Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer Gets into Signal Trouble

[Thiệu Ngô]

Lindsey Halligan’s ham-handed effort to bully Anna Bower into backing off her coverage of problems with the Tish James’ indictment has not gone unnoticed.

By emptywheel

American Oversight just filed a FOIA for Halligan’s Signal texts.

All messages on the messaging platform Signal and any app that can interfacewith Signal or otherwise borrow its technology sent or received by U.S.Attorney Lindsey Halligan regarding government business.

American Oversight requests that all images, videos, audio recordings, or otherattachments regarding official government business shared via Signal, includingany app that can interface with Signal or otherwise borrow its technology, beproduced in response to this request. To the extent any hyperlinks and/or URLs were shared, American Oversight requests records in a form that display the full URL.

Given that this request is limited to a specific, recent, and readily identifiable documents, American Oversight expects that this request can be processed on the Simple processing track and result in a prompt agency response.

Remember: American Oversight was the organization that sued to preserve Pete Hegseth’s Signal tweets, only to discover many of them were destroyed.

As the NGO noted in a presser, though, Halligan is under additional legal mandate to preserve the texts she sent to Bower: DOJ records retention rules that will become key in the Vindictive Prosecution motions filed against her.

Today, American Oversight launched an investigation into interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan’s reported use of Signal to communicate with a journalist about the prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James — one of President Trump’s perceived political enemies. Halligan, whose status and authority as interim U.S. Attorney are being contested in court, later attempted to retroactively claim her Signal messages to the reporter were off the record. According to reports, she set her messages to automatically delete after eight hours — which, if true, constitutes a clear violation of the Federal Records Act and the Department of Justice’s own records-retention rules requiring the preservation of official communications.

In launching its investigation, the nonpartisan watchdog filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the DOJ seeking Halligan’s Signal communications about government business, as well as related DOJ records concerning her use of the app.

“No one can go ‘off the record’ to avoid following the law, not even someone acting as a powerful interim U.S. Attorney. That Halligan used Signal to discuss government business and configured her messages to automatically delete raises serious concerns that she is actively violating the law and attempting to hide the record of her actions — including that she may have revealed sensitive grand jury information,” said Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director of American Oversight. “What makes this all the more alarming is the context: Halligan appears to have engaged in this conduct while leading prosecutions against the president’s perceived political enemies — heightening concerns that her lawlessness is part of a broader pattern of politicized and unethical behavior within the president’s Justice Department.”

Plus, it’s not like Halligan can claim ignorance of the Federal Records Act. The law was central to the logic of the stolen documents case on which she was a defense attorney for Trump.

I’m still somewhat surprised that neither Patrick Fitzgerald nor Abbe Lowell have filed a preservation order on Halligan. Perhaps they’re just assuming that Halligan’s destruction of these texts will guarantee DOJ’s failure on the Vindictive motions?

Correction: They have not sued for Halligan’s texts, yet; they’ve just filed the lawsuit.