The following story needs to be read in full to totally appreciate it, via Lawfare: “Anna, Lindsey Halligan Here.”
The short version is this: Lindsey Halligan, one of Trump’s personal lawyers (discussed here) who has been elevated from Florida insurance lawyer to now federal prosecutor, contacted Anna Bower of Lawfare out of the blue via Signal (this administration will never learn) to harangue her about a tweet she sent out focusing on some NYT reporting about how weak the Leticia James case is.
Very late in the game, Hallagan declared the whole thing “off the record” (days into the interchange).
At 4:10 p.m., she texted me: “By the way—everything I ever sent you is off record. You’re not a journalist so it’s weird saying that but just letting you know.”
I responded: “I’m sorry, but that’s not how this works. You don’t get to say that in retrospect.”
Halligan was unpersuaded: “Yes I do. Off record.”
“I am really sorry. I would have been happy to speak with you on an off the record basis had you asked,” I said. “But you didn’t ask, and I still haven’t agreed to speak on that basis. Do you have any further comment for the story?
To my surprise, she kept going: “It’s obvious the whole convo is off record. There’s disappearing messages and it’s on signal. What is your story? You never told me about a story.”
The level of incompetence is staggering. I am not sure what is worse, thinking you can retroactively (and unilaterally) declare a conversation “off the record,” or believing that because she set her Signal texts to self-erase after eight hours meant that that was some kind of security against them being kept and used.
It just made me think of Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy.
