In “Henry VI, Part 2,” Shakespeare famously wrote that to overthrow the lawful order and seize power, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Yesterday’s judicial hearing concerning the Trump administration’s controversial prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey — four centuries after the Bard — revealed we do not need to go so far. In fact, replacing lawyers with incompetent lackeys probably does the trick.
It is impossible to overestimate the danger posed by an administration willing to pursue criminal charges against whomever it wants for whatever reason it wants.
On Wednesday morning, Justice Department prosecutors conceded that the grand jury that supposedly approved the pending indictment against Comey never voted on — or even reviewed — the actual indictment. This is, to say the least, a stunning admission that could sink the government’s case against Comey, either on its own or in connection with several other potentially fatal flaws. But the magnitude of the prosecution’s incompetence plays a more sinister role as well: It masks the sheer extent of the pervasive and pernicious corruption and lawlessness that has been allowed to fester by this administration.
Even before yesterday’s hearing, Comey’s prosecution was bizarre and unprecedented. On Sept. 19, 2025, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Erik Siebert — the career prosecutor who Trump nominated — resigned after being pressured by the White House to bring charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The next day, Trump publicly demanded via a social media post that Attorney General Pam Bondi prosecute Comey, James and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. In the same post, Trump wrote, “Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot,” without any further context.
Within 48 hours, Bondi designated Halligan — an insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience — as interim U.S. attorney. Three days later, just five days before the five-year statute of limitations would have expired, Halligan indicted Comey on two counts alleging he made false statements to Congress in 2020 regarding leaks to the media about the investigation of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. Halligan personally signed the indictment, and it was later revealed she presented the indictment to the grand jury by herself, unaccompanied by experienced prosecutors, a highly unusual move.
Comey has since argued the case should be dismissed because it is a selective and vindictive prosecution driven by Trump’s animus, and that Halligan’s appointment was unlawful, meaning she had no authority to indict anyone.
Apparently recognizing the strength of Comey’s argument, on Oct. 31, Bondi issued a memo purporting to retroactively “fix” the appointment problem by naming Halligan a special attorney and claiming to have reviewed the grand jury transcript. But a federal judge has already said Bondi’s account is not credible because parts of the transcript did not exist.
On Monday, the Virginia judge who is presiding over certain issues in the Comey prosecution related to attorney-client privilege, issued a blistering opinion detailing 11 separate instances of apparent misconduct by the government.
U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick described how there was reason to conclude that the government violated Comey’s Fourth Amendment rights protecting against unreasonable search and seizure, his Fifth Amendment rights and his attorney-client privilege.
This debacle resulted from installing unqualified loyalists in positions where they can carry out the president’s political vendettas.
Judge Fitzpatrick found multiple serious problems with Halligan’s grand jury presentation. Halligan told jurors they did not need to rely on the evidence before them because the government supposedly had “better” evidence for trial, an egregious violation of fundamental rules that any competent attorney knows. She also wrongly suggested Comey had no right to remain silent, an even more egregious violation that every first-year law student — or anyone who has ever watched an episode of “Law & Order” — knows. For a prosecutor, even one who had until a few days before been an insurance lawyer, to suggest otherwise is simply baffling.
The judge further noted that the grand jury transcript appears incomplete, raising concerns because the jury initially rejected one of the three counts before returning a different two-count indictment. As Fitzpatrick put it, this is “uncharted legal territory,” and the case is on unstable ground if the indictment filed in court is not the one the full grand jury actually reviewed. On Wednesday morning, during a hearing before the federal judge overseeing the prosecution, a DOJ attorney admitted that is exactly what happened. The grand jury did not, in fact, review the final indictment; only the foreperson and one other grand juror did. U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff ordered the Justice Department to respond in writing Wednesday afternoon, saying the issues are “too weighty and complex” to make an immediate ruling. Halligan’s swap of one indictment for another is not just another “paperwork error,” as the government characterized Halligan’s appointment. Criminal procedure requires that the grand jury return the indictment, not a revised version the jurors never saw. Even technical violations of basic procedural requirements can justify dismissal. There are good reasons for this: If the prosecutor effectively decides who gets charged and for what, that opens the door to political, retaliatory or abusive prosecutions because there is no longer a neutral body verifying that the evidence even supports the charges. It is impossible to overestimate the danger posed by an administration willing to pursue criminal charges against whomever it wants for whatever reason it wants. Yet that is precisely what is occurring, whether under the guise of rank incompetence or the real thing. Grand juries — and independent prosecutors for that matter — historically served as a check on this overreach. By replacing experienced prosecutors with sycophants, Trump has systematically dismantled that structural and procedural guardrail. The hearing showed that the threat to the rule of law is not, as Shakespeare warned, merely the absence of lawyers; it is also the presence of lawyers who treat the law as optional. This debacle resulted from installing unqualified loyalists in positions where they can carry out the president’s political vendettas — and it presents a clear warning that politicizing the Justice Department corrodes the very foundations of our democracy. Unless there are severe consequences, it will not be the last one.
Andrew Warren
Andrew Warren is senior counsel at Democracy Defenders Action. He previously was a prosecutor with the U.S. Justice Department and the elected district attorney in Tampa, Florida. 
