Florida Bar says no probe into Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan, reversing earlier statement
The Florida Bar said Friday it is not investigating former Justice Department lawyer Lindsey Halligan, walking back an earlier statement that an investigation was underway.
In early February, a Florida Bar official responded to a request for an investigation into the Trump loyalist during her tenure in the administration by writing, “We already have an investigation underway.”
A day after NBC News and other media outlets reported the letter Thursday, the Florida Bar said that while there is a “surveillance file,” there is no investigation into Halligan.
“In response to a request from a complainant, the Florida Bar wrote a letter to the complainant erroneously indicating that a Bar investigation was underway into member Lindsey Halligan,” a Florida Bar spokeswoman said in a statement Friday. “There is no ongoing Bar investigation into Lindsay Halligan.”
The bar said it received a complaint against Halligan and then followed what it called standard practice by “monitoring the ongoing legal proceedings giving rise to the complaint.”
The complaint filed with the Florida Bar came from the Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog group. The group said that by falsely claiming to be a U.S. attorney, Halligan committed various ethical violations.
Halligan, who had no prosecutorial experience before leading unsuccessful cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, left her post as acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in January after a judge said she was “posing as the district’s top federal prosecutor.”
The Campaign for Accountability filed complaints with the Florida and Virginia Bars in November, and followed up with the Florida Bar last month.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who previously served as Florida’s attorney general, criticized previous news reports of an investigation.
“The Florida Bar’s investigation into Lindsey Halligan is totally fake news,” she said in an article on X on Friday. “Lindsey not only did nothing wrong, she did a great job!”
Asked to comment on the Florida Bar reversal, Halligan responded to NBC News on Friday, writing: “Where are my apologies?
She also sent a screenshot of Trump’s Truth Social account where he reposted Bondi’s defense of Halligan.
