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A
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A
I'm good. It's been a weird week or a weird nine days, but I appreciate you having me here. I'm Good.
- [02:36]
B
Absolutely. There were many, many things about your reporting. And we'll put a link to it down in the notes on Lawfare yesterday and we'll read from some of the texts. They're just eye poppingly fascinating about what Lindsay Halligan thought she was doing. And I want to ask you what you thought, what she thought she was doing, but so you've done reporting about everything related to Donald Trump and prosecutions and the vindictive prosecutions that are now going on. And Lindsay Halligan seen, it looks like you guys met apparently at the Breakers Hotel with Jim Trustee when she was on the Mar A Lago case, right?
- [03:13]
A
Yeah, yeah. So the background here is I, I was covering Trump's criminal cases at the time. He had not yet been indicted. But of course, there was this search at Mar A Lago. Documents were seized by the FBI. Trump's team, which at the time included Lindsey Halligan and Jim Trustee, filed a very unusual motion in which they sought to have the appointment of a special master to sort through these documents and to kind of stop the Justice Department's investigation of Trump's alleged wrongful retention of classified documents. So amid all of that, Judge Eileen Cannon, who was presenting, presiding over this civil case related to that motion, calls a hearing. I had just started reporting on these cases. I am in Florida and go to this hearing. Afterward, I go to eat dinner at this hotel. And who is there but Lindsay Halligan and Jim Trusty.
- [04:15]
B
Was she wearing her red pantsuit?
- [04:18]
A
She was not, no. I think she was wearing. I don't remember what she was wearing. She does have some really great court fits, though, in terms of her courtroom outfits. But we briefly spoke. I remember it very clearly because they were very dissatisfied then with my reporting on the hearing, particularly some of the verbs that I used. And then, since then, I have not talked to Lindsey Halligan. Of course, I followed her career. She, after Trump was elected, went to the White House, was put in charge of reviewing materials at the Smithsonian museums, and then all of a sudden is, you know, handpicked by Trump to prosecute his perceived political enemies in the Eastern District of Virginia, becomes the top prosecutor there. And, and then one day out of the blue, I get a message from her or someone purporting to be her, which I didn't believe first. You know, I thought it was a troll. And it turns out it really was her because she was able to tell me where we first met, who she was with. And then we confirmed that it was her by obtaining her phone number, which connected to the discussion and the Justice Department eventually confirmed it.
- [05:42]
B
So to be clear, you're. When you woke up that day to her text message, you're not planning to write an article about Lindsey Halligan particularly, and some, some of her prosecutorial work on Letitia James. So when, when she later says, I didn't know there was a story, there wasn't a story, the story is her communicating with you.
- [06:03]
A
Right, Right. And I, and I want to be very clear here, Michael, because, like, there's a lot of context here about how relationships between reporters and prosecutors work. So a few things that people who maybe aren't familiar with that context and just like how unus. And why this is even a story, I think it's important to keep these things in mind. So one is that it is normal for prosecutors and journalists to speak to each other, you know, prosecute. It's, it's, it's the kind of thing that, that's how reporting happens, you know, so that's not strange. But there are a few things that are really abnormal here. One is that it's the sitting United States attorney who's one of the most high profile prosecutors in the country, who's already under immense scrutiny because of the circumstances in which she was put into this job and the cases that she is pursuing against Letitia James and James Comey. The other is that she is reaching out to me, who, you know, it seemed that she was reaching out to me about these tweets I wrote that was summarizing someone else's reporting.
- [07:15]
B
Right. The New York Times in that case.
- [07:17]
A
The New York Times. And that New York Times story happened to be about grand jury testimony in the case that she was overseeing, the Letitia James case. And it's very unusual for prosecutors to reach out to a reporter unsolicited about an ongoing prosecution concerning something that touches on grand jury matters. Because as, as you know, you might, we might speak to later. There's rules and policies and, and laws around the prot. Of grand jury secrets, which I'll be fair, Anna.
- [07:57]
B
When we get into the text, it looks like she does not understand the secrecy that is around grand jury material and the way she challenges you about your reporting about not only this grand jury, but apparently another grand jury that looked into the issues and had the grand niece of Letitia James testify that while she lived in the house, this seemed to be the triggering moment for Letitia James, what she referred to as the exculpatory evidence that while the niece lived there, Letitia James, in this very modest $118,000 house in Virginia visited it as well. And they live there rent free with some of her kids, which she's allowed to do under a mortgage.
- [08:37]
A
Right. And so before we get into that, one other thing I will mention as well is that the final thing that is really remarkable about this, in addition to it being about an ongoing prosecution, it seems to relate to something I didn't even report myself. It also concerns matters that relate to grand jury testimony. But finally, nothing, at no point did she say that we were off the record. And for people who don't know what that means, everyone who is a public figure knows very well that when you engage with the media, you can set at the beginning the basis on which you wish to spend speak. One way that you can do it is say, hey, I'd like to go off the record. And there has to be an agreement with the reporter that that is the basis on which you speak. And then they can't publish anything, you know, that you speak about in that off the record conversation. But if there's no agreement at the outset, the assumption is that you are speaking on the record and that everything that you say is fair game and no backseat, and no backseats and there's no takesy backsies. It doesn't work where you can retrospectively, as a source, say to a reporter, oh, hey, by the way, that was off the record. And look, there's, there's contextual situations where people might have ongoing relationships between a source and a reporter, where, you know, it's understood that in certain context, you know, you've agreed, oh, hey, everything we talk about is off the record unless there's an agreement otherwise, you know, that's something that some reporters are willing to do. But when you are a sitting United States attorney approaching a reporter, you don't, you don't know, and you don't at the outset set the conditions of that conversation. Of course, it's expected that what, whatever you say is on the record and that they can report that.
- [10:36]
B
I have some questions for you that you haven't yet been asked.
- [10:39]
A
Okay.
- [10:40]
B
But I want to get the audience that may be joining this story in progress, even though I have a video up about it. I want to read from some of these texts because you post them in your lawfare article. And I think it's important to set the context. And then I'll follow up with some questions and we'll put them up on the screen. You, you already said she contacts you out of the blue. You're a good reporter, so you want to Confirm it's her and that you're not being trolled. It starts with as your article does and the title, Anna. Lindsay. Lindsay Halligan here. You're reporting things that are simply not true. Thought you should have a heads up as if it was just going to end there. Well, thanks a lot, Lindsay. And then you do a confirmation process. Figure out, you know. Do you know the secret password? Yes, it's the Breakers Hotel with Jim Trustee. Okay, I think I've got it. I'm all ears. Right. Good reporting there. Okay, here we go. Okay, awesome, thanks. I'm all ears. What am I getting wrong? That's what you write. I'm waiting now. And by the way, just to short circuit it, she never tells Anna about what she's got wrong. Honestly, so much I can't. I just can't read this without being. Being. Without doing that voice. I can't tell you. Everything about your reporting in particular is just way off. I had to let you know it's clear you don't have sources that are accurately telling you what you're writing. Seems clear to me that you just jump to your bias conclusions based off of what you read. And still instead of really looking at the evidence, evidence that she never reveals to you, at one point she's insulting. Right. She acts like you're like a clip accumulator and you're not a journalist, so I don't have to have this agreement with you. But of course she's been talking to you since the Breakers. She knows you're a journalist. She knows what you're. Maybe that particular tweet was something that you thought was interesting to your audience from the Times, but that doesn't mean you're not a reporter. And then she goes off with it continues. She says you're assuming exculpatory evidence without knowing what you're talking about. It's just bizarre to me. Okay, I think I made it clear. You say that my post was based on the New York Times report, but did they get something wrong? Yes, they did. But you went with it like, okay, are you ever going to tell me what is wrong about the reporting? Obviously, no. And they're also disclosing grand jury info. So at that point I'm like, oh, she sort of understands the secrecy that's required by law around grand jury. No. Which is also not a full representation of what happened. I guess I was surprised by you running with it. I'm happy to retract you say or correct anything that is untrue, but I can't do that. If you don't, if I don't know what the supposed error is. Can you be more specific? This goes on for several more chains. When you finally say, did you just write me to criticize my reporting? I thought you were, you know, you said, ask questions. I'm asking questions, and you just told me I got it wrong. So here's my question to you. Why. Let's put ourselves for a moment in her head. Why did she contact you in her best day? What was she trying to accomplish?
- [13:47]
A
I, you know, I have been, oh, I've been over this again and again and again in my head. I frankly cannot figure it out at all. And like, like, look, I want to be very clear. It's total speculation and just theories on my part, so I have no idea. But, but, but one thing that, you know, might have happened is some of the tweets that I had posted. You know, one of them I think was moderately, you know, popular in the sense it got like, you know, a little bit of traction. It had like a thousand likes or something. And it was the one, I believe that was just that I, that's the one I sent her that I took her to be directly responding to, which summarized the New York Times reporting about this testimony that was reportedly given by the grand niece.
- [14:45]
B
Right. Zakiya Thompson.
- [14:47]
A
Right, right. And I had another tweet in which as you, as you heard, she was, seemed to be responding to also, which was, you know, I said, I think this is exculpatory in that it, this testimony in which the niece said reportedly that she lived in the house for many years, that's the subject of the indictment, and that she did not pay rent. You know, I took that to be exculpatory because it tends to show that Letitia James, who is alleged to be using a home, a second home as a rental investment property, was not actually using this property primarily to collect rental income because the grand niece had lived there for many years and did not pay rent. You know, it may very well be that someone, you know, at, at the White House on, in the Justice Department sent her this tweets or these tweets, and maybe, you know, they weren't too happy about it. And so then she's reacting to the, to some type of criticism. That's a possibility, but I have no idea. The other possibility is just that she had a moment of frustration because she's been under immense, you know, public pressure.
- [16:02]
B
I go with this one. I'm going with this one.
- [16:04]
A
Yeah. And, and like, you know, I'M someone she could put a name to, a face to, because we met three years ago. And so potentially it's that I, again, this is all speculation. I have, frankly, I have no idea. It can foul. It's baffling to me, but those are my theories.
- [16:25]
B
So, so let me. It's, it's lonely at the top when you're a top prosecutor and you've never had that role before. So that, that my second question was is this an example of another, yet another example of Lindsey Halligan going rogue? There's already been reporting that she obtained the indictment of at least Comey without letting Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche know in advance that they were caught flat footed. We've got the other reporting that Ed Martin seems to be playing an outsized role as some sort of shadow AG that's maybe guiding Lindsay Halligan here. She went in, you know, by herself to the grand jury. I think somebody wrote a script for her and it might have been him. That's my own speculation. But if, is this another example, you think she actually cleared this, this contact with you and the lack of off the record with anybody in the, in the, in Main justice, you know, so.
- [17:19]
A
Look, I, if you look at the Justice Manual, US Attorneys do, are allowed to, you know, themselves without authorization, talk to the media. And like I said, it's not, you know, there are examples of US Attorneys having relationships with the media. Again, typically that would be off the record and it would not be about an ongoing prosecution. But what, what I, what I think is interesting is that, you know, again, it's a reporter that you're on the record with. You don't go through public affairs, which is kind of, even though she is technically authorized, is my understanding of the Justice Manual, to go reach out to a reporter herself because she's the U.S. attorney, you would typically go through public affairs. You would then also report the contacts, you know, to higher ups, particularly because here it related to matters concerning an ongoing prosecution and grand jury or, you know, reported grand jury testimony. I would be really surprised if, if the people at the Justice Department knew about this beforehand and had kind of cleared it or even after the fact. I, you know, I don't know that I just can't speak to those facts. But what I will say is I think it's really interesting and telling that in the Justice Department statement, when we went to them for a request for comment, they suggested that I was tattletailing on tattletale journalism. Lindsey Halligan. And that to me indicates that maybe they did not know about this communication. I don't know.
- [19:05]
B
Plus, they spelled her name wrong.
- [19:06]
A
Yeah.
- [19:07]
B
Which is ironic given she's got problems with spelling and geolocations like Brooklyn, New Jersey, in some of her.
- [19:14]
A
Right, I forgot about that. Yeah. They reached out a few hours after the story published and realized the spelling error. But I have never seen the United States Justice Department call a reporter a tattletale for reporting badge of honor. Yeah. I mean, reporting something that was on the record and clearly newsworthy. You know, we, in the course of reporting this story, spoke to multiple former officials from the Justice Department and also reporters who cover legal affairs, and no one was able to tell us of something that came to mind that was even remotely similar to this type of contact with a U.S. attorney. So, you know, it was clear to us this was newsworthy and it was on the record, and I. And I think that it was completely fair game.
- [20:10]
B
I want to write. I want to read our audience here at the end of the interview with the exchange about on the record and off the record. This is nine days after the initial contact. This is the backseat we were talking about. She just writes you out of the blue. Nine days later, there's nothing. Nothing in the chain. Boom. By the way, everything I ever sent you is off record. You're not a journalist. No. We're just insulting you for so no reason. So it's weird saying that, but just letting you know. And you write back, I'm sorry, but that's not how this works. You don't get to say that. In retrospect, yes, I do. Off record. I'm really sorry. You write back, I would have been happy to speak with you on an off the record basis had you asked. But you didn't ask, and you still haven't agreed to speak on that basis. Do you have any further comment for the story? Now it dawns on her. It's obvious the whole convo is off record. And here's. Here's one of my favorite parts. There's a dis. They're disappearing messages. And I use signal, and it's on signal here again. The Trump administration already got in trouble with the Atlantic and Jeffrey Goldberg and Mike Waltz adding him accidentally to the Houthis and Yemeni attack. Right. With J.D. vance and Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller. Have they not learned about disappearing messages? And then you. Then you say, she says, and what is your story? You never told me about a story, Lindsay. You contacting Anna is the story. Now, here's the question out here at the end, there was a Bit of. Because I want people to understand the nitty gritty of journalism. There was a bit of a gap between the text exchange until you released the story yesterday. So what were you doing as a journalist about the story before you decided to time it for yesterday?
- [21:58]
A
Yeah, so look, I mean we, we knew that there was a story here, but of course we wanted to make sure that we were diligently fact checking everything we needed to confirm that it really was her. It took us a few days to obtain her phone number and to actually, you know, make sure that and confirm that it really was her. We went through the process, as I said, of speaking with experts who can, could speak to us about how unusual this story is. And then also, you know, I was not entirely sure whether she was done talking to me. And a part of, like a part of journalism, you know, it is just trying to see whether there is a possibility of a relationship there. And we had to make a decision like we've got something that's clearly newsworthy. But also it. Does she really want to open a line of communication with me? Because at the beginning of the conversation, even though she was, you know, expressing her dissatisfaction with my reporting, she also said at one point, before you report, feel free to reach out. And that's an incredible like, you know, opening for, you know, I'm reporting on these cases. So of course, if the U.S. attorney is offering for me to reach out to her and ask her questions about the case that she personally is prosecuting of, of course I'm going to try to see and feel it out. And we're. When we're on the record and she's offering to answer questions. So it. For a few days I tried to see if she was serious about that. It quickly became clear to me that she was not. You know, she started, I don't know if maybe she just thought better of what she was doing and the outreach, but she started stopped responding to my messages. And so then we started going through the process, you know, of writing the story. But I just really want to underscore that like this is the kind of thing that is so risky for a prosecutor to do. You know, there can be a host of conflicts, consequences for talking to a reporter on the record about an ongoing prosecution, which is why prosecutors typically don't do. Can result in, you know, all kinds of ammo for the defense. She clearly knows that she is, you know, every misstep, every minor mistake or error is going to be picked apart by Abby Lowell in the Letitia James case, who is LETITIA james, DEFENSE Counsel so it still just is shocking to me that this happened. But we'll see. I don't know what's going to happen, but it'll be interesting to see kind of the response to the story as the next few days play out.
- [24:54]
B
Thank you for kind of sharing that kind of inside baseball about journalism and how hard you work to confirm stories before you run with them and the decision making tree that went on for you. I think that our audience will find, will find all of that fascinating, as they will if they if you don't already know about Anna Bauer in Lawfare, this is your opportunity. I'm so I've been trying to find a way to get you on here for a long, long time. I read the story, I was like, oh my God, we've got to try to get Anna. I'm so pleased that you're willing to brief our audience here on the Midas Touch Network and Legal af and we'd love to have you back for any kind of follow up or anything else that, that you're you you think is interesting. I know our audience will find it interesting. Anna Bauer for Lawfare here. About Anna, Lindsey Halligan here, her new article about a very unique, maybe once in a lifetime opportunity to have a text exchange with a sitting head of a U.S. attorney's office about ongoing matters. And I'll go one further, Anna, I'd be shocked if this doesn't show up at least in a footnote in an argument in the motions practice that's going to be filed not just by Letitia James, but I'm sure James Comey and all the rest of the political enemies that are being targeted by Donald Trump will find a way to use this incredible, incredible piece of reporting. And so I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for being part of our audience today.
- [26:20]
A
Thanks for having me.
- [26:22]
B
MICHAEL popak, Legal AF on the Midas Touch Network in collaboration with the Midas Touch Network, we just launched the Legal AF YouTube channel. Help us build this pro democracy channel where I'll be curating the top stories the intersection of law and politics. Go to YouTube now and free subscribe at legalafmtn. That's @legal afmtn. High interest debt is one of the toughest opponents you'll face unless you power up with a SOFI personal loan. A SOFI personal loan could repackage your bad debt into one low fixed rate monthly payment. It's even got superspeed since you could get the funds as soon as the same day you sign. Visit sofi.com power to learn more. That's sofi.com power loans originated by Sofa Bank, NA member FDIC terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891.