Inside the Trump administration’s push to prosecute James Comey

WASHINGTON – The first few days in any new job are always hard, but Sept 25 was especially tough for Ms Lindsey Halligan, the newly installed US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

She had to navigate an unfamiliar courthouse, make her first-ever appearance in a criminal case and, on top of all that, indict one of President Donald Trump’s enemies.

Ms Halligan, who took over on Sept 22 after her predecessor quit rather than prosecute James Comey with what he believed was insufficient evidence, had a little trouble with the first two tasks. At one point, she entered the wrong courtroom. When she found the right one, she stood on the wrong side of the judge, then appeared confused about the paperwork she had just signed.

But she accomplished the third task, the one that mattered most to her boss: securing a

criminal indictment against Comey

, the former FBI director.

The indictment marked the culmination of an extraordinary series of White House actions that have, in the view of many Justice Department veterans, stripped away remaining legal and procedural restraints that might have prevented Mr Trump from directing federal law enforcement to humiliate, investigate and prosecute the people he hates.

Mr Trump’s campaign of retribution began to intensify in mid-July after an adviser stoked his snarling impatience over the slow pace of Justice Department investigations.

It hit fever pitch over the past week with the resignation of Mr Erik S. Siebert, the US attorney who believed the evidence against Comey was insufficient, and with

Mr Trump’s remarkable public demand on Sept 20

that Attorney General Pam Bondi move quickly to prosecute his enemies.

The moves set in motion five frantic days that dealt a blow to the department’s independence. It ended with a tableau that summed up the gravity and slapstick of the moment. Ms Halligan stood before the grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, overriding the judgment of her new subordinates to seek a prize her boss had long coveted: Comey’s comeuppance.

This account is based on interviews with more than a dozen administration officials and former and current prosecutors, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

The US attorney’s office, based in Alexandria, just outside Washington, is among the most important in the country, handling sensitive national security and terrorism cases.

The chaos of the investigation into Comey tore through the close-knit staff like a whirlwind, with career prosecutors scrambling for news about their leadership and marching orders. At one point on Sept 19, about a dozen of them marched up to Mr Siebert’s office to demand answers about his status, as rumours of his departure swirled.

Quitting, he told them, “was the easiest thing” he had ever done in his long career at the department, according to a person who witnessed the exchange.

The scene was equally tense on Sept 25 as jittery staff gathered in their offices, or at local bars like the one in the Westin hotel near the courthouse, awaiting the fate of Comey, Ms Halligan and, by implication, their own. Many had already contacted former colleagues at local law firms to shop resumes.

Others, including some who worked on the Comey investigation, drafted memos and e-mails to create a paper trail if they had to defend themselves or file lawsuits to contest personnel actions.

In a statement, Ms Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that Mr Trump “stands by Attorney General Bondi and appreciates her efforts to make America safe again and hold criminals accountable”.

A defiant Comey, in a video released after his indictment, said he was innocent, adding that he looked forward to his vindication at trial.

“We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either,” he said.

More indictments against Mr Trump targets appear to be on the way. The president suggested as much on Sept 26.

“It’s not a list, but I think there will be others,” he told reporters at the White House.

“These were corrupt, radical-left Democrats,” he added. “James Comey essentially was a Democrat. He was worse than a Democrat. I would say the Democrats are better than Comey, but there will be others. Look, that’s my opinion.”

Charges against Mr John Bolton, his former national security adviser who was accused of retaining classified documents, are likely to be filed soon, according to officials, though even Trump critics say that case has merit.

The New York attorney general, Ms Letitia James, is the subject of an investigation centred on her real estate dealings, even as prosecutors have found little evidence that she intended to commit mortgage fraud, as Mr Trump claims.

It is less clear where an inquiry, led by the US attorney in Maryland, into Senator Adam Schiff’s mortgage documents, is headed. A push to indict Mr John Brennan, the former CIA director, has hit snags but could quickly be revived. And the Justice Department is seeking records related to the travel history of Ms Fani Willis, the Georgia district attorney, though it remains unclear whether she is the target of an inquiry.

Stoking a drive for vengeance

Mr Trump has never been coy about his intentions. He ran in 2024 on a promise of payback and declared in a speech at the Justice Department this year his intention to pursue vengeance against the “scum” he says weaponised the criminal justice system against him.

While Mr Trump and his team acted quickly to purge the Justice Department and the FBI of officials who had roles in prosecuting him and his allies, it has taken a while for the president to exert maximum pressure to bring charges against his highest-profile foes.

In July, Mr William Pulte, an obscure but ambitious housing finance official, padded into the Oval Office and pressed doubts in Mr Trump’s mind about Mr Siebert’s role in the James investigation. It fuelled his growing frustration over the pace of Justice Department inquiries into all of his enemies, including Comey.

Mr Pulte argued that Mr Siebert was slow-walking the James case in order to get confirmed by the Senate for a job in a state with two Democratic senators, according to people briefed on the conversation.

The president’s drive for vengeance was stoked by allies in and outside his government, most notably Mr Pulte, whose accusations of wrongdoing against a Federal Reserve governor, Ms Lisa Cook, helped instigate Mr Trump’s move to oust her. Mr Pulte has often teamed up with Mr Ed Martin, who runs the Justice Department’s “weaponisation” task force.

Mr Pulte, who referred the James mortgage case to the department earlier this year, was not just veering out of his lane. He had jumped the median.

Mr Todd Blanche, the former Trump defence lawyer who now runs the day-to-day operations of the Justice Department as the deputy attorney general, made it clear he did not appreciate Mr Pulte telling the boss what the department should do, according to officials briefed on their interactions and familiar with Mr Blanche’s thinking.

Mr Blanche told people in his orbit that Mr Pulte was hyping up the president’s expectations, even though the legal threshold for bringing charges against James, proving criminal intent, had not been met.

Mr Pulte declined to comment. Mr Blanche did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr Blanche is a Trump loyalist. He left a partnership at a top New York law firm when colleagues refused to let him take on Mr Trump as a private client, and he has promoted the view that Mr Trump has nearly unlimited authority under Article II of the Constitution. He strongly believes law enforcement was weaponised against the president.

Yet unlike Mr Martin and Mr Pulte, Mr Blanche is also a seasoned former federal prosecutor with a firm grasp of evidentiary rules and an appreciation of work done by career department investigators that is not shared by the president or many others in the West Wing.

He passed along their unwelcome findings in the James investigation to the White House, knowing it would not be happily received, according to officials.

He knew that Mr Trump viewed him as his personal lawyer. He also knew his client wanted revenge, not a legal lecture, and understood that it was futile to protest too much.

By late summer, bigger political forces were at work – namely, the backlash over his department’s failure to release the full tranche of investigative files into disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. In what was seen as an effort to divert public attention, many pro-Trump influencers – egged on by government officials like Mr Kash Patel, the FBI director – turned up the volume on their demands about prosecuting the president’s enemies.

The calls for vengeance reached such a frenzy that Mr Trump himself eventually issued a chilling yet all but undeliverable threat: He claimed that former President Barack Obama had committed treason and should face “consequences”.

Enter Mr Martin, a far-right activist from Missouri, who had been given an ill-defined but potentially powerful role at the department to pursue Mr Trump’s enemies after Senate Republicans quashed his nomination to serve as US attorney for the District of Columbia.

He had a direct line to the White House, at times bypassing Mr Blanche, and had a mandate to work directly with US attorneys to bring cases.

By mid-August, he was focused on indicting Ms James over questions Mr Pulte had raised about a mortgage application for a house she had purchased in Virginia. One of the spurs driving him: His special agreement to work with Mr Siebert’s office on the James case expires at the end of this month.

Prosecutors working under Mr Siebert, however, determined that there was insufficient evidence to bring charges.

But Mr Trump was growing increasingly fixated on the fact that the Justice Department had not yet indicted a single person he had targeted, according to multiple people in his orbit, and was receptive to the agitation of advisers. Mr Pulte soon had frequent access to Mr Trump by phone, and efforts by some Trump advisers to stall Mr Siebert’s dismissal were failing.

Mr Sergio Gor, the director of the presidential personnel office, moved to dismiss Mr Siebert after Mr Trump said multiple times that he wanted him fired, according to two people with knowledge of the events. And Mr Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump legal adviser, spoke with Ms Halligan, who was serving as a lawyer in the White House, about stepping in to lead the US attorney’s office. The president quickly settled on her for the role, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Senior Justice Department officials, meanwhile, suggested that the Comey investigation was moving forward and did not rule out the possibility of a prosecution.

Another deadline accelerated the pace of that investigation: the five-year statute of limitations on potential crimes emanating from Comey’s Senate testimony, which would have expired on Sept 30.

In early September, prosecutors from Mr Siebert’s office subpoenaed Mr Daniel C. Richman, a Columbia law professor and close adviser to Comey, in connection with an investigation into whether the former FBI director lied about authorising Richman to leak information.

Mr Richman’s statements to prosecutors were not helpful in their efforts to build a case, according to people familiar with the matter. And Mr Siebert began expressing serious doubts about the case, which quickly made their way up the chain of command.

By mid-September, Mr Trump was determined to rid himself of Mr Siebert, a 15-year veteran of the office. Ms Bondi and Mr Blanche, who had worked closely with Mr Siebert on immigration, drug and gang cases, pushed back.

The president was unswayed. On Sept. 19, he told reporters he wanted Mr Siebert to leave. The prosecutor, who had hoped to find another job in the department, knew that time was up and resigned, according to officials in his office who requested anonymity to avoid retribution.

The next morning, shell-shocked staff members in the US attorney’s office awakened to find an e-mail in their inboxes from Ms Maggie Cleary, a veteran state prosecutor, saying she was their new boss.

At 6.44pm on Sept 20, Mr Trump dashed off a rambling but pointed social media message to Ms Bondi demanding action. It landed with a boom.

It read: “Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, ‘same old story as last time, all talk, no action.’ Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.”

His coda erased any questions about his intentions.

“JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” he wrote.

Moving to indict Comey

From that point on, events moved quickly and with characteristic chaos, improvisation and bluster.

By the night of Sept 20, it was clear that Ms Cleary would not be in charge after all.

Mr Trump announced that Ms Halligan, a former member of his criminal defence team who had previously specialised in insurance law, would run the office. That her first order of business was indicting Comey was obvious.

Ms Bondi and Mr Blanche had not been given much of a heads-up, or veto power, over the pick. Both quietly questioned Ms Halligan’s credentials to run such an important US attorney’s office, according to a person with knowledge of her thinking.

They have subsequently offered their enthusiastic support for Ms Halligan. Officials from the Justice Department’s headquarters were at the courthouse to assist Ms Halligan, according to a spokesperson for the department.

It is not clear who assisted Ms Halligan in drafting the bare-bones, two-page indictment. Tellingly, she was the only one to sign the paperwork. Typically, such filings are also endorsed by career prosecutors who have gathered the evidence in the case.

Only 14 of the 23 grand jurors who heard the presentation of charges voted to indict Comey, narrowly clearing the 12-vote threshold, according to the magistrate judge who oversaw the proceedings.

Moments later, it became clear that Ms Halligan, the only government lawyer assigned to the case as of Sept 27, would need some serious backup.

Comey quickly beefed up his legal team, bringing on Mr Patrick Fitzgerald, a storied former federal prosecutor best known for high-stakes prosecutions against notorious terrorists like Osama bin Laden and Ramzi Yousef.

Hours before, as Ms Halligan’s grand jury appearance at 2pm neared, rumours ricocheted around the Virginia prosecutor’s office about who might quit or be fired.

People in the office were concerned in particular that two top supervisors – Ms Maya Song, who had worked as Mr Siebert’s top deputy, and Mr Brian Samuels, the managing assistant US attorney – would not survive the day.

Office alumni contacted them both, begging that they consider remaining at their posts, if only to help maintain a sense of order, according to a person familiar with the conversations.

Thus far, only one staff member has quit: Mr Troy A. Edwards Jr., a prosecutor who is married to one of Comey’s daughters.

Mr Edwards was present at the courthouse as the grand jury deliberated, telling people there that he intended to resign if an indictment was returned.

He made good with a single-sentence letter to Ms Halligan, informing her that he was stepping down “to uphold my oath to the Constitution and the country”.

Mr Edwards stayed at work until 10pm cleaning out his office, after almost everybody else had gone home, according to a person close to him. NYTIMES