Trump’s handpicked interim US attorney is at the center of a legal and political firestorm after admitting that the full grand jury never saw the final indictment it issued against former FBI Director James Comey.
In a stunning moment in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday, interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan conceded that only two grand jurors reviewed the final version of the indictment that was ultimately handed up against Comey. The revelation has opened the door for Comey’s legal team to argue that the entire case may be legally defective.
Comey’s attorney, Michael Dreeben, wasted no time seizing on the admission. Halligan’s testimony, he argued, means “there is no indictment” against his client at all. If the judge agrees, the charges could be tossed on procedural grounds, ending one of the most politically charged prosecutions of Trump’s second term.
Comey is accused of lying during a 2020 congressional hearing about whether he ever authorized leaks to the press. He has pleaded not guilty. His legal team argues that the case was driven by President Trump’s long standing animosity toward Comey, who was fired as FBI director in 2017. Dreeben told the court the prosecution was brought at the direction of Trump and rooted in that hostility, pointing to the president’s public attacks and a social media post asking Attorney General Pam Bondi for “justice.”
Prosecutor Tyler Lemons pushed back, insisting that Halligan was acting independently, not carrying out a political hit job. “There’s been no proof that US Attorney Halligan took” Trump’s social media post “as a charge,” Lemons argued, saying the case is based on Comey’s alleged lie, not presidential grudges. “Ms. Halligan was not a puppet,” he added.
But the real jolt came when the hearing turned to how the indictment was actually approved.
Katelyn Polantz: The judge got the Justice Department to admit the final indictment James Comey now faces… was never shown to the full Grand Jury, and they did not approve it in full. They had voted down indicting Comey because they had been asked to approve three different… pic.twitter.com/Q9Uz99BMsX
— Blue Georgia (@BlueATLGeorgia) November 19, 2025
According to prosecutors’ own description, after the grand jury declined to approve one of the counts, Halligan did not go back to the full panel with a revised indictment. Instead, she brought an altered version to the magistrate judge’s courtroom and had the grand jury’s foreperson sign it. “The new indictment wasn’t a new indictment,” Lemons told the court, as he tried to explain why only the foreperson had reviewed the changes.
Judge Michael Nachmanoff was clearly alarmed. He called Halligan, the only prosecutor who presented the case to the grand jury, to the lectern and pressed her to confirm that the altered indictment was never shown to the entire panel.
The judge began, “Am I correct” before Halligan cut him off. “No, you’re not,” she said, insisting there was one additional grand juror in the magistrate’s courtroom and recounting her exchange with the judge who supervised the process, per CNN.
“I’m familiar with the transcript,” Nachmanoff replied, before telling her to sit down.
Turning back to Lemons, the judge asked bluntly whether the new document had ever been presented to the grand jury for approval. Lemons answered carefully. “I wasn’t there, but that is my understanding,” he said.
That was all Dreeben needed. Given the prosecutors’ testimony, he argued, “no indictment was returned.” “There is no indictment,” he told the court, adding that the statute of limitations on the alleged false statement to Congress has now expired, which would bar any new charges.
It’s serious enough that Judge Nachmanoff is taking his time and told the courtroom he would not rule on Wednesday, calling the questions before him “too weighty and too complex.” He ordered the Justice Department to file a written response to the grand jury bombshell by 5 p.m. Eastern.
For Trump’s Justice Department, the case against one of his most prominent enemies has now become a test of its own credibility. If the judge agrees that the grand jury process was mishandled, the Comey prosecution could collapse under the weight of its own shortcuts.
