“Anna, Lindsey Halligan Here.”
My Signal exchange with the interim U.S. attorney about the Letitia James grand jury.
It was 1:20 p.m. on the afternoon of Saturday, Oct. 11. I was lounging in my pajamas, idly scrolling through Netflix, having spent the morning reading news stories, occasionally tweeting, and watching TV. It was a rare day off.
Then my phone lit up with a notification. I glanced down at the message.
“Anna, Lindsey Halligan here,” it began.
Lindsey Halligan—the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia—was texting me. As it turned out, she was texting me about a criminal case she is pursuing against one of the president’s perceived political enemies: New York Attorney General Letitia James.
So began my two-day text correspondence with the woman President Donald Trump had installed, in no small part, to bring the very prosecution she was now discussing with me by text message.
Over the next 33 hours, Halligan texted me again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Through the whole of our correspondence, however, there is something Halligan never said: She never said a word suggesting that she was not “on the record.”
It is not uncommon for federal prosecutors to communicate with the press, both through formal channels and sometimes informally. My exchange with Halligan, however, was highly unusual in a number of respects. She initiated a conversation with me, a reporter she barely knew, to discuss an ongoing prosecution that she is
personally handling. She mostly criticized my reporting—or, more precisely, my summary of someone else’s reporting. But several of her messages contained language that touched on grand jury matters, even as she insisted that she could not reveal such information, which is protected from disclosure by prosecutors under federal law.
As a legal journalist covering the Justice Department, I had never encountered anything quite like my exchange with Halligan. Neither had my editor. Over the last several days, he and I spoke with multiple former federal officials and journalists who cover the justice system. None could recall a similar instance in which a sitting U.S. attorney reached out to chastise a reporter about matters concerning grand jury testimony in an active case.
Justice Department spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre confirmed the authenticity of the texts at 4:34 p.m. today, responding to my questions about the exchange with a statement that reads in its entirety:
"
You clearly didn’t get the response you wanted—which was information handed over to you without having to dig into the facts of the case to craft a truthful story—so you thought you’d “tattletale” to main justice. Lindsay [sic] Halligan was attempting to point you to facts, not gossip, but when clarifying that she would adhere to the rule of the law and not disclose Grand Jury information, you threaten to leak an entire conversation. Good luck ever getting anyone to talk to you when you publish their texts.
CONTINUED:
My Signal exchange with the interim U.S. attorney about the Letitia James grand jury.
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