A federal judge grilled prosecutors pursuing charges against James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, on Wednesday, questioning irregularities in the case, including that the full grand jury did not see the indictment it was supposed to have approved. Lindsey Halligan, the U.S. attorney handpicked by Mr. Trump to bring the case, admitted she never showed the second version of the Comey indictment to the full grand jury before the foreperson signed the charging document. This move could cripple the case.
The grand jurors had to vote on indictments to approve them, but only the foreperson formally approved the second charging document. Grand jurors have to see the indictment they are voting on, but Ms. Halligan told Judge Nachmanoff she didn’t show it to them. Comey’s lawyers called this another reason to dismiss the case entirely.
The prosecutors’ answers were even more extraordinary than the judge’s inquiries. Tyler Lemons, one of Ms. Halligan’s subordinates, acknowledged that someone in the deputy attorney general’s office instructed him not to discuss certain information in open court because it was privileged. In the end, Lemons confessed that the prosecutors who previously handled the case had written a draft of a memo declining prosecution.
The spectacle played out over nearly 90 minutes of tense courtroom colloquy, driving home how slapdash the prosecution of Mr. Comey appeared from its inception. Judge Nachmanoff declined to issue a ruling on Comey’s claims that the case was brought vindictively but seemed to be leaning in that direction.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/us/politics/comey-vindictive-prosecution-trump.html