The Florida Bar has retracted its earlier assertion of an ongoing investigation into Lindsey Halligan, a prosecutor whose appointment by President Donald Trump was later deemed unlawful. The reversal came Friday, following previous statements from the Bar indicating an active inquiry into Halligan’s conduct during her tenure at the Justice Department.
Last month, a Bar representative informed a nonpartisan watchdog group, which had sought an ethics inquiry, that an “investigation pending” existed. This was echoed Thursday by Florida Bar spokesperson Jennifer Krell Davis, who told The Associated Press there was an “open file” on Halligan, declining further comment due to the confidentiality of active discipline cases.
However, on Friday, Davis issued a new statement, clarifying, “The Florida Bar wrote a letter to the complainant erroneously stating that there is a pending Bar investigation” of Halligan. She added, “There is no such pending Bar investigation” of Halligan.
While Davis noted the Bar had received a complaint and was monitoring “ongoing legal proceedings underlying the complaint,” she offered no explanation for the conflicting information regarding the existence of an investigation.
The complaint from the Campaign for Accountability centers on Halligan’s brief but turbulent tenure as acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, historically one of the Justice Department’s most elite prosecution offices. A former White House aide under Trump with no prosecutorial experience, Halligan pursued cases against a pair of the president’s political appointees but resigned in January as multiple judges questioned the legitimacy of her appointment and cast doubt on her ability to remain in the job legally.
The nonprofit watchdog had requested a bar inquiry into whether Halligan had violated the rules of professional conduct. The complaint cited, among other things, Halligan’s handling of a case against former FBI Director James Comey and the fact that she continued to hold herself out as acting U.S. attorney even after a judge concluded that her appointment violated rules governing the selection of federal prosecutors.
The organization posted on its website a letter dated Feb. 4 in which a Florida Bar representative told the group, “We are aware of these developments and have been monitoring them closely. We already have an investigation pending.”
On Friday, Michelle Kuppersmith, the executive director of the Campaign of Accountability, said the Bar had not told the organization that its earlier assertion was erroneous. She said it was “hard to reconcile” the Bar’s latest statement with the earlier letter.
“If there is no longer an investigation into Halligan, the question is why not, given that three judges indicated she engaged in conduct that appears to violate ethics rules,” Kuppersmith said in a statement.
Bob Jarvis, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University and member of the Florida Bar, said the most likely reason for the reversal is that the initial confirmation of the investigation was unauthorized. That type of information isn’t normally made public until after a grievance committee makes an actual finding to move forward, he said. The reason is to prevent a baseless accusation from damaging someone’s reputation.
“I think somebody at the Florida Bar probably jumped the gun,” Jarvis said.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post on the social platform X on Friday that Halligan “not only did nothing wrong — she did a great job.”
“The Florida Bar ‘investigation’ of Lindsey Halligan is totally fake news,” she added.
Halligan did not immediately respond to several email requests for comment about the investigation.
Halligan, who had served as one of Trump’s attorneys but had no experience as a federal prosecutor, was installed in September after the Trump administration effectively forced out her predecessor, Erik Siebert, amid pressure to bring charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, another longtime Trump foe.
Halligan secured indictments against Comey and James but quickly ran into difficulty as lawyers for Comey raised questions about what they said were irregularities in the grand jury presentation of the case, including legal and factual errors that tainted the process. A judge in November scolded Halligan for “fundamental misstatements of the law,” including what he said was her suggestion to the grand jury that Comey did not have a Fifth Amendment right to not testify.
The Comey and James prosecutions were subsequently dismissed following a challenge by defense lawyers to Halligan’s appointment.
