A story today NY Times reporter Alan Feuer described a remarkable development in the government’s criminal prosecution of former FBI director James Comey.

A federal magistrate judge said on Monday that the criminal case against James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, could be in trouble because of a series of apparent errors committed in front of the grand jury by Lindsey Halligan, the inexperienced prosecutor picked by President Trump to oversee the matter.

The remarkable rebuke of Ms. Halligan came in a 24-page ruling in which the magistrate judge, William E. Fitzpatrick, ordered her to give Mr. Comey’s lawyers all of the grand jury materials she used to obtain the indictment and raised the question of whether “government misconduct” in the case might require dismissing the charges altogether.

Grand Jury materials almost always remain confidential.

Judge Fitzpatrick’s order recognized that full disclosure to the defense is “an extraordinary remedy,” but explained that “given the factually based
challenges the defense has raised to the government’s conduct and the prospect that government misconduct may have tainted the grand jury proceedings, disclosure of grand jury materials under these unique circumstances is necessary to fully protect the rights of the accused.”

The 27-page memorandum opinion, which is attached below, spells out in detail just how badly the government appears to have botched this case, beginning with its failure to properly execute search warrants in 2019 and 2020 in an unrelated matter to either avoid seizing evidence beyond the scope of the warrants, and identify and separate items the would be covered by attorney-client or other legal privileges.

The prosecutor who presented the proposed indictment to the grand jury was Lindsey Halligan, who President Trump named as the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virgina because she indicated she would file criminal charges against Comey that had been turned down by her predecessor, who Trump fired due to his refusal to prosecute the case. At the time of her appointment, Halligan, an insurance attorney, had never prosecuted a case, had no experience as a prosecutor, but had served at one point as one of Trump’s personal attorneys.

At the bottom of page 20, Fitzpatrick ticks off eleven findings of fact that each provides “a reasonable basis” for Comey’s defense team to challenge specific points that could provide “ground[s]…to dismiss the indictment because of a matter that occurred before the grand jury,” as provided by Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

I recommend reading through the opinion in order to appreciate the range of problems that Judge Fitzpatrick’s opinion itemizes. Non-lawyers can skim over the legalese sections and pay closer attention to factual findings of what happened and what the errors mean for the case.