Former prosecutor Andrew Warren tells MS Now that it’s easy to dismiss the Trump administration’s disastrous Wednesday judicial hearing as what happens when you replace real lawyers with “incompetent lackeys.” But this isn’t just about a president’s abysmal hiring standards.
Justice Department prosecutors admitted during the prosecution of a former FBI director James Comey that the grand jury that “approved” the pending indictment against Comey never voted on — or even reviewed — the actual indictment.
“But the magnitude of the prosecution’s incompetence plays a more sinister role as well: It masks the sheer extent of the pervasive and pernicious corruption and lawlessness that has been allowed to fester by this administration,” said Warren.
U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick found multiple serious problems with Halligan’s grand jury presentation. Halligan told jurors they did not need to rely on the evidence before them because the government supposedly had “better” evidence waiting at trial, which Warren described as an “egregious violation of fundamental rules that any competent attorney knows.”
Halligan, a real estate attorney temporarily charged with removing mentions of historical racism from the Smithsonian Institution before Trump tapped her as AG, also wrongly suggested Comey had no right to remain silent, which Warren said “anyone who has ever watched an episode of ‘Law & Order’” knows isn’t true. And now Lindsey’s case is on shaky ground if the indictment she filed in court turns out not to be the one the full grand jury actually reviewed.
But Halligan’s swap of one indictment for another is not just another “paperwork error,” as the government claims, said Warren. Criminal procedure requires the grand jury to return the indictment, not some revised version known only to the prosecutor.
“There are good reasons for this: If the prosecutor [and not a jury] effectively decides who gets charged and for what, that opens the door to political, retaliatory or abusive prosecutions because there is no longer a neutral body verifying that the evidence even supports the charges,” said Warren. “It is impossible to overestimate the danger posed by an administration willing to pursue criminal charges against whomever it wants for whatever reason it wants. Yet that is precisely what is occurring, whether under the guise of rank incompetence or the real thing.”
“Grand juries — and independent prosecutors for that matter — historically served as a check on this overreach. By replacing experienced prosecutors with sycophants, Trump has systematically dismantled that structural and procedural guardrail.”
Warren went on to say that Trump’s big threat to the rule of law is lawyers he hires who treat the law as optional.
“This debacle resulted from installing unqualified loyalists in positions where they can carry out the president’s political vendettas — and it presents a clear warning that politicizing the Justice Department corrodes the very foundations of our democracy. Unless there are severe consequences, it will not be the last one.”
Read the full MS Now report at this link.