U..S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan (Photo: screen capture)
Editor's Note: This story has been updated with the addition of a video.
Lawyers for James Comey are in court on Wednesday as part of the former FBI director's case against the Justice Department. Comey claims he's being selectively prosecuted as part of a revenge effort by President Donald Trump.
CNN's crime and justice correspondent Katelyn Polantz revealed one "startling discussion" in court during which "things got very intense very quickly."
One of the revelations was that the full grand jury never saw the final indictment of Comey before U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan announced it.
"I mean, this is a big revelation, Katelyn. Have you ever heard of this happening before?" host Pamela Brown asked.
Polantz said she's been in a lot of these DOJ hearings, and this one was "gobsmacking."
"It was absolute silence," she said. "You could see the entire room shift. And from that point on this was the only thing mattering in this case. This was the only thing the judge and others were talking about."
"In full, they had voted down indicting Comey because they had been asked to approve three different charges against him. That indictment was a no from the grand jury. And then there was no further discussion with the prosecutors to bring about the indictment Comey now faces," she explained.
The judge then began asking questions about the missing pieces of the grand jury testimony. The transcript had chunks missing, even in the judge's copy and he wanted to know why.
"The judge asked the question: 'The operative indictment in this case, that document was never shown to the entire grand jury?'" she cited.
Tyler Lemons, the prosecutor at the table with Halligan said, "no."
Another thing Polantz found surprising is how much the argument went back to Halligan.
"Is she a puppet? Is she a stalking horse of Donald Trump [...] sent in to bring this case?" the judge asked at one point.
"And the prosecutors kept saying, 'No, she was making decisions on her own,'" Polantz explained, describing Halligan as nodding vigorously in agreement.
Once it became known that the full grand jury didn't see the indictment, it was about a different matter entirely, and Halligan became very "short" with the judge, Polantz said.