In its rush to indict former FBI director James Comey, the Justice Department “may have tainted the grand jury proceedings,” a federal judge said Monday.
Lindsey Halligan, the former White House lawyer President Donald Trump appointed to lead a U.S. attorney’s office in Virginia with explicit expectations to settle a score with his political enemies, has now been ordered to turn over all the grand jury materials to Comey’s lawyers — an unusual step that denotes how this case is already spiraling out of control.
In a 24-page opinion, Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick described how Halligan may have crossed the line by having an FBI special agent who had previously reviewed “potentially privileged information” testify before the grand jury.