Judge Finds Halligan Misrepresented Law and Used Tainted Evidence in Comey Grand Jury

Federal Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick issued a scathing ruling on November 17, 2025, finding that interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan may have fundamentally undermined the integrity of the grand jury proceedings against former FBI Director James Comey. In a devastating opinion, the judge identified “a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps, missteps that led an FBI agent and a prosecutor to potentially undermine the integrity of the grand jury proceeding.” The ruling came just two days before Halligan would admit in court that the full grand jury never reviewed the final indictment against Comey, adding another layer of misconduct to what the judge characterized as a prosecution riddled with constitutional violations.

Judge Fitzpatrick identified at least two instances where Halligan made “fundamental misstatements of the law” to the grand jury that were capable of compromising the entire proceeding. The first and most egregious misstatement involved the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. According to the judge’s findings, Halligan “suggests to the grand jury that Mr. Comey does not have a Fifth Amendment right not to testify at trial”—falsely implying that Comey would have to take the stand to defend himself. This represents a fundamental constitutional violation, as defendants have an absolute right to decline to testify without it being used against them. The second misstatement involved evidence standards: Halligan “clearly suggested to the grand jury that they did not have to rely only on the record before them,” misleading jurors into believing the Justice Department possessed “more and better evidence” it could deploy against Comey at trial than what was actually presented to the grand jury.

Beyond the misrepresentations of law, Judge Fitzpatrick uncovered serious problems with tainted evidence. The government had accessed materials from a prior leak investigation of Comey that had concluded years earlier without charges. When executing new search warrants targeting Columbia Law professor Daniel Richman—Comey’s friend and legal advisor—the Justice Department excluded Comey from the privilege filter process despite foreseeable attorney-client privilege concerns. Most troubling, an FBI agent who had been exposed to potentially privileged materials “proceeded to testify before the grand jury without removing himself from the investigation,” conduct the judge described as “highly irregular and a radical departure from past DOJ practice.” The agent had been explicitly warned about the potentially tainted evidence but “proceeded into the grand jury undeterred” as the only witness presenting the case.

The judge further found that prosecutors avoided seeking a new warrant for 2025 searches due to statute of limitations pressure, instead recycling materials seized five years earlier under completely different legal theories—conduct that potentially violated Fourth Amendment requirements for particularized probable cause. Fitzpatrick also questioned Halligan’s claim that all grand jury materials had been produced, identifying apparent gaps in transcripts. He raised concerns about whether the indictment returned in open court matched the document originally presented to grand jurors, describing this as potentially “uncharted legal territory.”

Judge Fitzpatrick’s findings represented a devastating rebuke of Trump’s former personal attorney and raised serious questions about whether the prosecution could survive. The magistrate judge determined there were “genuine issues of misconduct” potentially justifying dismissal of all charges. Coming just days before Halligan would be forced to admit that only two grand jurors—the foreperson and one other member—ever saw the final indictment, the November 17 ruling exposed a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct that threatened the entire case. Comey’s attorney, Michael Dreeben, would later characterize the prosecution as “a blatant use of criminal justice to achieve political ends,” arguing that Halligan’s conduct demonstrated she “did what she was told to do” by the Trump administration.

The case exemplifies the dangers of appointing political loyalists with no prosecutorial experience to positions of immense power. Lindsey Halligan, described in court documents as “a White House aide without prior prosecutorial experience” and “a former personal lawyer to President Donald Trump,” secured the indictment against one of Trump’s most prominent critics just days after her September 22, 2025 appointment—and mere days before the statute of limitations expired. Judge Fitzpatrick’s findings of fundamental constitutional violations, misrepresentations to the grand jury, and use of tainted evidence represent a stark judicial rebuke of the Trump administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department against political opponents.