Trump DOJ Prosecutor Lindsey Halligan Sent Journalist Dozens of Texts — Then Tried to Claim ‘Off the Record’

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan sent Lawfare Senior Editor Anna Bower dozens of text messages earlier this month to complain about her reporting — and then attempted to claim after the fact that the conversation was off the record.

It was most certainly not off the record, and on Monday evening, Bower published screenshots of their texts.

In her article, Bower described how on the afternoon of Saturday, October 11, she got a new message alert on Signal — the same app where Trump administration officials infamously shared attack plans on a group chat — that purported to be from Halligan.

Bower initially “assumed the exchange was a hoax,” she wrote, because “while it is not unusual for lawyers to reach out to me about my reporting or commentary, it is highly unusual for a U.S. attorney to do so regarding an ongoing prosecution—particularly in a high-profile case in which her conduct is already the subject of immense public scrutiny.”

It was not a hoax, and Halligan sent her dozens of messages before attempting to claim after the fact that their conversation had been off the record.

Halligan, President Donald Trump’s former attorney before he appointed her as U.S. Attorney, was annoyed about tweets Bower had posted regarding the prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Trump nemesis for the civil judgment her office obtained against the president and his company last year. The massive financial penalty was tossed out by a New York appeals court a few months ago, but the ruling seemed to do little to calm the president’s ire towards James.

Multiple media outlets reported that the previous U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, found the allegations that James had committed mortgage fraud to be unsupported by sufficient evidence. After Siebert refused to move forward with the case and resigned, Halligan took over, and James was indicted for mortgage fraud earlier this month.

James blasted the indictment as “political retribution” and called the charges “baseless.”

Numerous attorneys and commentators — including Bower — have expressed deep skepticism regarding the validity of the charges against James, and it was a few of Bower’s tweets sharing screenshots of a New York Times article with factual inconsistencies in the indictment that drew Halligan’s attention.

After verifying that the person messaging her was actually Halligan, Bower asked her what was “inaccurate” in her tweets, and Halligan accused her of “assuming exculpatory evidence without knowing what you’re talking about” and “jumping to conclusions,” but declined to be more specific.

The two continued to message back and forth, with Halligan accusing Bower of being “biased” and of “want[ing] to twist and torture the facts to fit your narrative,” and Bower making repeated requests for Halligan to specify what was inaccurate.

Halligan also told Bower she should “feel free” to reach out with questions, and scolded her about “fact-checking” before sharing other outlets’ reporting.

But when Bower later attempted to do that, Halligan accused her of not reporting “fairly” and refused to answer her questions. Bower made additional attempts to ask Halligan what was inaccurate about her reporting, but could not get an answer.

As Bower observed, Halligan was very chatty with her, “[b]ut there was an important thing she had not said during the entirety of our communications: ‘Off the record’ or ‘On background’ or anything whatsoever about the terms on which we were talking.”

The request to have the conversation “off the record” did not come until Monday, after Bower reached out to the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs for comment with a 4:15 pm ET deadline.

Five minutes before that deadline, Halligan attempted to retroactively make their conversation off the record, getting a “I’m sorry, that’s not how this works” reply from Bower, as seen in the screenshot below:

Screenshot via Lawfare.

Considering Halligan’s past experience as Trump’s attorney, frequently dealing with the media, Bower thought it was “baffling” that she would reach out over text and share so much information without first requesting to be on background, off the record, or some other restriction.

“She knew I was a journalist,” wrote Bower. “She approached me. She invited my questions. She even encouraged me to stop chasing other reporters’ stories and focus on my own.”

“Turns out, she gave me a great one,” she added.

Read Bower’s article at Lawfare and the screenshots of the text messages here.