American attorney and legal commentator Elie Honig said nobody really knows the full extent of the case the DOJ is building against former FBI director James Comey, but court watchers can expect an unfair fight.
“The showdown between Lindsey Halligan (for the United States) and Patrick Fitzgerald (for the defense) presents an epic mismatch of courtroom talent,” Honig told the Intelligencer. “If the case reaches trial — and it might not, given how President [Donald] Trump has teed up Comey’s selective prosecution motion with his serial public rants — watch for Fitzgerald to mop the floor with Trump’s unqualified loyalist turned prosecutor. Fitzgerald is as good as it gets. He is a legendary trial tactician who has repeatedly won jury verdicts in the highest-stakes courtroom showdowns of the past 30 years.”
“And Halligan — I’ll try to be nice here — is a charlatan. (I tried.)” Honig said, adding that Halligan is only on her tenth day as a first-time prosecutor.
“The New York Times reported that Halligan made her first-ever court appearance on the Comey matter. She originally went to the wrong courtroom and, when she did find the right place, stood on the wrong side of the judge,” Honig said. “Halligan appeared baffled by basic paperwork relating to the indictment, eventually confusing the magistrate judge by presenting two different indictments. I don’t fault Halligan at all; I was just as clueless at the end of my second week on the job.”
Halligan was primarily an insurance lawyer before Trump grabbed her to replace U.S. attorney Erik Siebert, who Honig said resigned under pressure because he didn’t believe there was enough evidence to support charges against Comey. And she got her job by being “an unflinching Trump loyalist.”
“She joined the president’s private legal team in 2022 and later oversaw the Trump White House’s review of Smithsonian Museum exhibits to eradicate ‘corrosive ideology.’ Federal prosecutors come to the job with a range of prior experience, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a U.S. attorney who has done so little of substance before landing the top job,” said Honig.
Meanwhile, Honig said Fitzgerald was a prosecutorial prodigy who spent his career “taking down mobsters and international terrorists, including the ‘Blind Sheikh’ Omar Abdel Rahman and others who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.” He also bagged associates of Osama bin Laden who bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.
During closing arguments in the 2007 false-statements trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, defense lawyer Ted Wells dramatically begged the jury: “Don’t sacrifice Scooter Libby … I give him to you. Give him back to me. Just give him back.” In his rebuttal, Fitzgerald stepped forward and said Libby “stole the truth from the judicial system. Give truth back.” Fitzgerald won a conviction.
It also doesn’t help that the Comey prosecution looks shaky, with Halligan reportedly convincing only 14 of 23 grand jurors to find probable cause for the Comey’s two-count indictment.
“If Halligan could barely win a majority of grand jurors’ votes with a low burden of proof and no defense counsel present — good luck proving the case to a unanimous jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, with Fitzgerald bringing his decades of courtroom experience to bear on the defense side.”
Fitzgerald retired from a long career in 2023 to defend his friend Comey,” said Honig. “The prosecutor across the courtroom is nowhere near up to the task.”
Read the Intelligencer report at this link.