Inside the seven tumultuous days that led to the James Comey indictment
By Jeremy Herb, Hannah Rabinowitz, Holmes Lybrand, Katelyn Polantz, Evan Perez, Aileen Graef, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan had been on the job for just four days as US attorney when she stood before a grand jury seeking an extraordinary and unprecedented indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.
There was, of course, the grave political implications of an indictment brought forward after a president demanded retribution against his political enemies, with Comey at the top of the list.
But there also was the fact it was the political appointee Halligan alone, with no prior prosecutorial experience, asking the grand jury to hand up an indictment on two counts of lying under oath and one of obstruction of justice – a not-so-subtle sign of protest from the Eastern District of Virginia prosecutors over the strength of the case.
The Alexandria, Virginia, grand jury ultimately approved an indictment charging Comey with two counts – the other false statements charge was rejected – propelling the United States into a new phase that Trump’s critics warn amounts to a breach of democratic values and a dangerous lurch toward authoritarianism.
The federal charges against Comey marked the culmination of seven days’ worth of chaos inside the Justice Department and the US attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia — which has had three different officials in charge of the office over the past week.
Trump has been calling for more blood. The president for months has lamented behind the scenes that while he was prosecuted and indicted while out of office, those he deems his political opponents have faced no such charges, sources told CNN.
Trump has called for the prosecutions of New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff, both Democrats. Justice Department senior leaders are advocating for a charge to come quickly against former Trump national security adviser John Bolton. And Trump signed an executive order on Thursday directing the Justice Department to investigate liberal groups, singling out billionaire Democratic donor George Soros as a “likely candidate” for investigation.
“It’s not a list, but I think there will be others,” Trump told CNN’s Kevin Liptak on Friday as he departed the White House for the Ryder Cup. “What they’ve done is terrible, I hope, frankly, there are others because you can’t let this happen to a country.”
Thursday’s charges underscore a massive shift in the way that the president has channeled the Justice Department to attack his political opponents compared to when he first took office in 2017.
It was the 2017 firing of Comey that prompted the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate possible Trump campaign connections to Russia and obstruction of justice. To Trump’s dismay, his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, recused himself from that case, and senior DOJ leaders and White House officials kept the president at arm’s length from interfering in the probe.
And it was Comey’s 2017 dinner with Trump, when the president asked Comey to “let” go of the investigation into his first national security adviser Michael Flynn, which became a key component of Mueller’s investigation that found Trump likely obstructed justice but couldn’t be charged because he was president.
Now in his second term, Trump has asserted control over the Justice Department and the prosecutors working for it. The president demanded the ouster of a US attorney who would not bring forward a case, replacing him with a fierce loyalist who wasted little time to bring forward an indictment against one of the people Trump blames for the Russia and special counsel investigations — despite attorneys inside the Eastern District of Virginia recently writing a memo detailing their reservations over seeking an indictment.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had dinner with Trump at the White House on Wednesday, had concerns about the case against Comey, sources told CNN, though she put out a message of support on social media immediately after news of the indictment broke Thursday and denied CNN’s reporting as a “flat out lie.”
Comey responded to the indictment with a message on social media saying he would not be intimidated.
“Jim Comey denies the charges filed today in their entirety. We look forward to vindicating him in the courtroom,” Comey’s attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, said in a statement.
‘I want him out’
The first domino in the chaotic week of events leading up to Comey’s indictment fell last Friday, when the US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, had been resisting pressure to go after Trump’s enemies. That pressure, however, was focused primarily on James, the New York attorney general who won the civil fraud case against Trump and his company, and who has been under investigation for allegations of mortgage fraud.
“Yeah, I want him out, yeah,” Trump said last Friday in response to a question about firing Siebert.
Siebert told his staff the same day he would be stepping down, while Trump claimed he had fired the prosecutor.
Regardless of how Seibert was dismissed, Trump wasn’t done. He posted a message on Truth Social addressed to Bondi on Saturday containing a demand that prosecutors bring charges against Comey, James and Schiff, a longtime Trump nemesis who is being investigated in a different US attorney’s office. Attorneys for both James and Schiff have said the allegations of mortgage fraud against them are baseless.
“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
Trump called on his attorney general to appoint Halligan, a fierce loyalist and former personal attorney, to be interim US attorney, despite her lack of prosecutorial experience. Maggie Cleary, the first assistant in the prosecutors’ office, had initially been put in charge following Seibert’s departure.
Halligan took over as US attorney on Monday.
‘That statement was false’
While Siebert’s resignation was forced primarily over the allegations surrounding the New York attorney general, it was the Comey case facing a time crunch — because the five-year statute of limitations on Comey’s congressional testimony was due to expire on Tuesday.
Comey’s testimony occurred before the Senate Judiciary Committee via Zoom from his home in northern Virginia on September 30, 2020. He was asked whether he stood by prior testimony from 2017 that he did not leak or authorize leaks about the FBI investigations into Trump and his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Comey testified that he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports,” the Justice Department said in its two-page indictment. “That statement was false.”
In the years since Trump fired him, Comey has become a prominent Trump critic, even as some Democrats still blame his public statements on the Clinton email investigation for helping Trump win the 2016 election.
Comey already faced questions from federal authorities earlier this year when he posted a cryptic message showing shells in the sand on a beach spelling out “86 47,” which has become a popular social media code for removing Trump from the presidency. Comey was interviewed by US Secret Service agents over the post.
‘Now what do I do?’
Halligan, who had never presented to a grand jury, did a crash course to prepare with DOJ attorneys and FBI officials before Thursday’s presentation, a source told CNN.
Halligan participated in a number of “practice runs” and spent hours going through the material in preparation, the source said.
Halligan has only ever appeared officially in federal court on three cases, according to court records. Based in Ft. Lauderdale, she represented Trump in all three of the cases in the Southern District of Florida, in 2022 and 2023. One of the cases is a lawsuit where Trump sued CNN. (The case was dismissed.)
With the decision on whether to charge Comey looming, Halligan was spotted at Justice Department headquarters in Washington this week. Sources told CNN that Bondi and other federal prosecutors had concerns about the strength of the case.
The night before the charges were brought, Bondi had dinner at the White House Rose Garden with Trump at a table for six.
As the prospect of an indictment came into focus Thursday, a crowd gathered outside the Comey’s residence. Comey’s home sits in a wealthy neighborhood in northern Virginia just outside of DC, with its own security team, pristine landscaping and quiet residents.
A handful of neighbors came out to ask why a row of cameras were pointed at the home all of Thursday – and one called security to try and remove media from the neighborhood, a police officer told CNN.
Members of Comey’s family would periodically come outside to check the mail or drive to and from the home, waving to the group of producers and cameramen who waited for Comey’s potential emergence.
Two separate pizza deliveries made their way to Comey’s home, neither of which the family ordered. Both orders — including two large pizzas from Domino’s and one 12-inch Original from Papa John’s with a Pepsi — said they would be paid for by cash upon delivery.
“Please knock or ring doorbell and hand it to customer,” one order’s instructions reviewed by CNN read.
“Now what do I do?” one delivery man asked when the order was turned away.
In the basement of a locked courthouse
The federal grand jury in Alexandria meets in the basement of the courthouse, away from public view.
Just before 5 p.m. ET, the courthouse put a big “locked” sign on the exterior door, meaning no more members of the public could go inside the courthouse, while the reporters and others gathered inside awaited Halligan and a potential indictment.
A little over an hour later — well past the time grand juries typically stay — Magistrate Judge Lindsey Vaala received the indictment handed up by the grand jury. The judge announced the new case against Comey and said publicly that 14 jurors agreed to indict on the counts of false statements in the jurisdiction of a congressional proceeding and obstruction of a congressional proceeding.
Vaala said there was a third count presented to the grand jury, which it did not approve for the indictment. A court record made public on Thursday confirmed that the grand jury voted “no” on indicting Comey on a second alleged false statement to Congress — a very unusual occurrence in the federal court system.
But before the judge announced the indictment, there was a wave of confusion over two documents that had been presented, which was not normal operating procedure.
The judge said she was confused and that this had “never happened before,” though the paperwork was sorted out with the grand jury foreperson and Halligan.
“I haven’t seen it,” Halligan said of the two documents.
“Your signatures are on both,” Vaala responded.
Timothy Belevetz, a former assistant US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, said he could not recall a grand jury ever turning down an indictment in his eight-plus years as a prosecutor in the office.
“It’s very rare for a count that’s been presented to the grand jury to be rejected,” Belevetz said.
As the indictment was handed up, there was another prosecutor in the courtroom: Comey’s son-in-law Troy Edwards Jr., who worked as a prosecutor in the same US attorney’s office now indicting the former FBI director. Edwards went in to speak with the judge privately in chambers for about 30 minutes before the public court proceeding.
Not long after the indictment was announced, Edwards submitted his resignation.
“To uphold my oath to the Constitution and country,” Edwards wrote in a one-sentence letter to Halligan, “I hereby resign as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in the Department of Justice effective immediately.”
CNN’s Casey Gannon, Kristen Holmes and Alayna Treene contributed to this report.
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