Trump's Mar-a-Lago lawyer makes classified info complaint against top James Comey attorney

Left: Lindsey Halligan speaks as President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci). Center: Former FBI director James Comey gestures while speaking at Harvard University's Institute of Politics' JFK Jr. Forum in Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File). Right: Patrick Fitzgerald, then U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois gestures during a news conference at the federal building in Chicago, Thursday, May 24, 2012, a day after he announced in a written statement he was resigning from the post he held for more than a decade. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato).

On the eve of James Comey's expected motion to disqualify an interim U.S. attorney from prosecuting him, Lindsey Halligan, the former Mar-a-Lago defense attorney for President Donald Trump, appeared prepared to turn the tables on the ex-FBI director's top defense lawyer with a classified information complaint.

In the brief Sunday filing in federal court in Virginia, Halligan took aim at Comey's longtime friend, former federal prosecutor and U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, by pointing to page 60 of a 2019 report from the DOJ's Office of Inspector General (OIG).

Halligan assigned blame to Fitzgerald as she alleged that Comey "used current lead defense counsel to improperly disclose classified information," quoting a portion near the end of the OIG report that ripped the former FBI director for his "fail[ure] to live up to" the "responsibility" to safeguard[] sensitive information[.]"

The filing suggested that Fitzgerald could be conflicted out of and disqualified from representing Comey as a result.

"This fact raises a question of conflict and disqualification for current lead defense counsel. Some of the communications in the potentially protected material are from the same time as the focus of the DOJ OIG report," said the filing submitted to U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff. "Before litigating any issue of conflict or disqualification, the parties should have access to all relevant and non-privileged information. The sooner that the potentially protected information is reviewed and filtered, the sooner the parties can make any appropriate filings with the Court."

On Monday, Comey's lawyers responded to the government by saying their contentions about Fitzgerald should fail as "provably false."

"The government's assertion that Mr. Comey 'used current lead defense counsel to improperly disclose classified information,' and the implicit assertion lead defense counsel and Mr. Comey engaged in criminal activity by doing so, is provably false," the defense filing said, adding that the OIG report showed there was "no 'leaking' of classified information to the press by either Mr. Comey or his counsel. Full stop."

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"After Mr. Comey was fired on May 9, 2017, he sought legal advice with respect to his termination and with regard to having witnessed behavior by the President that he considered unlawful. Mr. Comey had written seven contemporaneous memoranda about his troubling interactions with President Trump," the defense explained. "The memoranda were unclassified at the time they were shared with counsel–Mr. Comey both authored the memos and was an Original Classification Authority. Mr. Comey did not share the classified memoranda with counsel."

Fitzgerald and fellow defense counsel Jessica Carmichael previously told the judge that Comey can, in fact, be trusted with reviewing his own discovery in the false statement and obstruction case given his former status as head of the FBI.

"To assert now, that he cannot be trusted with receiving discovery in his case controverts his long career of distinguished government service at the highest levels. Moreover, no one knows the facts of this case better than Mr. Comey himself," the filing said. "It places his defense at a severe and unnecessary disadvantage to insist that he be prohibited from possessing Protected Material to be able to review and refer to whenever necessary throughout preparation of his defense."

Thereafter, the judge ended up siding with Comey's lawyers by finding the government's proposed discovery restrictions would "unnecessarily" hinder and delay his "ability to defend himself" and prepare for trial.

Comey's team is expected to argue that Halligan was unlawfully appointed, just like acting U.S. Attorney Alina Habba in New Jersey, but all indications suggest that Halligan won't go without a fight.