"Anna, Lindsey Halligan Here." My Signal exchange with the interim U.S. attorney
55 comments
·October 21, 2025wrs
nyc_data_geek
The grownups have left the building, and the brats have guns.
consumer451
You thought politicians were bad? We gave TV personalities the nuclear codes! But hey, woke is dead!?
Actual photo of the historic East Wing of the White House today: https://i.redd.it/vchtk38rijwf1.jpeg
___
I once got scammed out of $350 for some speakers sold out of the back of a van, in traffic. I could not admit it for years. I kept pretending they were great, even in front of my audio engineer friends.
How do we bring our friends who got politically scammed, in from the cold? We all get scammed sometimes.
midtake
Nice try. Maybe when Democrats decide to uphold their own values and defend the working class, people will come back in from the cold. Until then, burning it all down is perfectly understandable. Betrayal stings and vengeance sometimes takes the form of scorched earth. At least with the Republican Party people know what they're getting.
As long as the Democratic Party keeps its current shape, people will continue to distrust it.
Freedom2
It's not very hard to admit when we're wrong. Some even consider it a power. From my experience working with Americans, you often have to drag them kicking and screaming to have any humility, let alone have them admit when they are categorically wrong.
Perhaps this cultural trait is one of the major reasons why the US is in the situation it's in.
netsharc
Haha holy smokes, got to the end of the article and it reminds me of this: mhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6Hf_BKEfnY
(The Thick of It, by Armando Ianucci - also the creator of Veep with Julia Louis-Dreyfus - is a political satire TV series about bumbling government employees).
actionfromafar
These fictional characters seem so normal compared to the actual real life dorks we have now. How do you even do satire now?
skeaker
All context and legal implications aside, this is just so embarrassing for Lindsey. The screenshots of the texts would be hard to read if they weren't so funny.
I do wonder how Signal deleting the texts automatically would be interpreted in a legal context.
rchaud
Presumably the "case" was shopped around to various attorneys, until they finally found one who agreed to move forward with it. That she had never prosecuted a case before is probably just a coincidence.
sillywalk
She was one of Trump's personal attorneys, and then a senior associate staff secretary.
jmuguy
I think that Halligan thinks that Anna Bower wrote the NYT piece she was commenting on. Our only hope really is that these people are too incompetent to actually do the whole dictatorship thing very effectively.
rand846633
Justice Department spokeswoman Natalie Baldassarre Is using chatGPT…
actionfromafar
No takesies-backsies, Anna Lindsey Halligan! :-D
I don't get it. The Trumpsters play it like it's already a dictatorship. You can't threaten the press like this so soon. That only works when you have a firm grip on power and a credible history of jailing and exiling journalists.
It's like she watched Hegseth drunk texting in Signalgate and thought, "which journalist could I add on Signal".
afavour
> The Trumpsters play it like it's already a dictatorship
I feel like a lot of them genuinely think that we’re past the point of no return and they will experience no repercussions. I’d have expected Halligan to have a different view given her legal training, but…
netsharc
What does that "point of return" look like, and who's going to actually enforce it? The regime has ignored courts' orders... I feel like only a military coup can actually do anything now.
Because I expect the 2026 or 2028 elections to be held more with Russian, Turkish, or Hungarian standards rather than 80's Hollywood movie idea of America's standard. The Dems and courts are going to cry foul, and the regime will just laugh at their faces and continue to rule.
afavour
I think the protests over the weekend show that if the 2026 election were subverted then a lot of the population would take to the streets.
Once the army fires on peaceful protestors protesting a corrupt election? That’s the point of no return.
consumer451
Well, the resistance at his point is the Admiral in charge of Southern Command resigning.
Below is a video from an F-14 REO, and previous Fox News contributor, Ward Carroll. He explains exactly why Holsey resigned.
TL:DW; Admiral Holsey protested to Secretary of War, Hegseth, that these killings broke all rules, and he would not stay on to follow illegal orders.
slg
The percentage of the US population that voted for Trump went up roughly half a percentage point from 2020 to 2024 and most of American society has responded as if that makes him a permanent dictator. And it isn’t just his supporters, most Democratic politicians and ostensibly apolitical corporations are behaving that way too. I don’t get it.
harimau777
I don't think that people are afraid that he will become a dictator because of his popular support so much as because no one is standing up to his abuse of power.
There's also the fact that MAGA is putting their thumb more and more on the election scales. I'm already not sure I think the next election will be fair considering how much MAGA has cheated already.
rand846633
The control of the supreme court as well as the demonstrated willingness to support a coup make the threat seem real.
afavour
It’s not entirely without reason. Just look at the electoral map proposed in NC: Trump won 51% of the vote, the GOP will be set to control over 80% of the NC House. And the Supreme Court gives permission to do whatever.
You’re right to call out Democrats too. It baffles me. Like Trump destroying the East wing of the White House. Universally not popular (not necessarily unpopular with all but no one is cheering it). Where are the press conferences being held outside to highlight it and show the people how little regard Trump has for the “People’s House”. It’s an easy lay up.
Trasmatta
> most Democratic politicians and ostensibly apolitical corporations are behaving that way too. I don’t get it.
If the group in charge has made their dictatorial ambitions clear, the only rational approach for the opposition to take is to treat that seriously. Do we just pretend like they're kidding?
profsummergig
> half a percentage point
2020: 46.8%
2024: 49.8%
bsder
> The percentage of the US population that voted for Trump went up roughly half a percentage point from 2020 to 2024 and most of American society has responded as if that makes him a permanent dictator. And it isn’t just his supporters, most Democratic politicians and ostensibly apolitical corporations are behaving that way too. I don’t get it.
People are fighting it, but it's not being covered. For example, the fact that legal cases are in the courts at all is because a bunch of Attorney Generals from many states were working together to file them even before Trump got elected. How big were the protests this last weekend near you? Were they covered at all? etc.
But that kind of stuff is boring--no engagement metric inflation here; so no coverage.
Perhaps now that government is actually shut down people will start paying attention. But I doubt it ...
> ostensibly apolitical corporations
Oh, you sweet, summer child.
njovin
In her defense, she's an insurance lawyer who got onto Trump's good side by bad-mouthing how woke The Smithsonian is. She doesn't exactly have a depth of criminal justice experience to draw from.
freen
It’s a commitment device: if the only way you’ll stay out of jail is if Trump is elected, you do anything you can, break any laws, whatever, to get Trump elected.
Because then you won’t go to jail.
See Santos.
fzeroracer
This entire admin functions like giving the worst posters on a forum unbridled power. The only thing they care about is owning their perceived enemies. When you look at it that way, the fact that all of them behave like children and make the dumbest decisions possible all make sense.
netsharc
What's cause and what's effect there? The fact that they have the emotional (and sometimes intellectual) intelligence of 6 years olds means what they mostly care about is the "pwnage"...
josefritzishere
This is not the behavior of a licensed, professional attorney.
netsharc
Article:
> Later in the week, I verified that the text exchange had genuinely been with Halligan—or, at least, with Halligan’s phone.
"My brother hacked my phone, I swear!"
drivingmenuts
This is an administration of Karens (sorry if your name is actually Karen). They want to bitch and moan about perceived injustices and have been given an immense power to prosecute those "injustices", regardless of justification. The people who are supposed to reign in those actions have abdicated responsibility in its entirety.
What a shitshow.
phkahler
The problem with Russia gate is that even if it was fabricated by the FBI as partisan politics, prosecuting the guilty will look like partisan politics from the other side.
treis
Jesus does this article ever get to what the messages say?
bahmboo
The crux of it is that it was extremely unusual that it even happened and then that the messages have a cringe level of circular nonsense replies from Halligan. The contents are almost irrelevant - it's her overall behavior that raises questions. There are many many worse things happening in his administration, this is just a data point for understanding their intellects.
Jtsummers
Yes, it quotes several of them and at least twice links to the screenshots of the exchange.
prawn
fishmicrowaver
I read this but where's the beef?
pitpatagain
It's not that there's a single money shot message, it's that the conversation throughout is just stuff that no normal prosecutor would ever say anything but "no comment" about in regard to an active case.
The prosecutor is not supposed to be disclosing information from the grand jury, and then spends a shockingly long signal thread talking on record with a journalist that constantly implicitly discusses/confirms information they aren't supposed to be talking about at all.
It doesn't reach the same level as the Hegseth Signal leak, but it's really bizarre stuff.
freen
You can read the entire exchange for yourself, it’s a link.
At the bottom of the article.
This administration seems to be “playing government”, like little kids “play house”. Assuming a role without understanding what the role actually is, using words they’ve heard the grownups use without knowing what they mean, declaring new rules whenever they don’t like how the game is going.
I just hope the grownups come back before the kids burn the house down completely.