Lawfare Senior Editor Anna Bower got a career boost when Acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan sat on the Signal for 33 hours about the recent indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James.
What began as an innocuous New York Times report on James’ recent mortgage fraud indictment turned into a two-day exchange between Bower and Halligan over alleged inaccuracies in her reporting. Bower detailed the exchange in an article published Monday in Lawfare.
Bower received the first alert message from a user named Lindsay Halligan on Saturday, Oct. 11, following her report to X about grand jury testimony that James’ niece had been living in her Virginia home for months without paying rent.
“Anna, this is Lindsay Halligan,” read the first message. “You’re reporting things that just aren’t true. I thought you should be careful.”
The Lawfare reporter was skeptical at first, but confirmed her identity using the location where they first met. The Signal chat was set to disappear after eight hours, but Bower took screenshots, which she posted in a Lawfare piece.
“Okay, I’m just an ear,” Bower replied after confirming Halligan’s identity. “What am I doing wrong?”
“Honestly, so much,” Halligan wrote. “I can’t tell you everything, but your reporting is way off. She then said that it was clear to her that the reporter was making ‘biased conclusions’ based on what he read and not ‘really researching the evidence.’
The conversation seemed out of place because Bower had no established relationship with the attorney. One thing in particular impressed Bower; Halligan, who has since fired people for speaking out in the press, never said the conversation was off the record.
“She initiated a conversation with me, a reporter she barely knew, to discuss an ongoing prosecution she was personally handling. She was mostly critical of my reporting — or rather, my summary of someone else’s reporting,” Bower wrote.
“For someone who is so willing to risk speaking out of turn and so willing to punish others for allegedly doing so, Halligan’s decision to contact me about the text remains baffling,” she added. “She knew I was a journalist. She reached out to me. She invited my questions. She even encouraged me to stop chasing other reporters’ stories and focus on my own. Turns out, she gave me a great story.”
President Donald Trump’s handpicked prosecutor, who previously served as his personal attorney, has replaced Eric Siebert, who declined to prosecute James Comey or James. Within days of Halligan’s appointment, she secured the indictment of Comey for making false statements to Congress and obstruction. Two weeks later, she persuaded a separate grand jury to indict James for mortgage fraud.
Bower asked later Saturday night why Halligan was frustrated with reporters’ coverage of the case. Halligan said she was not disappointed and that Anna was the only reporter she contacted, but reiterated that there were inaccuracies in Bower’s reporting.
“You are biased. Your reporting is not accurate. I am the one on the case and I am telling you that,” Halligan wrote. “If you want to twist and torture the facts to fit your narrative, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Halligan never explained exactly what was inaccurate about the rent reports. Bower contacted The Times, and they said the Justice Department disagreed with their story when it was published.
Before releasing their entire signal exchange, Bower reached out to the Justice Department. Five minutes before the deadline, Halligan responded to Bower’s Signal message, saying that everything she had been sending her was off the record, a condition of anonymity that neither agreed to with the entire Signal back-and-forth.
Bower said she “really would have preferred” an interview with Halligan in the background or off the record.
“By the way, everything I’ve ever sent you is off the record. You’re not a journalist, so it’s weird to say that, but just to report,” she wrote. “Obviously the whole conversation isn’t recorded. Messages and beeping are going away. What’s your story? You never told me a story.”
By then it was too late.
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