Trump Dumbass Lindsey Halligan Ain't Need No 'Evidence' Or 'Probable Cause' To Indict James Comey!
She does actually need those things.
There’s an awful lot of “The fascism is not coming, it’s here” in this story, but don’t worry, it’s also full of reminders that our fascists are fucking dumbasses. So take heart!
Line prosecutors have written a memo to Lindsey Halligan, the new clownishly inexperienced-yet-blonde lawyer Donald Trump installed to lead the Eastern District of Virginia after the last guy Eric Siebert refused to make up crimes to charge New York AG Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey with. Will Halligan do that for Trump? Uhhhhhh, well, she’s inexperienced, blonde and MAGA, and Trump hired her to be part of his legal team after he saw her at Mar-a-Lago wearing a suit, which we guess looked like “central casting” to him? (Those lady lawyers on Law & Order are ALWAYS wearing a suit!)
So she’s perfect!
She’s like the Miss Virginia version of Miss New Jersey Alina Habba, we bet she can fake smart just like Habba too! (What? Do you think former Miss USA owner Trump is doing anything here besides lining up pageant contestants on a stage? Heh.)
So yeah, Lindsey Halligan, a moron, is totally ready to do that for Mister Trump.
News started to break yesterday that Halligan was preparing to do exactly that, to indict James Comey for (???), to teach him a lesson! (About refusing to drop the Russhur Russhur Russhur investigation, even though Trump totally demanded it and then fired him for disobedience. Also whatever else is making Trump mad about Comey, he’s got a list of grievances. Remember who told Trump about the pee tape rumors? Yep.)
Which brings us to the memo.
This is so embarrassing, we are almost embarrassed for Lindsey Halligan.
The line prosecutors explained to Halligan the Superlawyer that one eensy problem with her plan to indict Comey — the stupid and spurious charge would likely be lying to Congress, and the statute of limitations for that is next Tuesday, UH OH! — and it is that after months of investigating, they not only found insufficient evidence to prove he committed a crime, but also no probable cause to even get an indictment.
You know that thing they say about grand juries being willing to indict a ham sandwich?
Yeah well the first rule of indicting ham sandwiches is that you have to actually show the grand jury a fuckin’ ham sandwich.
Dumbass.
Did we mention that this would be Lindsey Halligan’s first time trying a criminal case? (She’s an insurance lawyer.) Wheeeeeee! Doin’ big stuff, mom and dad, be sure to take pictures!
And how did that memo from the line prosecutors land? Did it helpfully explain the first thing to Halligan about How To Law? Did she get the message that not even a leaking Bota Box legal wizard like DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro was likely to get an indictment here?
Despite their recommendations, Halligan — who has never prosecuted a criminal case in her career as an insurance lawyer — plans to present evidence to a grand jury before the statute of limitations for the alleged offense expires next week, the sources said.
Bless her heart.
So this could go the way it’s been going for Pirro. You never know, though, Halligan might throw ham slices at the grand jury, might work.
ABC News reports that Halligan’s immediate deputy “has also expressed reservations about bringing the politically charged case,” so we guess they’ll be fired soon for insufficiently huffing Trump’s farts and saying he likes it. Also expressing reservations, according to the Wall Street Journal? Pam Bondi!
But no matter, Trump is sitting on the potty and stomping his feet.
“Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, and Leticia???” demanded Trump to Bondi this weekend. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
What if they have literally no case against these people?
Haha, that doesn’t matter in dictatorships! (It actually kind of still matters in the US of A, for however long that lasts.)
So, about the likely “charges” if this dumbass actually goes through with going to the grand jury, which may happen as soon as today.
You might have assumed this is about that time Comey wrote “86 47” in jellybeans on the beach and the feds caught him RED-HANDED, because of how he posted it on Instagram. (Also he didn’t actually write it, he just took a picture and posted it. It was most likely written by God, through His little helpers the seagulls.)
But no. This is equally stupid, and much more boring.
Basically, the conspiracy theory is that Comey allegedly lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 30, 2020, when Ted Cruz asked him if he had authorized former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to leak to the media about the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation. “Have you ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton administration?” asked Ted Cruz. Comey replied, “I can only speak to my testimony. I stand by the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of 2017.”
If you want to refresh yourself on all the Trump 1.0 controversies over McCabe supposedly authorizing or not authorizing leaks to the press, knock yourself out. Lawfare has a really good new primer on WTF it’s about, plus other fever dream bogus charges they could make up for Comey, based on right-wing conspiracy theories. But the important thing here is that in 2018, the DOJ inspector general released the findings of his investigation, which found, per MSNBC, that “Comey did not authorize the release of the information and that FBI rules allowed McCabe, as deputy director, to speak to the news media without authorization.”
That’s … likely the entirety of it. Or at least that’s the thing where the statute of limitations would expire Tuesday. But hey, maybe they’re going to loop in some more Comey’s treasonous Instagram posts, he put up a thing for Pride this year, maybe he will go to jail for doing a #woke!
Again, Lindsey Halligan has a memo sitting on her desk, written by real DOJ prosecutors, that says she can’t win this case and might not get a grand jury to even indict, due to the lack of evidence and probable cause. But she’s a dumbass, and she wasn’t hired because she was good at law, so fuck it, she’s probably gonna go for it!
In which case the grand jury has an opportunity to do something hilarious as every other grand jury lately when a Trump dumbass begs for a baseless indictment.
How much dumbass is Lindsey Halligan? Remember, she’s the one Trump deputized to pick through all the art at the Smithsonian and pull out anything that suggests white conservative men have ever acted less than perfectly in our nation’s history. This is the dumbass who said on TV, “While slavery is obviously a horrible aspect of our nation’s history, you can’t really talk about slavery honestly unless you also talk about hope and progress.”
Yeeeeeah. That much dumbass.
As we said at the top, this is a story about America’s fascists, but it’s also a story about how America’s fascists are absolute fucking morons.
What an era of greatness we live in, the founding fathers would be so proud.
[ABC News]
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Trump is in the White House because of Comey's willing 2016 betrayal. He bears at least some responsibility for the horrors America has suffered since.
Comey can burn on the floor of Hell.
Special Assistant Nazi Barbie!
(indictment sold separately)