Lindsey Halligan, the newly minted head of the Justice Department’s Eastern District of Virginia, has landed in hot water with a jaw-dropping 33-hour text spat with a journalist, as Daily Mail reports.
This saga centers on Halligan’s prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud, a case already steeped in controversy, now amplified by a messy exchange with Lawfare senior editor Anna Bower.
Halligan, recently appointed to her powerful role, is seen by many as a staunch ally of conservative priorities within the DOJ, a fact that adds fuel to the fire of this unfolding drama.
Earlier this month, Halligan took a daring step by independently indicting James on charges of mortgage fraud, without coordinating with the attorney general or her team.
The indictment alleges James signed a "Second Home Rider" for a property, promising to use it as a secondary residence while barring timesharing or shared ownership, only to allegedly misrepresent her usage.
Prosecutors claim this deception helped James dodge a higher mortgage rate by 0.815 percent, pocketing savings of roughly $17,837 over the loan term and a seller credit of about $3,288—a tidy sum for bending the rules, if true.
James now faces staggering consequences, including up to 30 years in prison per count, fines as high as $1 million each, and the potential forfeiture of her properties.
Yet, James has firmly denied any misconduct, calling the prosecution a “desperate weaponization of our justice system,” a charge that resonates with those wary of overreach by federal authorities (Letitia James).
While her defenders might see this as a political hit job, the numbers in the indictment paint a troubling picture that demands answers, not just rhetoric.
Amid this legal storm, Halligan reached out to Anna Bower of Lawfare earlier this month, upset over social media posts critiquing the DOJ’s case against James.
What followed was an intense 33-hour text exchange via the encrypted Signal app, where Halligan accused Bower of misrepresenting the prosecution and leaping to unfounded conclusions.
Bower, pushing back, repeatedly asked Halligan to pinpoint specific errors in her reporting, only to be met with silence on that front—a curious dodge for someone so eager to set the record straight.
Things took a sharper turn when Halligan tried to retroactively label their entire conversation as “off the record,” even setting her messages to delete after eight hours, claiming it was “obvious” due to Signal’s privacy features.
Bower wasn’t buying it, informing Halligan that such after-the-fact declarations hold no weight in journalism, and she ultimately published the exchange, chat history and all, for public scrutiny.
Halligan’s insistence with, “By the way — everything I ever sent you is off record,” seems more like a Hail Mary than a sound legal strategy, leaving one to wonder if she underestimated the tenacity of a seasoned reporter (Lindsey Halligan).
