost half of the country. 

There’s no credible argument for conversion therapy, which tries to force minors to be heterosexual and cisgender. Major health care organizations have denounced it, and people forced to undergo it report high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. 

The right-wing argument in Chiles is that it violates the free speech of therapists if they can’t compel children to listen to how their identity is bad and wrong. 

It’s an absolute sham of a lawsuit, with no evidence that the plaintiff ever intended to offer conversion therapy or received any complaints. Her lawyer, with the rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ group Alliance Defending Freedom, told the court that Chiles was the subject of “anonymous complaints” that they declined to provide. 

This is just another case where the plaintiff is nothing but a straw man standing in to get the desired conservative result—which is to protect the free speech of bigots at the expense of the wellbeing of LGBTQ+ kids. 

Trump and the DOJ are going to tweet Luigi Mangione right out of jail

The DOJ is in trouble over how hyped it is to talk about Mangione’s guilt while in the midst of prosecuting him, with the public affairs deputy director posting on X interviews of Trump saying that Mangione “shot someone in the back as clear as you’re looking at me.” 

Luigi Mangione is seen in a courtroom wearing a bulletproof vest.

This is pretty much a textbook example of prejudicial pretrial statements, which are not allowed, as pretty much every DOJ prosecutor knows. But the DOJ is being steered by people whose main interests are creating cool meme content and hurting people, so they might not be so familiar.

When the court ordered the Trump administration to explain what happened here, they said that, since the person who made the post wasn’t part of the prosecution team, they weren’t violating the rule. 

This is nonsense, of course, as it would basically mean that the DOJ could pop off with these statements any time as long as the actual prosecutor on the case isn’t the one to say it. 

But this isn’t the first time that the attention-hungry, meme-driven administration ran into trouble with Mangione, who’s now moving to block the DOJ from seeking the death penalty because of the highly televised perp walk they made him do.

Republicans cheer Trump’s despicable prosecution of another enemy

Republican lawmakers are ecstatic about the indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James, cheering on President Donald Trump's corrupt and vindictive prosecutions of his perceived enemies as he slides the country further into autocracy.

Career prosecutors had refused to seek an indictment against James, saying there was not enough evidence that James committed mortgage fraud and that the case was unlikely to end in a conviction.

But Trump fired the prosecutor who wouldn’t go along with his corrupt demand to indict his enemies and installed  unqualified sycophant Lindsey Halligan as Virginia's top federal prosecutor, who went on to follow Trump's orders to seek out the indictment.

“The enemy within” by Mike Luckovich

Now, Republicans are gleefully mocking James, whose indictment mirrors that of the civil fraud case James successfully brought against Trump, and are lauding the Trump administration for indicting her.

"Crooked NY AG Letitia James, used taxpayer money to maliciously prosecute President Trump over non-crimes, has now been INDICTED based on legitimate bank fraud allegations," Rep. Claudia Tenney (D-NY) wrote in a post on X.

"Back in 2024, Letitia James posted, 'No one is above the law. Even when you think the rules don’t apply to you.' Here's the reality: 1–No one is above the law 2–You cannot commit mortgage fraud 3–She thought the rules didn't apply to her 4–She got indicted. Law & order is back," Rep. Byron Donalds (D-FL) wrote in a post on X.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY)—who is running a likely unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign in New York—cheered what she called James' "long overdue indictment" calling it a "critical step toward restoring accountability and the rule of law."

Actual legal experts say, however, that James is unlikely to be convicted, as the charges are even less than thin gruel.

Former FBI director James Comey

"It’s hard to imagine a worse case than the one against James Comey—until you see the one against the attorney general of New York," Molly Roberts, a senior editor at the legal outlet Lawfare, wrote in an article on the site in which she laid out all of the reasons why the evidence does not exist that James committed fraud.

Democrats condemned the Trump DOJ for seeking the indictment, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries saying that the "baseless indictment ... is part of Donald Trump's corrupt weaponization of the criminal justice system against anyone who has sought to hold him accountable."

"This is what tyranny looks like. President Trump is using the Justice Department as his personal attack dog, targeting Attorney General Tish James for the ‘crime’ of prosecuting him for fraud—and winning," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in a post on X. "One U.S. Attorney already refused this case. So, Trump hand-picked an unqualified hack that would go after another political enemy. This isn't justice. It's revenge. And it should horrify every American who believes no one is above the law."

James, for her part, vowed to fight the charges.

"This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system," James said in a statement. "I am not fearful—I am fearless. We will fight these baseless charges aggressively, and my office will continue to fiercely protect New Yorkers and their rights."

And given that the prosecutor who sought the charges couldn’t even fill out the indictment form correctly, she’s likely to beat them. 

Trump team faces critical shortage of morally flexible lawyers

It’s hard to find good help these days. What’s a president to do when all he wants is to use the might of the state to persecute his political enemies, but all of these pencil-necked geek attorneys keep saying things like “sir, there is no case here”? 

President Donald Trump’s retribution jamboree is being stalled out by career Justice Department prosecutors worried about stupid things like “the law” and “ethics.” 

Lindsey Halligan, interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia

Take Elizabeth Yusi, a career prosecutor who has been an assistant U.S. attorney for about 15 years. According to MSNBC, Yusi will be telling Lindsey Halligan, a real-estate lawyer who has been interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia for about 15 minutes, that there’s no probable cause to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James for mortgage fraud. 

How dare she? 

Looks like Halligan is going to have to roll up her sleeves and take care of this herself, just like she did with bringing charges against former FBI Director James Comey. Sure, the indictment was comically thin, and sure, she didn’t manage to make one of the ginned-up charges stick, and sure, she had to present it to the grand jury herself. 

Halligan, of course, was installed in her job because she’s perfectly happy to take on the shoddiest, most vindictive prosecutions. She was brought in to bring charges against Comey after her predecessor, Eric Siebert, said he wouldn’t. 

Trump took a victory lap after Halligan secured an indictment against Comey, but for all the fanfare over that, there is so much more that has to happen before Trump can live out his fantasy of putting Comey behind bars. 

Sadly for Trump, all of those steps require prosecutors. Many, actually. 

At the moment, Halligan might need to consider a crash course in trial preparation, because as of Tuesday, no career attorneys from her office have entered an appearance in Comey’s case, even though the arraignment is on Wednesday. Though to be fair, Halligan probably doesn’t know about this, since she’s never been a prosecutor and her only client as a defense attorney was Trump.

Instead, it looks like Halligan is going to bring in prosecutors from outside her office. Can’t wait for a passel of freshly minted Liberty University School of Law graduates to handle a politically explosive and high-profile prosecution. Well, at least those who weren’t smart or vicious enough to land a clerkship with the many Trump judges eager to mold new baby fascists.

Meanwhile, when it comes to the Trump administration’s eagerness to have one state invade another, it seems to all rest—legally speaking—on the shoulders of one lawyer: Eric Hamilton. 

A protester stands draped in an American flag as officers try to disperse protesters near an ICE facility in Portland on Oct. 5.

Hamilton handled Sunday night’s hearing about deploying National Guard troops to Oregon and was then bundled off to Illinois to argue about how cool and legal it would be if Texas troops were deployed to Chicago.

Normally, of course, there is a veritable army of DOJ attorneys to handle these things. But between resignations and purges, the DOJ doesn’t have a lot left in the tank. 

The agency lost 70% of its civil rights division. The top national security prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia was just purged. Multiple high-level prosecutors who refused to sign off on the DOJ’s quid pro quo with Mayor Eric Adams were also fired. Two-thirds of the attorneys tasked with defending Trump’s signature initiatives—like birthright citizenship and immigration—have bolted. And Trump has rapidly depleted the entire federal attorney bench. 

This is also why there’s such turmoil among some U.S. attorneys right now. Trump knows he can’t get people like Alina Habba—another of his former personal attorneys—or Halligan confirmed by the Senate. But he also knows that only the most bone-deep partisan loyalists will do his bidding. 

Eventually, all that the DOJ will have left are people who previously represented Trump in some personal capacity. Fortunately for Trump, that’s a lot of people. Unfortunately for the rest of us, they all suck.

Republicans defend Trump’s disturbing thirst for revenge

Congressional Cowards is a weekly series highlighting the worst Donald Trump defenders on Capitol Hill, who refuse to criticize him—no matter how disgraceful or lawless his actions.

President Donald Trump has been inching the United States toward becoming an authoritarian state since he put his hand on the Bible and took the oath of office for a second time back in January.

But the inching turned into a full-on slide this week, as Trump took tangible steps toward weaponizing the Department of Justice to jail his perceived enemies and silence those with views that differ from his own.

There were fewer comments than usual this week, as Congress is in recess and thus lawmakers are not on Capitol Hill, and safe from reporters asking them to comment on Trump’s impeachable actions.

But the Republican lawmakers who did comment this week cheered Trump's actions.

Following reports that Trump's newly minted U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia will seek an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey—even though career prosecutors said they do not believe probable cause exists to charge him with a crime—multiple GOP lawmakers applauded.

Related | Republicans cheer Comey indictment—to their own peril

"James Comey betrayed our nation. He meddled in the 2016 election, concealed the baseless Trump-Russia probe, abused FISA with the Steele dossier, leaked classified memos to spark the Mueller witch hunt, and lied to Congress. The DOJ should indict him. Justice must be served," Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) wrote in a post on X.

Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) went a step further, saying on Fox Business, "In my opinion he should be charged with treason."

And Rep. Derricek Van Orden had a more succinct response to the news of Comey's possible indictment.

"Prison," Van Orden wrote in a post on X.

Van Orden later said he was excited about the possibility of DOJ officials resigning in protest over a possible Comey indictment, saying that it would be "Outstanding."

"In SEAL training we call this 'self selection,'" Van Orden wrote.

Meanwhile, other Republicans continued to applaud Trump for trying to force ABC to pull comedian Jimmy Kimmel from the airwaves.

“It is reasonable for the FCC commissioner to say what he basically said, which is when he said, 'You can do this the easy way or the hard way, either back off, Disney ... or you’re going to deal with the fact that you’re going to have licenses,'" Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) told right-wing hack Glenn Beck.

They also refused to say Trump should rule out a third term—which the Constitution explicitly prohibits.

“Trump 2028. I hope this never ends,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) refused to condemn Graham for cheering on a blatantly unconstitutional action.

“Well, I didn't see—I know Lindsey said that before—and I think he generally expects a, you know, a pretty lighthearted response when he says it,” Thune said.

Less scary but embarrassing nonetheless were the Republicans who defended Trump's moronic speech to the United Nations on Tuesday, with others joining Trump's attacks against the organization over the failure of an escalator that Trump and first lady Melania Trump attempted to ride.

Thune called Trump's embarrassing speech that diminished the United States on the world stage "Straight talk from the president."

"He puts out the unvarnished truth," Thune said of Trump's idiotic remarks.

"President Trump commanded respect at the UN, while Biden's wandering turned America into a global punchline," Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) wrote in a post on X, which is the absolute opposite of reality. "It's great to have leadership that doesn't apologize for American strength once again!"

Meanwhile, Steube called for an "investigation" into the escalator situation at the U.N., saying that it “could not be a coincidence" that the escalator stopped right when Trump was on it.

Never underestimate Republicans' ability to debase themselves in subservience to Dear Leader.

Ex-FBI Director James Comey charged with making false statement and obstruction

James Comey was charged Thursday with making a false statement and obstruction in a criminal case filed days after President Donald Trump appeared to urge his attorney general to prosecute the former FBI director and other perceived political enemies.

The indictment makes Comey the first former senior government official to face prosecution in connection with one of Trump’s chief grievances: the long-concluded investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump and his supporters have long derided that investigation as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” despite multiple government reviews showing Moscow interfered on behalf of the Republican’s campaign.

The criminal case is likely to deepen concerns that the Justice Department under Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Trump loyalist, is being weaponized in pursuit of investigations and now prosecutions of public figures the president regards as his political enemies.

It was filed as the White House has taken steps to exert influence in unprecedented ways on the operations of the Justice Department, blurring the line between law and politics for an agency where independence in prosecutorial decision-making is a foundational principle.

Comey was fired months into Trump’s first administration and has long been a top target for Trump supporters seeking retribution. Comey was singled out by name in a Saturday social media post in which Trump complained directly to Bondi that she had not yet brought charges against him.

The following evening, Trump said in a Truth Social post aimed at the attorney general that department investigations had not resulted in prosecutions. He said he would nominate Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide, to serve as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. She has been one of Trump’s personal lawyers and does not have experience as a federal prosecutor.

“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote, referencing the fact that he himself had been indicted and impeached multiple times. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

The office that filed the case against Comey, the Eastern District of Virginia, was thrown into turmoil last week following the resignation of chief prosecutor Erik Siebert under pressure to bring charges against another Trump target, New York Attorney General Letitia James, in a mortgage fraud investigation.

Halligan had rushed to present the case to a grand jury this week. Prosecutors were evaluating whether Comey lied to Congress during testimony on Sept. 30, 2020, and they had until Tuesday to bring a case before the five-year statute of limitations expired. The push to move forward came even as prosecutors in the office had detailed in a memo concerns about the pursuit of an indictment.

Related | Trump builds strong impeachment case against himself

Trump has for years railed against both a finding by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia preferred him to Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and the criminal investigation that tried to determine whether his campaign had conspired with Moscow to sway the outcome of that race. Prosecutors led by special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish that Trump or his associates criminally colluded with Russia, but they did find that Trump’s campaign had welcomed Moscow’s assistance.

Trump has seized on the fact that Mueller’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign and the Kremlin colluded, and that there were significant errors and omissions made by the FBI in wiretap applications, to claim vindication. A yearslong investigation into potential misconduct during the Russia investigation, was conducted by a different special counsel, John Durham. That produced three criminal cases, including against an FBI lawyer, but not against senior government officials.

The criminal case against Comey does not concern the substance of the Russia investigation. Rather, it accuses him of having lied to a Senate committee in his 2020 appearance when he said he never authorized anyone to serve as an anonymous source to a reporter about the investigation.

Mike Pence and Joseph Clancy stand near Donald Trump as he shakes hands with James Comey during a reception in the Blue Room of the White House in Jan. 2017.

Trump’s administration is trying to cast the Russia investigation as the outgrowth of an effort under Democratic President Barack Obama to overhype Moscow’s interference in the election and to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s victory.

Administration officials, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, have declassified a series of documents meant to chip away at the strength of an Obama-era intelligence assessment published in January 2017 that said Moscow had engaged in a broad campaign of interference at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Comey has for years been a prime Trump antagonist. Comey was a senior Justice Department official in Republican President George W. Bush’s administration, was picked by Obama to lead the FBI in 2013 and was director when the bureau opened the Russia investigation.

Comey’s relationship with Trump was strained from the start and was exacerbated when Comey resisted a request by Trump at a private White House dinner to pledge personal loyalty to the president. That overture so unnerved the FBI director that he documented it in a contemporaneous memorandum.

Related | Trump moves even closer to indicting his enemies—first stop, Comey

Trump fired Comey in May 2017, an action later investigated by Mueller for potential obstruction of justice.

After being let go, Comey authorized a close friend to share with a reporter the substance of an unclassified memo that documented an Oval Office request from Trump to shut down an FBI investigation into his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Trump and his allies later branded Comey a leaker, with the president even accusing him of treason. Comey himself has called Trump “ego driven” and likened him to a mafia don.

The Justice Department, during Trump’s first term, declined to prosecute Comey over his handling of his memos. The department’s inspector general did issue a harshly critical report in 2019 that said Comey violated FBI policies, including by failing to return the documents to the FBI after he was dismissed and for sharing them with his personal lawyers without FBI permission.

Related | DOJ's latest firing ensures Epstein scandal won't go away

Earlier this year, the department fired Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, from her job as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. She has since sued, saying the termination was carried out without any explanation and was done for political reasons.

Trump moves even closer to indicting his enemies—first stop, Comey

The pace at which President Donald Trump is committing impeachable offenses is quickening.

On Wednesday, multiple media organizations reported that Trump's new U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia is planning to seek an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey—even though the Department of Justice does not believe probable cause exists to charge Comey with a crime.

The news comes days after Trump already fired the former U.S. attorney for the EDVA, Erik Siebert, because Siebert wouldn't heed Trump's demand to charge his enemies with crimes.

That’s an impeachable offense in and of itself. But now, Trump's replacement is actually following Dear Leader's orders and will seek charges against people Trump has vowed to get retribution against. It's a terrifying and stomach-churning instance of lawfare that should get Trump impeached and removed from office, but won't because Republicans are cowards who excuse Trump no matter how deplorable his actions.

Interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan

MSNBC, which first reported the news, said interim EDVA U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan will move to charge Comey with lying to Congress. She will do that even though Halligan was told by DOJ officials that in a memo that, "there isn’t enough evidence to establish probable cause a crime was committed, let alone enough to convince a jury to convict him," according to MSNBC reporter Ken Dilanian.

Comey would be the first Trump "enemy" charged by the Trump administration.

But Trump is also demanding that Halligan indict New York Attorney General Letitia James and California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff with mortgage fraud, even though there is no evidence that either committed that crime.

Halligan is reportedly gearing up to charge James—who Trump loathes because she successfully sued Trump for business fraud, with a judge finding Trump liable for inflating his net worth in order to receive more favorable loans.

Aside from using the power of the presidency to try to jail his opponents, Trump is also trying to silence dissent and speech he doesn’t like.

Trump’s Pentagon is attempting to limit what reporters can report. And Trump is trying to pressure media organizations to remove programming from the airwaves in order to avoid being hit with costly lawsuits (see Kimmel, Jimmy).

What’s more, Trump is also closing criminal investigations into his allies (see Homan, Tom), and engaging in blatant corruption by giving out pardons to people who line his pockets with crypto cash.

"The point here is to get a few of Trump's political adversaries in jail, but the real point is a tried and true tactic of despots all over the world, which is to just harass and intimidate their political opposition so that protesters don't show up, candidates don't run,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Thursday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “That's how democracies die."

Murphy: "The point is to get a few of Trump's political adversaries in jail, but the real point is a tried & true tactic of despots all over the world, which is to just harass & intimidate their political opposition so that protesters don't show up, candidates don't run. That's how democracies die." [image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) September 25, 2025 at 9:17 AM

House GOP to probe important things—like Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis

Because they are absolute ghouls, House Republicans are opening an investigation into former President Joe Biden’s health, including demanding that his doctor testify about Biden’s private medical information. Meanwhile, current President Donald Trump is so flagrantly and consistently incoherent that the only way for his administration to deal with it is to ensure no transcripts of his rambling remarks are available. 

This latest probe is technically more of a reopening. House Republicans investigated Biden’s alleged cognitive decline last year, but thanks to Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper making the rounds with their book about how Biden getting old is the biggest threat to American democracy, they’ve got an excuse to do it again. And of course, after Biden announced his prostate cancer diagnosis, the door was wide open for Rep. James Comer to continue his unhealthy vendetta against the Biden family.

Not that Comer really needs an excuse. The fever swamp that is his brain likely means that pretty much any time anyone even mentions the Biden name, he spins up the House Oversight Committee to “investigate” something, anything. After Biden pardoned his son, Hunter, Comer ran to Newsmax to say that meant it was time to open another investigation into Hunter’s laptop. That was after he spent 15 months fruitlessly trying to invent some corruption for which Biden could be impeached. 

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer

The one-two punch of Tapper’s media blitz and Biden’s cancer diagnosis must have been a dream come true for Comer, who dashed off letters to Biden’s doctors and former aides. He wants Biden’s doctor to prove that his “financial relationship with the Biden family” didn’t affect his assessment of Biden’s fitness to serve, while also basically saying that the doctor helped cover up Biden’s decline from the public. Inquiries to former aides are so that Comer can “understand who made key decisions and exercised the powers of the executive branch during the Biden Administration,” with the implication there being, of course, that it was not Joe Biden. 

Hilariously, Comer is pretending that one of the reasons Biden’s physician has to share the former president’s private medical information is that the Oversight Committee needs that to “explore whether the time has come for Congress to revisit potential legislation to address the oversight of presidents’ fitness to serve pursuant to its authority under Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.” 

Comer has no actual interest in fitness to serve. This is just him building on Trump’s 2024 campaign rhetoric saying the 25th Amendment should be “modified” to allow for the removal of a vice president because Kamala Harris was part of a conspiracy to cover up Biden’s decline. Any real query into the capacity of a president to do his job would have to grapple with not just Trump’s inability to do the job but also his obvious handoff of vast chunks of decision-making.

Trump routinely makes things up out of thin air, but that’s always been the case. That makes it difficult to tell whether he’s lost the plot or is just lying. When he showed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa pictures from the Democratic Republic of Congo and insisted they were instead evidence of white genocide in South Africa, it’s just as likely that Trump knew the truth but didn’t care as it is that he genuinely didn’t have any idea what he was looking at. 

Related | Trump's racist ambush of South African president gets even more bonkers

But even if you set aside all the times in which Trump blatantly lies in service of a political point, you’ve still got all the other times where it seems like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He told the press he didn’t sign the Alien Enemies Act proclamation that paved the way for the mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants, despite his signature appearing on it. 

And he routinely admits he doesn’t know about major decisions. Earlier this month, The Washington Post compiled the most recent ones. He said he didn’t know his nominee for surgeon general, but had listened to a recommendation from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He said he hadn’t been briefed on U.S. soldiers killed in Lithuania. He wasn’t aware the administration was considering deporting people to Libya. He’s not the person responsible for the failure to bring Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia home from a Salvadoran prison, because, “We have lawyers that don’t want to do this.”

It’s a cliche to say that every accusation is a confession, but that’s pretty much what happens every time Republicans open their mouths. 

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Biden interviewed as part of the special counsel investigation into handling of classified documents

President Joe Biden has been interviewed as part of an independent investigation into his handling of classified documents, the White House said late Monday. It's a possible sign that the investigation is nearing its end.

Special counsel Robert Hur is examining the improper retention of classified documents by Biden from his time as a U.S. senator and as vice president that were found at his Delaware home, as well as at a private office he used after his service in the Obama administration.

Biden has said he was unaware he had the documents and that " there's no there there. ”

Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House counsel's office, said in a statement that the voluntary interview was conducted at the White House on Sunday and Monday as Biden and his national security team grappled with their response to the surprise weekend attack on Israel by Hamas militants and as the president received some criticism for not being more visible during the crisis.

It’s not clear when Hur’s team approached Biden’s lawyers about an interview or how long they’d been negotiating. Asked on Aug. 25 if he planned to sit for an interview with the special counsel, Biden replied, “There's no such request and no such interest.”

The interview could signal that the special counsel investigation is nearing its conclusion.

In 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey announced his recommendation against criminal charges for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. the Democratic presidential nominee, over her handling of classified information just three days after agents interviewed her at FBI headquarters.

Investigators with Hur's office have already cast a broad net in the Biden probe, interviewing a wide range of witnesses about their knowledge of the handling of classified documents.

In his statement, Sams reiterated that Biden and the White House were cooperating. He referred any questions to the Justice Department.

“As we have said from the beginning, the President and the White House are cooperating with this investigation, and as it has been appropriate, we have provided relevant updates publicly, being as transparent as we can consistent with protecting and preserving the integrity of the investigation,” Sams said. "We would refer other questions to the Justice Department at this time.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland in January 2023 named Hur, a former U.S. attorney for Maryland, to handle the politically sensitive Justice Department inquiry in an attempt to avoid conflicts of interest.

It is one of three recent Justice Department investigations into the handling of classified documents by politically prominent figures.

The investigation into Biden is separate from special counsel Jack Smith’s probe into the handling of classified documents by former President Donald Trump after he left the White House. Smith’s team has charged Trump with illegally retaining top secret records at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and then obstructing government efforts to get them back. Trump has said he did nothing wrong.

No evidence has emerged to suggest that Biden engaged in comparable conduct or willfully held onto records he wasn’t supposed to have.

Questioned in January about the discovery, Biden told reporters that the documents were immediately turned over to the National Archives and the Justice Department. He said he was cooperating fully with the investigation and was “looking forward to getting this resolved quickly.”

“I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there,” he said. “There’s no there there.”

In June, the Justice Department informed former Vice President Mike Pence's legal team that it would not pursue criminal charges against him related to the discovery of classified documents at his Indiana home. The news came as Pence finalized plans to launch his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

About a dozen documents with classified markings were discovered at Pence’s home in January after he asked his lawyers to search his vice presidential belongings “out of an abundance of caution” after the Biden discovery. The items had been “inadvertently boxed and transported” to Pence’s home at the end of the last administration, Pence’s lawyer, Greg Jacob, wrote in a letter to the National Archives.

The FBI then discovered an additional document with classified markings at the Indiana house during its own search the following month.

Pence repeatedly had said he was unaware of the documents’ existence, but that “mistakes were made" in his handling of classified material.

It is hardly unprecedented for sitting presidents to be interviewed in criminal investigations.

President George W. Bush sat for a 70-minute interview as part of an investigation into the leak of the identify of a CIA operative. President Bill Clinton in 1998 underwent more than four hours of questioning from independent counsel Kenneth Starr before a federal grand jury.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team negotiated with lawyers for then-President Donald Trump for an interview but Trump never sat for one. His lawyers instead submitted answers to written questions.

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Fox News host did not expect his Biden conspiracy to get blown apart on live TV

At the heart of every single Republican conspiracy about both President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine is a single claim. The claim is that Joe Biden got Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin sacked in order to protect energy company Burisma, where Hunter Biden was on the board.

That was the claim former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani brought back from Ukraine, and the basis on which Donald Trump tried to blackmail Ukraine and earned his first impeachment. Also, because Republicans keep saying things long after they know, we know, and they know we know that they’re lying, this claim is also behind the hearings being led by Rep. Jim Jordan in the House. It’s behind the messages being pushed by Rep. James Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley. And it’s the basis of an improbable number of stories at Fox News.

The idea that Shokin was fired to protect Burisma has been debunked so many times that de bunk is exhausted, but it has seldom gone down with as much grim satisfaction as it did on Sunday when Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade interviewed former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

amazing - during a Fox News interview w/ Brian Kilmeade, former president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko denounces Victor Shokin, who plays as a leading role in Kilmeade's conspiracy theories, as a "completely crazy person" & says "there's something wrong with him" as Kilmeade melts pic.twitter.com/MXedG1FmrB

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 25, 2023

Kilmeade: Is that why he got fired? Because of the billion dollars and the former vice president, now president?

Poroshenko: First of all, this is a completely crazy person. This is something wrong with him. Second, there is not one single word of truth. And third, I hate the idea to make any comments and to make any intervention in the American election. We have very much enjoyed bipartisan support. Please do not use such person like Shokin to undermine the trust between bipartisan support and Ukraine.

It helps to get the laughter flowing if you know that Kilmeade is a near-constant spouter of this false claim who has been treating Shokin as a fount of wisdom. As for Shokin, in his portion of the recording, he states the Republican claim quite succinctly.

“Poroshenko fired me,” said Shokin, “at the insistence of the then-Vice President Biden because I was investigating Burisma. There were no complaints whatsoever and no problems with how I was performing at my job.”

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Well, that seems like something that might be checked out. We can start with this Financial Times article where officials from a number of nations (not just the U.S.) sought the removal of Shokin for months before Biden ever became involved because Shokin was not investigating potential corruption cases, including Burisma, and was suspected of being corrupt himself. In addition to U.S. and E.U. officials, senior officials from the International Monetary Fund called for reforms because widespread corruption in Ukraine was seen as the country’s biggest obstacle to growth and stability.

And there was one other group really pushing for Shokin’s removal, as CNN reported in 2019. That group was the Senate Ukraine Caucus, where Republican member Sens. Rob Portman, Mark Kirk, and Ron Johnson dispatched a letter urging Poroshenko to “press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General's Office.”

Shokin’s own deputy testified that there was no active investigation into Burisma at the time of Biden’s actions. And not only was all this looked into as part of Trump’s impeachment, a Republican investigation launched in 2020 specifically to find any wrongdoing by Biden ended in an 87-page report that “contained no evidence that the elder Mr. Biden improperly manipulated American policy toward Ukraine or committed any other misdeed.”

The claim that Biden did something wrong in Ukraine wasn’t true, isn’t true, and can’t be made true through repetition. Shokin was fired because he was corrupt, bad at his job, and everyone complained.

As The Washington Post points out, Fox News and Republicans come out of this looking extremely foolish, though no one should expect them to admit it. They are deeply invested in this lie. In 2020, Republicans looked into this idea and realized it was baseless. But then, 2020 was a year when some Republicans still thought they could pull their party away from Trump and chart a course back to a world where they had both policies and a platform. Connections between Republicans and reality have become much more tenuous since then.

They’ll keep promoting the lie, because without it everything that Jordan, Comer, Grassley, and the rest are doing is revealed as pointless political theater in support of a lie. They know that we know that they know they are lying.

It helps that they don’t care.

Kerry talks with Drew Linzer, director of the online polling company Civiqs. Drew tells us what the polls say about voters’ feelings toward President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and what the results would be if the two men were to, say … run against each other for president in 2024. Oh yeah, Drew polled to find out who thinks Donald Trump is guilty of the crimes he’s been indicted for, and whether or not he should see the inside of a jail cell.