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Might Pam Bondi’s Latest Prosecutorial Abuse Give Us Ponies and Puppies?

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The media’s response to this exchange (remember, timezone reflects Irish time) between Donald Trump and Pam Bondi has been procedural.

At the NYT yesterday, for example, first Erica Green, Glenn Thrush, and Alan Feuer described it (competently) in procedural terms. It was a tired Trump strategy of projection, it might stall release of files to Congress, gosh it’ll make things hard for Jay Clayton. 30-some ¶¶ in, it briefly turned to politics, in the form of quotes from Robert Garcia (Ranking Member of Oversight) and Don Bacon. Tom Massie, Ro Khanna, and Marjorie Taylor Greene are not quoted, to say nothing of Epstein’s victims.

Then the NYT today turned to its SDNY reporters — Jonah Bromwich, Benjamin Weiser and William Rashbaum — to focus more closely on just how much trouble this could cause SDNY US Attorney Jay Clayton. That story mentions Maurene Comey’s firing in passing twice, but days ago, Bromwich and Rashbaum described how everyone in the New York Metro area dodged defending Ms. Comey’s wrongful termination lawsuit which, after some delay, NDNY, led by a corrupt Trump flunkie, will now take on.

Both stories make Trump the agent of the narrative. He made an order and as Bondi executes it, this is what will happen.

As I suggested in this video, I look at Bondi’s public haste to bow to Trump’s demands differently.

Pam Bondi doubled down on ratifying Lindsey Halligan’s indictment of Jim Comey, after having been caught in failing to exercise the least due diligence the last time she tried to do so. One reason she did so, no doubt, is that DOJ literally told Judge Currie that the unlawful means Bondi used to turn Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer into US Attorney was a mere “paperwork error,” Pam Bondi’s fuck-up. And so, in an attempt to salvage the fuck-up DOJ is attributing to the Attorney General, she may have inserted herself into what appear to be serious Fourth Amendment violations, among other things.

And, that very same day, she publicly bowed to the President’s demand that she pursue clearly political prosecutions just months after DOJ had publicly issued an (unsigned) declination decision in the same investigation (after reportedly having shut down an ongoing investigation into Epstein co-conspirators, presumably led by Jim Comey’s daughter, months earlier).

Even in July, it was crystal clear that Pam Bondi kept making things worse.

Then Bondi made things worse when she told Fox News that Epstein’s client file was on her desk for review. She made things worse when she orchestrated the re-release of the already-released files to a select group of right wing propagandists, all packaged up to look special, a spectacle that stoked divisions among MAGAts but also raised concerns that she was covering stuff up. She made things still worse when — responding to James Comer’s role in making things worse, when he claimed the Epstein files had been disappeared — she said there were tens of thousands of videos involving Epstein.

By the end of that week, Todd Blanche would announce he’d spend some quiet time with Ghislaine Maxwell, which I imagine he thought was clever but has resulted in further questions, starting with why he’s not charging Maxwell for the lies she told to his face and why the sexual predator got a puppy.

Pam Bondi has been trying to make the Epstein problem she made worse go away. It hasn’t worked. Nothing has worked. All the pressure she and Blanche and Kash Patel could apply failed to force Lauren Boebert to make it go away. And having failed so far, she very publicly and very quickly agreed to do something stupid, reopen an investigation that she already said could not be pursued.

She did so the week before Judge Michael Nachmanoff (on Wednesday) will preside over Jim Comey’s vindictive and selective prosecution claim, which will be followed by Letitia James’ motion in a few weeks, assuming one or both of those prosecutions are not preempted by some other dismissal before then. (Comey Motion; DOJ Response; Comey Reply; James Motion; there are a slew of Amici filing in both)

In Comey’s reply, he responded to Lindsey Halligan and her Loaner AUSAs’ attempt to claim only Halligan’s motive can be scrutinized in this prosecutorial decision by citing one of the most troubling passages in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. USA:

Imputation of President Trump’s vindictive motive to Ms. Halligan is particularly warranted because the President has “exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the Justice Department and its officials.” Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593, 621 (2024). As the government itself describes, U.S. Attorneys are subordinate aides to the President, “help[ing the President] discharge” his “responsibility” to prosecute crimes. ECF No. 138 at 17. And President Trump’s authority is not merely formal or abstract: he has exercised an unprecedented and extraordinary degree of control over the DOJ, installing his personal allies to key positions and inserting himself into prosecutorial decisions that, in previous Administrations, would have been left to the DOJ’s independent judgment. See ECF No. 59 at 8-11. [my emphasis]

That’s the language John Roberts used to excuse Trump’s efforts, via Jeffrey Clark, to use DOJ to steal the election.

The Government does not dispute that the indictment’s allegations regarding the Justice Department involve Trump’s use of official power. The allegations in fact plainly implicate Trump’s “conclusive and preclusive” authority. The Executive Branch has “exclusive authority and absolute discretion” to decide which crimes to investigate and prosecute, including with respect to allegations of election crime. Nixon, 418 U. S., at 693. And the President’s “management of the Executive Branch” requires him to have “unrestricted power to remove the most important of his subordinates”—such as the Attorney General—“in their most important duties.” Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 750. The indictment’s allegations that the requested investigations were shams or proposed for an improper purpose do not divest the President of exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the Justice Department and its officials. Because the President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority, Trump is absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials. Pp. 19–21.

Trump seemed to echo this license when asked about ordering Bondi to investigate Democrats on Friday.

Reporter: Do you believe a President should be able to order investigations?

Trump: Sure. I’m the chief law enforcement officer of the country. Not that I want to use that. But I am considered the chief law enforcement agent in the country. And I’m allowed to do it.

Effectively, Comey argued that because of the monstrosity Roberts created, his vindictive prosecution claim must be judged according to different rules. And then Trump just reaffirmed his responsiblity.

If these things happened in a vacuum, I’d say that Bondi’s quick and public acquiescence to Trump’s demand that she investigate his enemies as a way to avoid scrutiny himself would be nothing more than a truly epic Constitutional confrontation.

A display of what goes happens when, as John Roberts did, you give the President literal immunity to hunt down his enemies for unrelated reasons, such as that the President’s one-time best friend “stole” his former spa girl and turned her into a sex slave a quarter century ago.

But it’s not happening in a vacuum.

The week before Trump’s defense attorney will sit mutely in a court room as Loaner AUSAs try to put lipstick on the pig of this prosecution, Trump his abuse even more plain than he did when he accidentally ordered up this very investigation (and that of James) in September, a tweet prosecutors have already had to invent bullshit excuses for.

How interesting, Judge Nachmanoff might think, that Pam Bondi just performed her utter obeisance to Trump, just the thing prosecutors insist didn’t happen with Comey. How interesting, that the lady who claimed to ratify this prosecution did that.

As I said in the video, there are up to ten ways that the Comey prosecution might go away, and I’m already greedily hoping that those ten things things not just fall into place, but fall into place in an order that will result in far more trouble for DOJ.

Certainly, the fact that Judge Cameron Currie started her hearing last week on the most obvious thing that might make this prosecution go away, Halligan’s unlawful appointment, by raising another, the declination memos reported in the press, makes me hope I might get a pony.

THE COURT: Mr. [Ephraim] McDowell, are you aware of any evidence of whether there was a declination memo prepared in the Comey matter?

MR. MCDOWELL: We are not aware of that at the moment. I think, you know, that would be something that could potentially come out in discovery, but we don’t have that as of yet.

Another thing we’ve been promised this week is Jim Comey’s explanation of the multiple ways Kash Patel’s FBI violated his Fourth Amendment rights by sniffing through everything Bill Barr’s hyper-aggressive DOJ seized four years ago. Then there are the parallel requests Comey has made for grand jury transcripts that Judge Currie certainly seems to think are improper — but Pam Bondi claimed, both the first time, and the second time — are not.

Bondi demonstrated her willingness to conduct political prosecutions the week before the wheels may start to come off the Comey prosecution.

And if they don’t, Maurene Comey may get to force the issue. Attorney General James may get to force the issue.

That’s all legal though, and the law never works as quickly or decisively as you’d like, particularly not with Donald Trump.

But it happens in the very same week that — reportedly — up to a hundred Republicans are prepared to vote to release the Epstein files to stave off lasting damage from Trump’s sex trafficker scandal, something that — if it happens — will make this referral to Jay Clayton a problem, not a solution.

One reason Pam Bondi was so quick to bow to Trump’s demands, sacrificing the very last shreds of credibility with courts, was because she’s in real political trouble, and has been since she thought she’d get cute by handing out binders of already-released Epstein files.

Trump’s effort, Bondi’s effort, to make all this go away by handing it to Jay Clayton on a steaming-shit platter reflect desperation, not the agency NYT portrays it as.

Sure, it’s certainly possible all this will go away, as it always does for Trump. Maybe the dog that didn’t bark can wag one in Venezuela to make his troubles go away.

It’s still a good bet that Ghislaine will be the only one who gets a puppy.

But both Trump and Bondi are operating reactively. And in a desperate attempt to reclaim agency over the Epstein scandal — something Trump has been struggling to do since July — he may well have handed Jim Comey a gift pony.

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Pam Bondi Replaces Her Embarrassing Reading Comprehension Failure with a 4A Violation

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When Judge Cameron Currie surprised Pam Bondi’s Counselor, Henry Whitaker, on Thursday with a question about whether DOJ believes Aileen Cannon wrongly dismissed Trump’s stolen documents case, Whitaker claimed what distinguished Jack Smith from Lindsey Halligan is that Halligan is closely supervised.

I do think that mostly what was driving Judge Cannon’s decision in that case was sort of the unique and broad authority that the special counsel possessed sort of free of supervision, which, of course, is an element that we do not have here.

He said that, mind you, even while conceding that Pam Bondi had claimed to ratify the Comey indictment even though the transcripts didn’t show how Halligan instructed the grand jury, yet.

MR. WHITAKER: Well, it’s true that — it is true, Your Honor, you’re right, that we didn’t have the intro and back end of the grand jury transcripts when we presented that.

Between that day, on October 31, when Pam Bondi claimed to ratify Lindsey’s work without noticing she couldn’t see that work, and yesterday, several things have happened.

We’ve gotten a lot more details about the suspected Fourth Amendment and Attorney-Client privilege violations Jim Comey’s investigators committed. First, Rebekah Donaleski told Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick that Jim Comey’s team believed investigators had worked off material seized from Dan Richman that was not responsive to the four warrants used to investigate him. Effectively, a general warrant.

[D]id the agents preserve nonresponsive copies or nonresponsive materials for five years? Because the Fourth Circuit has said that’s not reasonable. Did that happen? Because the prolonged retention of nonresponsive electronic data can render an initially lawful search unconstitutional. The Fourth Circuit has said that. That’s what appears to have happened here.

[snip]

We need to know was this a narrowly tailored responsive set or did they just mark the entire iCloud responsive, thus rendering it a general warrant. We don’t know the answers to those questions.

Then, the FBI agent who realized he was reading privileged material described that he had been given the “full Cellebrite extraction” of Dan Richman’s phone to review, precisely that general warrant Donaleski feared. His supervisor said that the original agent had prepped the grand jury team with “a two-page document containing limited text message content only from May 11, 2017,” designed to avoid any taint. But Miles Starr appears to have presented eight pages of those texts to the grand jury; the Bates stamp for those texts include only a number, nothing to indicate they post-dated a privilege review by Richman.

After that, the Loaner AUSAs confessed that they had no fucking clue whether the material used to investigate Jim Comey had been scoped for responsiveness (though Comey’s team described that it looked like these were “raw returns for the search warrants at issue, unscoped for responsiveness and filtered for Mr. Richman’s privileges”).

The Order also required the government to provide, in writing, by the same deadline: “Confirmation of whether the Government has divided the materials searched pursuant to the four 2019 and 2020 warrants at issue into materials that are responsive and non-responsive to those warrants, and, if so, a detailed explanation of the methodology used to make that determination; A detailed explanation of whether, and for what period of time, the Government has preserved any materials identified as non-responsive to the four search warrants; A description identifying which materials have been identified as responsive, if any; and A description identifying which materials have previously been designated as privileged.” ECF No. 161 at 1-2.

Despite certifying on November 6 that it had complied with the Court’s Order, ECF No. 163, the government did not provide this information until the evening of November 9, 2025, in response to a defense inquiry. The government told the defense that it “does not know” whether there are responsive sets for the first, third, and fourth warrants, or whether it has produced those to the defense, and said that in that regard, “we are still pulling prior emails” and the “agent reviewed the filtered material through relativity but there appears to be a loss of data that we are currently trying to restore.”

Then, in one of their response briefs, the government effectively threw out half their evidence, including all the texts from Richman’s phone.

At the earlier hearing, Fitzpatrick warned the government not to use any violative material.

THE COURT: The Court authorized you to search and to seize, or to seize primarily, a very specific subset of information; that’s it. It’s the government’s burden to comply with that court order. You need to confidently explain to me how you have done that. You need to confidently explain how you have complied strictly with the Court’s order. If you can do that, then I suspect that that narrow window of time, you probably still can review, at least pending the outcome of the other motions.

He even ordered them not to review any materials seized from those search warrants until further order of the Court.

ORDERED that the Government, including any of its agents or employees, shall not review any of the materials seized pursuant to the four 2019 and 2020 search warrants at issue until further order of the Court;

In the middle of this, Comey argued that if Halligan presented unlawfully seized material to the grand jury, then Pam Bondi’s review of the grand jury materials — the first one, on October 31 — might also constitute a violation of Comey’s Fourth Amendment.

2 Concerns about taint arising from the improper use of potentially privileged and unconstitutionally-obtained materials are heightened because of the government’s continued use of the materials obtained pursuant to the warrants and grand jury transcripts. On October 31, 2025, the Attorney General purported to ratify the indictment based on her review of the grand jury proceedings. ECF No. 137-1 at 2-3. If that review entailed further improper use of privileged or unconstitutionally-obtained materials insofar as they were presented to the grand jury, it casts further doubt on the propriety of the government’s conduct of this case. The government produced the grand jury materials on November 5, 2025 to Judge Currie for in camera review, and thus could quickly produce the same materials to the defense. See ECF No. 158.

So to sum up so far: Jim Comey said, you violated my Attorney-Client privilege and my Fourth Amendment rights. And it’s likely that when Pam Bondi reviewed that transcript where unlawfully seized materials were presented, she did too.

And then Pam Bondi — after her Counselor assured Judge Currie that Halligan is closely supervised — reviewed the grand jury transcripts again.

The ones that likely rely on unlawfully seized materials.

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Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s Story Gets Stupider

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In an attempt to unfuck Pam Bondi’s Halloween attempt to ratify Lindsey Halligan’s attempt to indict Jim Comey, the blondes from Florida have fucked things worse.

Bondi submitted a declaration effectively saying, never mind that the last time I claimed to ratify Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s work, I didn’t read closely enough to notice that the transcripts were incomplete. This time, I have read “the entirety of the record now available to the government” and I re-ratify what Lindsey did almost two months ago.

The district court has subsequently raised questions about the completeness of the record of the grand jury proceedings presented to me at the time of the initial ratification. For the avoidance of doubt, I have reviewed the entirety of the record now available to the government and confirm my knowledge of the material facts associated with the grand jury proceedings.

Lindsey, for her part, claims there was no gap and confessed she did not re-present the charges after getting no-billed. There was only one presentment.

1. Accordingly, I, Lindsey Halligan, submit this declaration to clarify the precise sequence of events on September 25, 2025, to confirm that the grand jury transcript accurately reflects the full extent of my appearance before the grand jury, and to explain that the period in question consisted solely of the grand jury’s private deliberations, during which no prosecutor, court reporter, or other person may be present pursuant to Rule 6(d) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. There are no missing minutes, contrary to the suggestion raised by the court.

2. On September 25, 2025, I presented the case of the United States v. James B. Comey, Jr., to a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division. I have reviewed the full transcript of the grand jury proceedings, and the transcript accurately reflects the entirety of the government’s presentation and presence in front of the grand jury. There was no additional presentation, interaction, or discussion with the grand jury outside of what is reflected in the transcript. Below is a brief timeline of the events that day.

3. On September 25, 2025, I appeared before the grand jury. After introducing myself and the case proposed for indictment, the case was presented through testimony. At the conclusion of the presentment, I provided a brief summation to the grand jury and then departed along with the court reporter. The process of presenting the indictment took place from approximately 02:18 PM to 04:28 PM.

4. Approximately two hours later, at 06:40 PM, I was notified by then-First Assistant United States Attorney Maggie Cleary that the grand jury had returned a true bill as to the presented Count Two and Count Three of the indictment and that the grand jury had not returned a true bill as to the presented Count One. I then proceeded to the courtroom for the return of the indictment in front of the magistrate judge.

There are a slew of problems with that.

First, there are two indictments — or rather, three:

  • The no-billed indictment as Lindsey first presented it, with the signature page from the real indictment, which starts in blue ink and ends in black.
  • The no-billed indictment as it subsequently got corrected, with both a (claimed) signature from herself and the foreperson, all in blue ink.
  • The indictment purportedly supported by the grand jury, signed in black.

Lindsey now claims she only presented the case once, yet there are — or purport to be — two indictments.

For what it’s worth, when Amicus12 first pointed this out, I called the clerk to find out WTF, but have gotten no response.

Also of interest, right wing propagandist Julie Kelly (who is quite chummy with Pam Bondi’s corrupt DOJ) claims that yesterday morning, the Chief Judge in EDVA, Leonie Brinkema, restricted Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s US Marshal detail from the courthouse.

But even if there’s not the colossal paperwork error there appears to be, there’s another problem.

The Loaner AUSAs confirmed … yesterday, that they plan to include Comey’s “Clinton Plan” statements — the stuff no-billed in original Count One — in the obstruction charge.

But, as provided in discovery and via the indictment, the government intends to seek the admission of evidence at trial on this count regarding the defendant’s statements to senators during the September 30, 2020, committee hearing. For instance, the defendant’s statements to Senators Grassley and Cruz regarding his use of Richman as an anonymous source concerning the Clinton email investigation and his statements to Senators Graham and Hawley regarding his alleged lack of memory concerning the so-called Clinton plan to “tie Trump” to Russia.

Comey attorney Pat Fitzgerald had already promised some challenge to this, in the halcyon days when everyone believed there were two presentments.

I think there’s another motion coming from us, in light of some disclosures that were made Monday, where we think that the government is expanding its case, we believe, to include the conduct that was no true billed in Count One as part of its proof of Count Two, which raises serious issues for us. So we’ll do everything we can, but to do all that while getting Mr. Comey access to materials…

But now Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer is claiming that she can rely on Count One even though grand jurors in the very same vote she’s claiming to rely on rejected that claim.

And Pam Bondi is signing on willingly to that claim.

Whatever else has happened, Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer has guaranteed that Comey will get to review what went down. The only remaining question, I suspect, is when he gets that — whether it is soon enough to help him throw out the evidence against him. But it seems like Judge Currie is not the only one alarmed by what she saw in these transcripts.

Update: I should add, given my continued obsession with the authors who have not noticed their appearance, Gabriel Diaz authored the document submitted today.

Meanwhile, Gabriel Cohen is the author of the digitally signed but unsworn declaration from Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer.

Someone named lheim authored Pam Bondi’s signed but unsworn declaration.

Update: Holy hell.

Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer appears to have resubmitted the entire package, not to fix her stupid story, but instead to fix her signature line (which Josh Gerstein first noted).

Update: Here’s the specific exchange about the missing stuff.

THE COURT: Let me ask you this. I was involved in receiving in camera provisions of the grand jury transcripts and tapes, and it became obvious to me that the attorney general could not have reviewed those portions of the transcript of the Comey presentation by Ms. Halligan which preceded and came after her presentation of the witness testimony in the case. There also is a missing section of what occurred between 4:28 and the return of the grand jury indictment, and it appears to me that there was no court reporter present, or if he or she was present, did not take down what happened during that time period.

So how does the attorney general ratify and say that she has reviewed the grand jury transcripts when they did not exist in the records of the Justice Department at that time?

MR. WHITAKER: Well, it’s true that — it is true, Your Honor, you’re right, that we didn’t have the intro and back end of the grand jury transcripts when we presented that.

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Lindsey Halligan’s Seven Times 18-Minute Gap

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Update As I lay out here, Lindsey Halligan has submitted a digitally signed unsworn statement saying that there is nothing missing from the transcript. One possible explanation is that she did not instruct the grand jury as to the law. In any case, she now appears to claim she only presented the case once.

It’s time to return to the mystery of the magical disappearing Jim Comey grand jury transcript.

On October 28, Senior Judge Cameron McGowan Currie — the woman presiding over Jim Comey and Letitia James’ challenge to Lindsey Halligan’s appointment, ordered the government to provide her, no later than Monday, November 3, 2025, at 5:00 pm, all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts.

On November 3, Currie revealed that when prosecutors gave her the transcripts on October 31, they hadn’t given her the part she most needed — revealing what Lindsey Halligan said to the grand jury — and ordered them to try again, asking them to provide a complete transcript and/or recording of what Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did.

On Friday, October 31, 2025, the court received a package containing, inter alia, a “Transcript of Grand Jury proceedings on September 25, 2025.” This court has reviewed the transcript and finds it fails to include remarks made by the indictment signer both before and after the testimony of the sole witness, which remarks were referenced by the indictment signer during the witness’s testimony. In addition, the package contains no records or transcripts regarding the presentation of the three-count indictment referenced in the Transcript of the Return of Grand Jury Indictment Proceedings before the Magistrate Judge. See ECF No. 10.

Accordingly, the Government is directed to submit, no later than Wednesday, November 5, 2025, at 5:00 pm, for in camera review, a complete Transcript and/or recording of all statements made by the indictment signer to the grand jury on September 25, 2025, to include statements made prior to and after the testimony of the witness and during the presentation of the three-count and subsequent two-count indictments.

On the morning of November 5, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick, presiding over Comey’s challenge to DOJ’s bid to breach his privilege, ordered the government to provide all of that to Comey.

As part of this, I am going to order the government to disclose to the defense all grand jury materials, not just the testimony of the agent, but anything that was said during the course of the grand jury. How the grand jury was instructed, any presentation to the grand jury, any questions that were asked of either the agent or the United States Attorney, all of that is to be disclosed because I think the defense needs that in order to marry up the information that they have or the information that they will get to how it was used.

Among the concerns Pat Fitzgerald raised was that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer had presented materials pertaining to the “Clinton Plan” that had been rejected during her first attempt as part of her obstruction charge.

And on top of that, Your Honor, I think there’s another motion coming from us, in light of some disclosures that were made Monday, where we think that the government is expanding its case, we believe, to include the conduct that was no true billed in Count One as part of its proof of Count Two, which raises serious issues for us. So we’ll do everything we can, but to do all that while getting Mr. Comey access to materials…

Later that day, November 5, Loaner AUSA Tyler Lemons submitted a filing claiming he had complied with Currie’s order; he explained they had previously only provided the grand jury transcript that “was previously provided to the government [passive voice] by the transcription service.” But now, in response to Judge Currie’s order, they were providing “the complete recording.”

The Court had previously Ordered the government to provide, for in camera review, all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts. [DE 95]. In response, the government provided the transcript of the Grand Jury proceedings that was previously provided to the government by the transcription service.

The Court’s subsequent Order at Docket Entry 148 additionally requested the recording from the Grand Jury presentation. Upon receiving this order, the government immediately contacted the transcription service and requested the complete recording.

But Loaner AUSA Lemons did not make the grand jury transcript available to Comey. Instead, on November 6 (and in this order), he (or rather James Hayes, the guy at Main DOJ who keeps writing these things but who has not filed an appearance) claimed he would comply with the order to provide all the material seized from Dan Richman. Then he (or rather Hayes) appealed the order to share grand jury transcripts.

The next day, November 7, Judge Currie noted she had received the grand jury materials on November 5.

In advance of a hearing on November 10, Comey revealed that Loaner AUSA Lemons had not complied with Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick’s order.

This Court subsequently entered a written order denying the government’s motion for implementation of a filter protocol and compelling production of seized materials4 and the grand jury materials, together with restrictions on further government review.

4 On November 6, 2025, the government produced various copies of what appear to be the raw returns for the search warrants at issue, unscoped for responsiveness and filtered for Mr. Richman’s privileges. But the government provided incorrect passwords to large subsets of those materials. The defense engaged a vendor who worked throughout the weekend to load and process those materials; the government provided the correct passwords on November 9, 2025.

5 The Order also required the government to provide, in writing, by the same deadline: “Confirmation of whether the Government has divided the materials searched pursuant to the four 2019 and 2020 warrants at issue into materials that are responsive and non-responsive to those warrants, and, if so, a detailed explanation of the methodology used to make that determination; A detailed explanation of whether, and for what period of time, the Government has preserved any materials identified as non-responsive to the four search warrants; A description identifying which materials have been identified as responsive, if any; and A description identifying which materials have previously been designated as privileged.” ECF No. 161 at 1-2.

Despite certifying on November 6 that it had complied with the Court’s Order, ECF No. 163, the government did not provide this information until the evening of November 9, 2025, in response to a defense inquiry. The government told the defense that it “does not know” whether there are responsive sets for the first, third, and fourth warrants, or whether it has produced those to the defense, and said that in that regard, “we are still pulling prior emails” and the “agent reviewed the filtered material through relativity but there appears to be a loss of data that we are currently trying to restore.” [my emphasis]

Nevertheless, Fitzpatrick adopted the government request that he first review the “transcript” to see whether Comey’s suspicions about privilege and Fourth Amendment violations could result in the dismissal of the entire indictment.

Later that day, November 10, the government submitted what should have been the grand jury materials for Fitzpatrick’s review.

At that point, both Judge Currie and Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick should have had a record of everything Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did in her attempt to indict Jim Comey.

In spite of the urgency, we haven’t heard from Fitzpatrick yet; I was wondering if he wanted to get a sense of how the Currie hearing today went.

But maybe he’s having the same problem Currie did.

In the disqualification hearing today, Currie revealed (ABC; CNN; Politico)  that nothing from 4:28 on was recorded.

Currie also laid into Whitaker during the hearing on whether Attorney General Pam Bondi had reviewed the grand jury transcript in James Comey’s case, noting there was no record of anything that happened after 4:28pm ET that day. Comey wasn’t indicted for nearly two hours after that, according to available court transcripts.

“It became obvious to me that the attorney general could not have reviewed” the entire proceeding, Currie said, adding that it appeared “there was no court reporter present” at the time of the missing portion.

In preparation for Thursday’s hearing, Currie privately reviewed the transcripts and said previously that she thought looking at the transcripts was “necessary to determine the extent of the indictment signer’s involvement in the grand jury proceedings.”

That’s what I said, Judge Currie!! Pam Bondi couldn’t have reviewed the transcripts when she claimed to ratify this prosecution on October 31!

If Lindsey presented in the order of the exhibit numbers, the latter part of this presentment focused on the Mike Schmidt communications and the “Clinton plan” documents — the things Comey expressed particular interest in. Plus, if you’re missing the latter bit of the presentment, you don’t have proof the grand jury voted to indict.

Remember that the foreperson did not specify that just one of the charges was no-billed (though there definitely were two indictments, both of which Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer signed).

Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer has done Rosemary Woods one, two, three, four, five, six, seven better, creating a gap of 139 minutes, from 4:28 until 6:47, over seven 18-minutes worth long.

Not bad for a rookie.

Update: Per CNN, DOJ claims nothing is missing.

In a statement to CNN following the hearing, a representative for the Justice Department denied that there was anything missing from the transcript.

“There is no ‘missing two hours.’ That time period refers to when the jurors were deliberating behind closed doors, which would not be included in a transcription,” the statement said.

The DOJ, however, did not offer an explanation for the gap in court.

Update: I think the answer is that the last bit of Lindsey’s instruction is missing, plus the entirety of the deliberation, which wouldn’t be recorded.

Update: Corrected “indictment” which would be dismissed for “transcript.”

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Corruption Is All Fun and Games Until It Threatens to Tank the Economy

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WSJ has a follow-up to the story Reuters published a week ago, on November 5 (which I wrote about here). The Reuters piece described that FHFA’s Inspector General had been fired as he was preparing to share information relevant to EDVA’s cases — so Letitia James — and also Congress.

The ouster of Joe Allen, FHFA’s acting inspector general, follows the agency’s director, Bill Pulte, becoming an outspoken voice in support of the Trump administration. Across the government, the Trump administration has so far fired or reassigned close to two dozen agency watchdogs, who police waste, fraud and abuse. It has also defunded the group that supervises those offices.

[snip]

Allen received notice of his termination from the White House after he made efforts to provide key information to prosecutors in that office, according to four sources. The information he turned over was constitutionally required, two of them said, while a third described it as being potentially relevant in discovery.

His ouster also came about as he was preparing to send a letter to Congress notifying lawmakers that the FHFA was not cooperating with the inspector general’s office, three of the sources said.

WSJ describes that Allen was investigating whether Bill Pulte ordered people to snoop in Trump’s adversaries’ records. It also confirms that Allen did share that information with EDVA (it doesn’t mention whether Allen had succeeded in sending off any letter to Congress).

Fannie Mae watchdogs who were removed from their jobs had been probing if Trump appointee Bill Pulte had improperly obtained mortgage records of key Democratic officials, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to people familiar with the matter.

Fannie’s ethics and investigations group had received internal complaints alleging senior officials had improperly directed staff to access the mortgage documents of James and others, according to the people. The Fannie investigators were probing to find out who had made the orders, whether Pulte had the authority to seek the documents and whether or not they had followed proper procedure, the people said.

That group elevated the probe about the James documents to the more senior Office of Inspector General for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and that Pulte heads, the people said. The acting inspector general then passed the report to the U.S. attorney’s office in eastern Virginia, some of the people said.

[snip]

The FHFA acting inspector general sent the office the report at least in part because it could be considered material information for James’s defense in the case, one of the people said.

The very days this all happened, on November 4, the Loaner AUSA in the James case, Roger Keller, filed a notice saying DOJ was not going to comply with Judge Jamar Walker’s order to turn over vindictive and selective prosecution evidence, specifically pointing to the carve out in Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure for “reports, memoranda, or other internal government documents” made by “other government agents in connection with the investigation,” language that would cover any FHFA reports into Bill Pulte’s corruption.

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16 does not require the Government to produce vindictive/selective prosecution-related evidence before a defendant files such a motion. The Rule permits a defendant to discover evidence material to her defense, FED. R. CRIM. P. 16(a)(1)(C), but “defense” means the “defense against the Government’s case in chief, . . . not to the preparation of selective prosecution claims.” Armstrong, 517 U.S. at 462 (citing FED. R. CRIM. P. 16(a)(1)(C))(emphasis added). FED. R. CRIM. P. 16(a)(2) underscores the limitation to “defense” as it “exempts from defense inspection ‘reports, memoranda, or other internal government documents made by the attorney for the government or other government agents in connection with the investigation or prosecution of the case.’” Id. (quoting FED. R. CRIM. P. 16(a)(2)). “If a selective-prosecution claim is a ‘defense,’ Rule 16(a)(1)(C) gives the defendant the right to examine Government work product in every prosecution except his own.” Id. [my emphasis]

James did mention the earlier Reuters report in her vindictive and selective prosecution motion, submitted last Friday.

The retribution campaign against AG James had only just begun. Around the same time, another federal agency, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), led by Director William Pulte, was also looking for dirt to use against AG James. By April 14, they had concocted it. Mr. Pulte delivered a criminal referral “[b]ased on media reports” to DOJ against AG James, claiming she had “in multiple instances, falsified bank documents and property records to acquire government backed assistance and loans and more favorable loan terms.” Ex. F at 1. The criminal referral cherry-picked documents to claim fraud over three properties—one even going back to 1983—none of which was the Peronne Property at issue in the indictment.16 The referral asked DOJ to open a criminal investigation into AG James. See Ex. F at 1. Mr. Pulte also coordinated with Edward Martin—the self-described “captain” of DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group who is President Trump’s close confidante and would later also be named a Special Attorney.17

16 Mr. Pulte’s conduct demonstrates how far allies of the President would go to carry out his “get James” orders. Public reports indicate that Mr. Pulte “skipped over his agency’s inspector general when making criminal referrals” against President Trump’s political enemies. Reports also indicate he may have bypassed ethics rules in doing so. Marisa Taylor & Chris Prentice, Exclusive: Trump official bypassed ethics rules in criminal referrals of Fed governor and other foes, sources say, Reuters (Oct. 6, 2025), https://perma.cc/HK6Y-LJVR. The FHFA has no generalized crimefighting or anti-fraud authority. It does not even have an express authority to make criminal referrals besides those granted to the FHFA’s Inspector General under the Inspector General Act of 1978. In addition to violations of the act itself, Mr. Pulte may have failed to comply with the FHFA’s own Privacy Act regulations, which require FHFA to “ensure” that records containing personally identifiable information are “protected from public view.” Domenic Powell, Are Pulte’s “Mortgage Fraud” Investigations Legal?, Yale J. Reg.: Notice and Comment (Nov. 1, 2025), https://perma.cc/2U6G-S46X.

17 Alan Feuer et al., Trump Demands That Bondi Move ‘Now’ to Prosecute Foes, N.Y. Times (Sept. 20, 2025), https://perma.cc/FC9R-U8TK. [link added]

This story may provide opportunity to submit a follow-up (or at least revisit the issue in a reply memo due in two weeks).

By then, of course, we may have more visibility into who got Allen fired, and whether simply the referral to Lindsey Halligan did the trick.

Particularly if Allen did succeed in getting that letter sent to Congress.

All this is happening at a curious time. First, just yesterday Politico claimed someone in Trump’s immediate orbit was furious at the way Pulte sold Trump on an insanely stupid 50-year mortgage plan.

White House officials are furious with Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, who talked the president into suggesting a 50-year mortgage plan.

The White House was blindsided by the idea, according to two people familiar with the situation granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, and is now dealing with a furious backlash from conservative allies, business leaders and lawmakers.

On Saturday evening, Pulte arrived at President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach Golf Club with a roughly 3-by-5 posterboard in hand. A graphic of former President Franklin Roosevelt appeared below “30-year mortgage” and one of Trump below “50-year mortgage.” The headline was “Great American Presidents.”

Roughly 10 minutes later, Trump posted the image to Truth Social, according to one of the people familiar, who was with the president at the time.

Almost immediately, aides were fielding angry phone calls from those who thought the idea – which would endorse a 50 year payback period for a mortgage – was both bad politics and bad policy, a move that could raise housing costs in the long run, the person said.

After describing fury about how Pulte did this — hitting Trump up with visuals at the golf club — Politico spends 11 paragraphs describing a range of people panning the idea before describing the last time Pulte did this: when pitching a plan to bring Fannie and Freddie public, another insanely stupid idea.

“Anything that goes before POTUS needs to be vetted,” said the person present for Pulte’s poster presentation. “And a lot of times with Pulte they’re not. He just goes straight up to POTUS.”

[11 ¶¶ of influencers and experts panning the idea]

This is not the first time Pulte’s policy proposals have caused headaches. He was also behind the idea Trump floated earlier this year to take Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public, which also resulted in significant pushback from industry.

Which brings us to the very last paragraph of the WSJ story, a story mostly focused on Pulte’s investigation-related corruption. It suggests Pulte’s corruption may make it harder to bring Fannie and Freddie public, that prior idea he floated by cornering Trump with unvetted ideas.

The Trump administration is considering an initial public offering for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, one of the biggest IPOs in history at a crucial moment for the mortgage market. That process will require convincing potential investors, and the broader mortgage-bond market, the management of the companies is stable.

As I read both James’ and Comey’s motions to dismiss for vindictive prosecution, there’s part of me that selfishly wants this process to be one step harder than it needs to be: rather than simply dismissing on the abundant evidence of vindictive prosecution laid out (or, even more likely, because Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer is only playacting as US Attorney, about which there is a hearing tomorrow), I want them to get discovery so we can unpack all this process and bring down the corrupt enablers like Pulte, Eagle Ed Martin, on up to Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche.

Still, there’s something that may force this to go even more public than it otherwise would: Lisa Cook, into whose private records Pulte was likely also snooping, who will have a hearing about whether Trump attempted to fire her “for cause,” or because Pulte snooped in her private records looking for cause.

Corruption is all fun and games until it gets fast-tracked to SCOTUS (where, admittedly, Justices have been all too happy to legalize corruption). It’s all fun and games, Trump’s team seems to believe, until it poses a risk to the housing market.

For whatever reason, Bill Pulte seems to be getting fast-tracked in Trump world, from a useful corrupt flunky to a dangerous liability.

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Gabriel Diaz’ 14 Exhibits

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As I noted here, in a telephone hearing yesterday, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick ordered the government to provide him with the grand jury transcripts in the Jim Comey case, which he will review after reading an ex parte filing from Comey’s team laying out the unlawful evidence they suspect got presented to the grand jury.

Loaner AUSA Gabriel Diaz may have helped them write that memo by confirming there were 14 exhibits presented to the grand jury.

His claim — that there were 14 exhibits — may not be entirely true.

I say that because that number — 14 — matches the number of exhibits included in last week’s response to Comey’s vindictive prosecution claim (the reply to which Comey submitted yesterday, which I’ll return to). The exhibits posted to docket last week, which all include exhibit tags, consist of the following:

This order would suggest they laid out the evidence that Comey lied, focusing heavily on the 2016 exchange (the only one from when Richman was at the FBI), and presenting Comey’s April 23, 2017 thank you email to Richman ahead of Richman’s February 11, 2017 recruitment of Chuck Rosenberg, possibly creating the misimpression that Comey asked for Richman to weigh in on what became the April 2017 story.

Then they presented the Comey memo exchange (Exhibits 10 and 11), and the “Clinton Plan” (Exhibits 12-14). As presented, they did not present the “Clinton plan” referral itself to the grand jury (which might have made it even more apparent that Lindsey was not asking about what Comey’s notes laid out).

There must be at least one more exhibit as presented for the indictment the grand jury approved. As laid out here, the grand jury was not shown how Comey responded to Ted Cruz’ question (to say nothing of Chuck Grassley’s question on which Cruz’ question was based). That is, as laid out here, prosecutors did not include the exhibit that laid out the one lie actually charged.

There must be a video or something — though I find it interesting that they didn’t provide a transcript of Cruz’ question (if they didn’t), since he garbled it about ten different ways.

There are three other questions this exhibit list raises for me.

First, one concern Comey’s attorneys have is the treatment of the materials obtained with a second warrant for Dan Richman’s Columbia emails  — presumably the source of Exhibits 4-9.

What’s interesting is the Bates stamps for those are inconsistent. The earlier set are marked with a Richman Bates stamp.

The two later ones, including the one from the same Jim Comey ReinholdNiebuhr7 alias Gmail, have COLUM Bates stamps.

That suggests those two sets of communications were treated differently. Possibly, the earlier one was part of Richman’s privilege log.

The Bates stamps on the texts between Richman and Mike Schmidt also raise questions, because there’s no source of any kind noted (or if there is, it is redacted), just a series starting with 4801.

Given some of the other details we’ve learned: that all the Feebs involved in this report directly to Kash Patel, that the agent who read the attorney-client privileged text was reading the entire Cellebrite extraction of Richman’s phone — that is, without privileged texts removed — it raises real questions about whether some other team provided them, a team with its own (obscured) Bates stamp.

Worse still, the one of the two agents who read the privileged text attested that he only handed Miles Starr two pages of texts, all dated May 11.

SA Warren provided the indictment preparation team a two-page document containing limited text message content only from May 11, 2017, predating the reference to potential future legal representation.

But the exhibit is eight pages long!

Having been told there was privileged communication there and shielded from it, someone went back to those texts to get more of them, to present them to the grand jury. And that same someone led the Loaner AUSAs to believe that sharing the Comey memos after consulting with attorneys was a crime.

Effectively, SA Warren has reported a crime committed by his superiors, the willful violation of Jim Comey’s privilege.

Which is undoubtedly why James Hayes is so intent on letting the FBI lead a privilege review.

Finally, one more thing. Remember how weird the no-billed indictment is, which I laid out here?

The indictment the grand jury approved charged Comey with lying to Ted Cruz (as Diaz would have it, without being shown what that lie is), and obstructing a Congressional proceeding, “by making false and misleading statements before that committee.”

The exhibit list makes clear that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did shoehorn the no-billed charge into the obstruction charge, presumably treating questions about the Comey memos and “Clinton plan” — the only things in the indictment that were material to the scope of the hearing — as “misleading” rather than “false” statements. Last week, Pat Fitzgerald had said they were going to raise concerns about that this week, but they may be waiting to get that grand jury transcript.

Now go back and look at how that obstruction charges looks in the no-billed (top) and approved (bottom) indictment.

Update: As Amicus12 points out below, sometime within a day or so of the indictment, this error got fixed. Here’s what the fixed document looks like:

It is increasingly clear that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer literally replaced what would have been Count Three of the no-billed indictment with Count Two of the approved indictment. That explains why that page has:

  • Staple and scan marks matching the real indictment
  • The numbering from the second indictment (these paragraphs should be numbered 7 and 8 in the no-billed indictment)
  • Both the signature of the foreperson (note the part of a signature that crosses into the “U” of the True Bill line) and Lindsey herself on that page

She simply swapped the page.

There’s good reason to ask whether she wasn’t just being dumb and inexperienced (which is what it looked like in the 7-minute hearing with the judge), but was also being deceitful.

For example, it’s possible that the original indictment charged Comey with obstructing the Senate’s investigation only by making false statements, but in a bid to get the material things in there pertinent to the larger investigation, the “Clinton plan” and the Comey memos, Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer added the word “misleading” to lower the bar to get a vote from the grand jurors.

It’s unclear whether Fitzpatrick will or can review some of these issues. He’s scrutinizing the indictment for unlawful and privileged exhibits. That also might explain why Diaz tried hard to prevent Comey from providing a list of things to look for.

The unlawful exhibits are bad enough. But there seems to be worse still.

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An awkward picture of Eagle Ed Martin and Lindsey Halligan posing in his office.

Letitia James Highlights Eagle Ed Martin Just Before He Goes on a Conspiratorial Rant

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Vindictive and selective prosecution cases are always nearly impossible to win, because of how narrowly the precedent draws the analysis. To prove vindictive prosecution, the defendant has to prove that the prosecutor who made a charging decision harbored animus to the defendant.

But of course, in Jim Comey and Letitia James’ case, the playacting prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, is just doing what her boss installed her to do. She didn’t act out of animus towards Comey and James, except insofar as such animus is a litmus test for belonging in Trump’s tribe (though her brief stint at the Smithsonian also exposed her as a dumb bigot, which could be relevant in James’ case). She acted out of a corrupt willingness to do anything her boss tells her to do.

Here’s how Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs argued that Comey had not met that standard in their response to his vindictive and selective prosecution motion.

To start, the relevant analysis is whether the “prosecutor charging” the offense “harbored vindictive animus.” Wilson, 262 F.3d at 316; see United States v. Gomez-Lopez, 62 F.3d 304, 306 (9th Cir. 1995) (noting that the focus “is on the ultimate decision-maker”). Here, that prosecutor is the U.S. Attorney. Yet the defendant doesn’t present any evidence that she harbors animus against him. Instead, he says that he doesn’t need any such evidence because his claim “turns on the animus harbored by the official who prompted the prosecution.” See Def. Mem., Dkt. No. 59 at 21. And, according to him, that is the President. See id. As discussed below, the President does not harbor vindictive animus against the defendant in the relevant sense. Before reaching that issue, however, the Court should determine whether the defendant has offered sufficient evidence to find that the President displaced the U.S. Attorney as “the ultimate decision-maker” in bringing this prosecution. See Gomez-Lopez, 62 F.3d at 304. The only “direct evidence” on the issue says otherwise. See Wilson, 262 F.3d at 314.

The defendant’s argument relies on the imputed-animus theory. The Fourth Circuit has never adopted that theory. In fact, when a defendant asked the Fourth Circuit to impute animus from investigating law-enforcement agents, the Fourth Circuit categorically rejected the theory. See United States v. Hastings, 126 F.3d 310, 314 (4th Cir. 1997) (“We will not impute the unlawful biases of the investigating agents to the persons ultimately responsible for the prosecution.”); see also United States v. Cooper, 617 F. App’x 249, 251 (4th Cir. 2015). That is consistent with other circuits’ application of the theory in that context. See, e.g., United States v. Gilbert, 266 F.3d 1180, 1187 (9th Cir. 2001) (“In all but the most extreme cases, it is only the biases and motivations of the prosecutor that are relevant.”); United States v. Spears, 159 F.3d 1081, 1087 (7th Cir. 1998).

When courts have entertained the imputed-animus theory in other contexts, they have required a significant evidentiary showing: there must be “evidence that the federal prosecutor did not make the ultimate decision to bring the indictment.” Spears, 159 F.3d at 1087.

It is true that Comey and James (in a filing submitted Friday) both did ultimately say Trump ordered up their prosecutions, relying heavily on his tweet ordering Pam Bondi to install Lindsey Halligan to do so.

But they took a different approach in laying out the weaponization of DOJ. Comey, relying on a 60-page exhibit of Trump tweets to demonstrate the President’s animus, focused relentlessly on Trump. He didn’t even mention the now-FBI Director’s equally rabid animus.

Tish James had her exhibit showing how obsessively Trump hates her too; it includes not just tweets, but also speeches, and at 113 pages is almost twice as long as Comey’s exhibit.

But James also focused on the way the Trump Administration, more generally, has been (literally) stalking her, notably in the form of Eagle Ed Martin, as well as Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller, and Bill Pulte (this section is where James includes the Reuters report about firing the FHFA IG to prevent him from sharing information with prosecutors; that footnote and others are at the bottom of this page).

AG Bondi took the President’s mission to heart, and on the first day of her appointment, established DOJ’s “Weaponization Working Group,” with the stated objective to examine “[f]ederal cooperation with the weaponization” by “New York Attorney General Letitia James” to “target President Trump, his family and his businesses,” among other top priorities. 15 Ex. C. The goal was to retaliate against the President’s perceived political enemies, including AG James.

In March, President Trump also issued a Presidential Memorandum, “Rescinding Security Clearances and Access to Classified Information from Specified Individuals,” specifically calling out AG James, claiming “it is no longer in the national interest” for her, along with fourteen of his other perceived political opponents, to have a security clearance or access classified information. Ex. D.

The retribution campaign against AG James had only just begun. Around the same time, another federal agency, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), led by Director William Pulte, was also looking for dirt to use against AG James. By April 14, they had concocted it. Mr. Pulte delivered a criminal referral “[b]ased on media reports” to DOJ against AG James, claiming she had “in multiple instances, falsified bank documents and property records to acquire government backed assistance and loans and more favorable loan terms.” Ex. F at 1. The criminal referral cherry-picked documents to claim fraud over three properties—one even going back to 1983—none of which was the Peronne Property at issue in the indictment.16 The referral asked DOJ to open a criminal investigation into AG James. See Ex. F at 1. Mr. Pulte also coordinated with Edward Martin—the self-described “captain” of DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group who is President Trump’s close confidante and would later also be named a Special Attorney.17 Reporting even indicates that President Trump had been bypassing his senior DOJ lead regularly telephoning Martin for updates on his work, leaving [DAG Todd] Blanche ‘frustrated and annoyed,’” according to sources.18

Standing outside the White House on the day the referral was released, one of the President’s aides, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, told reporters AG James “is one of the most corrupt, shameless individuals ever to hold public office” and “is guilty of multiple, significant, serial criminal violations” for having “persecute[d] an innocent man,” referring to President Trump.19 President Trump also did not withhold his views about FHFA’s criminal referral to DOJ, attacking AG James directly in several social media posts discussing the referral:

Turns out you can’t have your principal residence in Virginia and be AG of New York. You can’t say your dad’s your husband. Or claim a five-unit is a four. But that’s what Letitia James did—while going after Trump for the same thing. You’ve got to be kidding me

Ex. A. at No. 334;

Letitia James, a totally corrupt politician, should resign from her position as New York State Attorney General, IMMEDIATELY. Everyone is trying to MAKE NEW YORK GREAT AGAIN, and it can never be done with this wacky crook in office.

Id. at No. 333.

On the heels of the referral to DOJ, in May, Mr. Martin admitted that he planned to use his authority to expose and discredit opponents of the President whom he believes to be guilty. 20 He made plain that it did not matter if there were no facts to back up President Trump’s accusations or even if a charge had no merit: “If they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them. And we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, there should be people that are shamed.”21 Discussing targets for criminal investigation, Martin stated that the Weaponization Working Group’s prerogative included “Letitia James.”22

And to support this additional prong of animus, James included a second, 12-page exhibit, which includes (among other things), all the creepy pictures Eagle Ed has posted of himself stalking James, including pictures showing him reviewing files with Halligan just before she indicted James or just randomly chatting up someone at FHFA.

It also documents Eagle Ed’s juvenile trolling on Xitter.

It may be an awkward time, for Eagle Ed, to have such a focus on his trollish obsessions.

That’s because he is currently involved in equally pathetic troll campaign targeting a woman that right wing nutjobs have decided must be the Pipe Bomber based off gait analysis — I guess they’ll get around to using phrenology? — and their dislike of how she testified against Guy Reffitt, the first Jan6er to go to trial.

Anna Bower has been spending her weekend documenting how Eagle Ed first posts, then deletes, tweets trying to gin up the frothy mob. In the first such instance, someone — maybe Todd Blanche — made Eagle Ed affirmatively deny the gait-analysis claims as a “fake.”

These tweets show not just that a key cog in the James prosecution — the guy who accepted allegations from Bill Pulte and then ferried them to the woman playacting as US Attorney — is a wild conspiracy theorist happy to magnify any kind of bullshit he gets from frothy right wingers, but also that some babysitter at DOJ knows he is, and is attempting to rein him in.

I’m not sure whether Comey’s more focused approach or James’ wholistic one works better. Given that prosecutors dismissed Comey’s comparators because none had precisely the same role he once did, he certainly has an opportunity to use the opening memo that Tyler Lemons submitted last week which led to these charges to show that the current FBI Director lied his ass off to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he told Mazie Hirono that he had no intention of revisiting history to prosecute Comey.

Senator Hirono (02:18:49):

Do you plan to investigate James Comey, who’s on your list?

Kash Patel (02:18:54):

I have no intentions of going backwards-

The opening memo shows that Kash wasted no time in doing just that — not just chasing the John Durham prosecution predicated of Russian disinformation, but putting Durham’s wildly-conflicted lead investigator in charge, literally finding a lame excuse to revisit the Durham investigation.

The broad or narrow scope may not matter. Indeed, unless the cases get dismissed because Lindsey was just playacting as US Attorney, there’s a non-zero chance these arguments will be appealed through the Fourth Circuit together, which is presumably why Comey had loaded his team with appellate lawyers and scores of people are submitting amicus briefs.

These vindictive and selective prosecution arguments may make new precedent, about whether the President can repurpose the Department of Justice to prioritize jailing his political adversaries.

But Eagle Ed has now made clear that one element of that repurposed DOJ is seizing and stoking baseless conspiracy theories to rile up the base.

15 Ryan Lucas, New attorney general moves to align Justice Department with Trump’s priorities, NPR (Feb. 5, 2025), https://perma.cc/WLU8-FPBL.

16 Mr. Pulte’s conduct demonstrates how far allies of the President would go to carry out his “get James” orders. Public reports indicate that Mr. Pulte “skipped over his agency’s inspector general when making criminal referrals” against President Trump’s political enemies. Reports also indicate he may have bypassed ethics rules in doing so. Marisa Taylor & Chris Prentice, Exclusive: Trump official bypassed ethics rules in criminal referrals of Fed governor and other foes, sources say, Reuters (Oct. 6, 2025), https://perma.cc/HK6Y-LJVR. The FHFA has no generalized crimefighting or anti-fraud authority. It does not even have an express authority to make criminal referrals besides those granted to the FHFA’s Inspector General under the Inspector General Act of 1978. In addition to violations of the act itself, Mr. Pulte may have failed to comply with the FHFA’s own Privacy Act regulations, which require FHFA to “ensure” that records containing personally identifiable information are “protected from public view.” Domenic Powell, Are Pulte’s “Mortgage Fraud” Investigations Legal?, Yale J. Reg.: Notice and Comment (Nov. 1, 2025), https://perma.cc/2U6G-S46X.

17 Alan Feuer et al., Trump Demands That Bondi Move ‘Now’ to Prosecute Foes, N.Y. Times (Sept. 20, 2025), https://perma.cc/FC9R-U8TK.

18 Andrew Feinberg, Trump ally probing rivals’ ‘mortgage fraud’ speaks directly with the president – and skips typical DOJ hierarchy, The Independent (Aug. 29, 2025), https://perma.cc/4LXUUUAC.

19 Statement of Stephen Miller, White House Homeland Security Adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, to Reporters outside the White House (Apr. 18, 2025), https://perma.cc/9X5GX7YB (emphasis added).

20 U.S. Attorney Ed Martin Holds News Conference, C-SPAN (May 13, 2025), https://www.cspan.org/program/news-conference/us-attorney-ed-martin-holds-news-conference/659817.

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Tyler Lemons Narcs out Pam Bondi: She Couldn’t Have Ratified Lindsey Halligan’s Actions

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Now that Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick has ordered that prosecutors provide Jim Comey with the grand jury transcripts along with all the evidence they used in their latest filing (which they had not provided to Comey beforehand), let’s return to the saga of the missing grand jury transcripts, shall we? Because they get closer to implicating Pam Bondi in misleading the court.

As I laid out here, on October 28, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ordered prosecutors to give her all the transcripts of Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s actions in the grand jury. On October 31, DOJ delivered a package to her. Yesterday, Judge Currie ordered prosecutors to deliver what she had actually asked for: “remarks made by the indictment signer both before and after the testimony of the sole witness” during the presentment of the indictment the jury accepted, as well as “transcripts regarding the presentation of the three-count indictment” that the grand jury no-billed.

“Upon receiving this order” (which would have been yesterday, November 4), according to a new filing from Tyler Lemons, “the government immediately contacted the transcription service and requested the complete recording.” And then “the government requested that the transcription service transcribe the entire recording, which had not been done previously.” It provided those materials, for the first time recording the things Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer had done in the grand jury — both during the presentment where the grand jury rejected one of the counts, and before and after the presentment where they approved the indictment — today.

But that means that when Attorney General Pam Bondi ratified what Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer had done on October 31 …

In addition, based on my review of the grand jury proceedings in United States v. Corney and United States v. James, I hereby exercise the authority vested in the Attorney General by law, including 28 U.S.C. § 509, 510, and 515, to ratify Ms. Halligan’s actions before the grand jury and her signature on the indictments by the grand jury in each case.

… (using the same transcripts that were delivered to Judge Currie), those transcripts didn’t reveal what Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer had done.

At all!

This means two things:

First, that Pam Bondi in fact has not ratified anything Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did, because she could not have reviewed any of it. DOJ did not yet have the recording, much less a transcript.

And it means that Pam Bondi ratified what Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did, seemingly seeing precisely what Judge Currie did: the transcripts actually excluded everything Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer had done.

Update: An interesting wrinkle. Normally it’d take a long time to drag someone in the AG’s vicinity to answer for these irregularities. But not so here. Henry Charles Whitaker has filed notices of appearances in both the Comey and James cases in advance of next week’s hearing on these challenges. He’s the former FL Solicitor General, now serving as Bondi’s Counselor. That may backfire.

Update: Journalists who were in Currie’s hearing today report that DOJ still didn’t give Judge Currie the entire transcripts. There was a several minute section missing!

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The IG Firing that May Matter: FHFA

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Yesterday, Reuters reported that the Inspector General for FHFA, which oversees Fannie and Freddie, got fired by the White House yesterday.

The ouster of Joe Allen, FHFA’s acting inspector general, follows the agency’s director, Bill Pulte, becoming an outspoken voice in support of the Trump administration. Across the government, the Trump administration has so far fired or reassigned close to two dozen agency watchdogs, who police waste, fraud and abuse. It has also defunded the group that supervises those offices.

The report attracted little notice; Reuters even notes that this is just one among dozens of IG firings. But this firing may blow up sooner rather than later.

That’s because Allen was preparing to share information with EDVA prosecutors.

Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who was hand-picked for the job by Trump, subsequently indicted James after her predecessor declined to do so, citing a lack of evidence.

Allen received notice of his termination from the White House after he made efforts to provide key information to prosecutors in that office, according to four sources. The information he turned over was constitutionally required, two of them said, while a third described it as being potentially relevant in discovery.

His ouster also came about as he was preparing to send a letter to Congress notifying lawmakers that the FHFA was not cooperating with the inspector general’s office, three of the sources said. These individuals said the FHFA director would typically have been notified of such a letter. Reuters was unable to independently determine whether Pulte was informed.

By the end of the day, the Loaner AUSA in the Letitia James case had submitted a letter stating they would not comply with Judge Jamar Walker’s order, issued during the arraignment, that they turn over evidence on selective and vindictive prosecution.

A grand jury returned a two-count indictment against Defendant on October 9, 2025. Doc. 1. Defendant’s Initial Appearance and Arraignment occurred on October 24, 2025. Doc. 24. At that hearing, the Court ordered Defendant to file her motion to dismiss based on vindicative/selective prosecution by November 7, 2025. Hear’g Tr., 23:18-20. It also indicated its expectation “that the discovery associated with this potential first motion needs to be frontloaded . . . .” Id. at 23:14-16. Consistent with this Court’s instruction, the Government provided newspaper articles to Defendant’s counsel. Defendant’s counsel also indicated that he intends to request substantial discovery from the Government.

The Government provides notice of its intent not to provide vindictive/selective prosecution-related discovery prior to Defendant’s motion because the law does not “allow[ ] a defendant to have discovery on the government’s prosecutorial decisions [until] the defendant . . . overcome[s] a significant barrier by advancing objective evidence tending to show the existence of prosecutorial misconduct. The standard is a ‘rigorous’ one.” Wilson, 262 F.3d at 315 (quoting Armstrong, 517 U.S. at 468). Until Defendant meets her threshold requirements, the Court’s instruction to produce any vindictive/selective prosecution-related discovery is premature.

The letter specifically describes that Rule 16 discovery does not include internal government reports made by government agents in connection with the case — something that would be covered by any review that FHFA’s IG did of this and other Bill Pulte referrals.

FED. R. CRIM. P. 16(a)(2) underscores the limitation to “defense” as it “exempts from defense inspection ‘reports, memoranda, or other internal government documents made by the attorney for the government or other government agents in connection with the investigation or prosecution of the case.’”

The filing is not dissimilar from a letter prosecutors sent in the LaMonica McIver case, telling McIver’s attorneys they would not abide by Judge Jamel Semper’s August 26 order to meet and confer about selective and vindictive evidence.

The Government has reviewed your letter of September 3, 2025 detailing the specific discovery requests sought in conjunction with your client’s motion to dismiss based on selective prosecution and enforcement, and vindictive prosecution. As we discussed during our Zoom call yesterday, we believe that the discovery sought in your September 3rd letter is not covered by Rule 16. Discovery in support of selective prosecution and selective enforcement claims is not provided as a matter of right, and we do not believe your client has satisfied the applicable threshold evidentiary showings required by Amstrong/Bass and Washington to compel discovery. We therefore believe that Judge Semper should first rule on your client’s motion for discovery, which we will oppose, and we will revisit the discovery demands outlined in your letter should the Court grant her request.

And while Semper ruled that prosecutors have to provide McIver the communications from Delaney Hall to her, they otherwise appear to have gotten away with this stance.

But two things may lead to a different outcome here.

First, by firing Allen, the White House has made the firing itself an issue, not unlike the Erez Reuveni firing did in the Kilmar Abrego case. At the very least, this news report will add to the bases to claim vindictive prosecution.

But also because Attorney General James shares an attorney, Abbe Lowell, with Lisa Cook. No one has charged Lisa Cook yet — maybe they never will; but nevertheless she has a date at the Supreme Court in January. And that may have the effect of putting several issues before the Court at once (the lawsuit by a bunch of Inspectors General fired at the beginning of Trump’s term is stayed pending all these other cases).

None of that’s to say that SCOTUS will reverse course on letting presidents (or at least this one) fire everyone put in place to exercise some oversight.

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Cat Got the Indictment Singer’s [sic] Tongue?

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On October 28, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie — the senior South Carolina Judge who’ll preside over Jim Comey and Tish James’ challenges to Lindsey Halligan’s appointment — instructed the government to give her the grand jury transcripts.

The undersigned has been appointed to hear this motion and finds it necessary to determine the extent of the indictment signer’s involvement in the grand jury proceedings. Accordingly, the Government is directed to submit, no later than Monday, November 3, 2025, at 5:00 pm, for in camera review, all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts.

On October 30, Jim Comey submitted a motion describing all the reasons it might be useful for him to see those transcripts, too.

Although those motions must be decided on their own merits, the circumstances described in both motions raise a strong possibility that there were “irregularities in the grand jury proceedings” that would provide a “basis for dismissal of the indictment.” Nguyen, 314 F. Supp. 2d at 616 (citations omitted). Indeed, Judge Currie has already ordered the government to produce for in camera review “all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts.” ECF No. 95. Mr. Comey has argued that if Ms. Halligan alone secured and signed the indictment, dismissal would be required because she was unlawfully appointed.

[snip]

For similar reasons, disclosure of the grand jury materials is reasonably calculated to provide additional support for Mr. Comey’s argument that he would not have been prosecuted but for President Trump’s animus toward Mr. Comey, including because of his protected speech.

On October 31, the government delivered a package of grand jury transcripts to Judge Currie.

Only, they didn’t include “all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts.”

Judge Currie exhibited remarkable patience when instructing DOJ, for the second time, to give her all the transcripts.

On October 28, 2025, the undersigned entered an order directing the Government to submit, for in camera review, “all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts.” ECF No. 95. On Friday, October 31, 2025, the court received a package containing, inter alia, a “Transcript of Grand Jury proceedings on September 25, 2025.” This court has reviewed the transcript and finds it fails to include remarks made by the indictment signer both before and after the testimony of the sole witness, which remarks were referenced by the indictment signer during the witness’s testimony. In addition, the package contains no records or transcripts regarding the presentation of the three-count indictment referenced in the Transcript of the Return of Grand Jury Indictment Proceedings before the Magistrate Judge.

Did DOJ really think Currie is stupid enough for this to work?

What makes all of this exceptionally stupid, though, is that Pam Bondi described reading the transcripts before she ratified the prosecution back on October 31, the same day the transcripts mysteriously weren’t all delivered to Judge Currie.

In addition, based on my review of the grand jury proceedings in United States v. Corney and United States v. James, I hereby exercise the authority vested in the Attorney General by law, including 28 U.S.C. § 509, 510, and 515, to ratify Ms. Halligan’s actions before the grand jury and her signature on the indictments by the grand jury in each case.

So whatever it is that led someone to withhold the most important parts of the Jim Comey transcript, Pam Bondi is now complicit in it.

And all of that will make it more likely that Judge Michael Nachmanoff will himself review the transcripts to see what all the fuss is about.

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