Donald Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan is facing scrutiny after her private messages with a reporter have surfaced.
Over the weekend, Halligan apparently initiated a conversation with Lawfare journalist Anna Bower on the encrypted Signal app about Trump’s case against New York Attorney General Letitia James after Bower posted on X about a New York Times article on grand jury testimony in the case.
“You’re biased. Your reporting isn’t accurate. I’m the one handling the case and I’m telling you that,” one of the Signal messages read. “If you want to twist and torture the facts to fit your narrative, there’s nothing I can do. Waste to even give you a heads up.”
Bower said that at first, she wondered whether someone posing as Halligan had sent her the messages. Later, she confirmed that it was indeed the interim U.S. attorney who was communicating with her.
“I was really surprised, and honestly, I was very curious what she had to say,” Bower told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday.
“It’s very much not often that you see a sitting United States attorney, who, unsolicited, reaches out to a reporter to talk about something that relates to an ongoing prosecution that relates to grand jury testimony,” she said.
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“I did not have a preexisting relationship with Lindsey Halligan in terms of speaking to her as a reporter,” Bower explained to Collins. “We have met one time, many years previous, while I was reporting on Trump’s criminal investigations and criminal cases,” and Halligan was on Trump’s defense team.
But deep into their Signal chat, Halligan told Bower that their conversation was meant to be “off the record,” meaning she did not want the reporter to publish or quote from their exchange.
However, Bower said she never agreed to those terms. People who are trained to interact with the press know that a request to keep certain information off the record should be made before that information is shared with a reporter, and that the reporter must agree.
“Lindsey Halligan never once suggested that we were off the record. She had reached out to me,” Bower said.
The journalist eventually shared her unexpected exchange with Halligan on Lawfare, as well as an angry statement from the Justice Department, which confirmed that the messages from Halligan were authentic.
“Halligan was attempting to point you to facts, not gossip, but when clarifying that she would adhere to the rule of the law and not disclose Grand Jury information, you threaten to leak an entire conversation,” Justice Department spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre wrote. “Good luck getting anyone to talk to you when you publish their texts.”
Collins agreed with Bower that the conversation with the U.S. attorney wasn’t “off the record,” and Bower reiterated that she didn’t “threaten” Halligan, but merely “reached out for comment” to the Justice Department based on journalistic ethics.