{"id":181308,"date":"2026-03-06T21:56:05","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T21:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/181308\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T21:56:05","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T21:56:05","slug":"in-reversal-florida-bar-says-trump-loyalist-lindsey-halligan-is-not-under-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/181308\/","title":{"rendered":"In reversal, Florida Bar says Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan is not under investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida\u2019s bar said Friday it is not currently investigating Lindsey Halligan<\/a>, a loyalist President Donald Trump selected to bring criminal charges against his political opponents, reversing a claim it made in a recent letter.<\/p>\n

One of\u00a0 Trump\u2019s former personal attorneys, Halligan unsuccessfully brought criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James after Trump nominated her to a temporary U.S. attorney post last year.<\/p>\n

The Florida Bar told the Campaign for Accountability (CfA), a nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog organization, in a letter<\/a> last month that it had opened an ethics probe into Halligan. The bar was responding to CfA\u2019s renewed ethics complaint<\/a> against the Trump appointee, in which the watchdog accused her of violating several rules of conduct during her failed prosecutions of Comey and James.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are aware of these developments and have been monitoring them closely,\u201d the bar said in the letter. \u201cWe already have an investigation pending.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement to Democracy Docket Friday, however, the Florida Bar claimed that the letter \u201cerroneously\u201d stated Halligan was under investigation and that it was only monitoring legal proceedings related to her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn response to an inquiry from a complainant, The Florida Bar wrote a letter to the complainant erroneously stating that there is a pending Bar investigation of member Lindsey Halligan,\u201d a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no such pending Bar investigation of [Lindsey] Halligan. In this case, The Florida Bar received a complaint against Lindsey Halligan and, consistent with standard practice, the Bar is monitoring the ongoing legal proceedings underlying the complaint.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement to Democracy Docket, CfA expressed confusion about the Florida Bar\u2019s reversal.<\/p>\n

\u201cCfA has not heard directly from the Florida Bar, but it\u2019s hard to reconcile this latest statement with the bar counsel\u2019s previous letter saying there is an investigation pending,\u201d Michelle Kuppersmith, CfA\u2019s executive director, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf 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,\u201d Kuppersmith added.<\/p>\n

The bar did not say whether it planned to open an investigation into Halligan in the future. It also did not clarify how it was monitoring legal proceedings involving her in light of her departure from the Department of Justice (DOJ) in January.<\/p>\n

In September, Trump tapped Halligan for a 120-day term as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. At the time, she had no prosecutorial experience.<\/p>\n

Halligan\u2019s nomination came shortly after Trump publicly ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to target his political enemies more aggressively. Days after being sworn in, Halligan personally brought criminal charges against Comey and James, two of Trump\u2019s long-time foes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The prosecutions were legally dubious and clearly stemmed from Trump\u2019s wider effort to wield the DOJ against his enemies. Both cases eventually failed after Comey and James successfully challenged the charges by arguing Halligan\u2019s appointment was illegal.<\/p>\n

In its original complaint, CfA accused<\/a> Halligan of making misrepresentations before the grand juries that approved the criminal indictments against Comey and James. In addition to the Florida Bar, CfA also sent its complaint to the Virginia State Bar.<\/p>\n

Should the Florida Bar open an ethics probe into Halligan in the future, she could eventually face severe sanctions depending on the results of the investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If the bar determines it has probable cause to believe Halligan committed wrongdoing, it could recommend a range of disciplinary actions against her, including disbarment, though state courts have the final say on disciplining lawyers in Florida.<\/p>\n

Recently, the DOJ has sought to derail state bar associations\u2019 disciplinary proceedings against its lawyers.<\/p>\n

On March 4, the DOJ proposed a new rule<\/a> in the Federal Register that, if finalized, would attempt to allow it to suspend any state ethics proceedings against current or former DOJ attorneys if the department decides to conduct its own review first.<\/p>\n

Legal experts said the proposed rule was the DOJ\u2019s latest attempt to limit ethical oversight. They also noted that it would likely be unenforceable, as the department has no formal authority over state bar disciplinary organizations.<\/p>\n

While the proposed rule would apply to former DOJ attorneys, it\u2019s unclear whether it would shield Halligan from a potential Florida Bar probe.<\/p>\n

In November, a federal judge determined<\/a> that Trump and Bondi violated federal law in appointing Halligan as interim U.S. attorney and formally disqualified her from exercising that role\u2019s authority. However, weeks after the ruling, the DOJ and Halligan continued to refer to her as a U.S. attorney, at times even dropping \u201cinterim\u201d or \u201cacting\u201d from her title.<\/p>\n

Halligan only resigned<\/a> in January after the chief judge of the Eastern District of Virginia declared the district\u2019s U.S. attorney title vacant and began accepting applications for her replacement.<\/p>\n

Judges in the district have yet to appoint a new U.S. attorney. If they do, the official will likely be immediately fired by Trump.<\/p>\n

In the wake of Halligan\u2019s resignation, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche promised as much in a social media post, saying that \u201cit\u2019s guaranteed that the President gets to pick his U.S. attorneys.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida\u2019s bar said Friday it is not currently investigating Lindsey Halligan, a loyalist President Donald Trump selected to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-181308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}