Lawfare senior editor Anna Bower landed a career-making scoop when interim U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan engaged in a 33-hour on-the-record Signal conversation about the recent indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James.
What started as an innocuous retweet of the New York Times’ reporting about James’ recent indictment for mortgage fraud turned into a two-day back-and-forth correspondence between Bower and Halligan over the alleged inaccuracies in her reporting. Bower detailed the exchange in an article published in Lawfare on Monday.
Bower received the first Signal message from a user named “Lindsay Halligan” on Saturday, Oct. 11, following her post to X on grand jury testimony that James’ grand niece lived in her Virginia home for months at a time without paying rent.
“Anna, Lindsey Halligan here,” the first message read. “You are reporting things that are simply not true. Thought you should have a heads up.”
The Lawfare reporter was skeptical at first but confirmed her identity, using the place they first met. The Signal conversation was set up to be disappearing messages after eight hours, but Bower took screenshots, which she published in the Lawfare piece.
“Ok, I’m all ears,” Bower replied after confirming Halligan’s identity. “What am I getting wrong?”
“Honestly, so much,” Halligan wrote. “I can’t tell you everything but your reporting in particular is just way off.” She then said it was clear to her that the reporter jumps to “biased conclusions” based on what she read rather than “truly looking into the evidence.”
The conversation seemed out of place because Bower did not have an established rapport with the attorney. One thing in particular struck Bower; Halligan, who has since fired people for speaking out of turn to 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 that she is personally handling. She mostly criticized my reporting — or, more precisely, my summary of someone else’s reporting,” Bower wrote.
“For someone so attuned to the risks of speaking out of turn — and so willing to punish others for allegedly doing so — Halligan’s decision to reach out to me over text remains baffling,” she added. “She knew I was a journalist. She approached 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 one.”
President Donald Trump’s hand-picked prosecutor, who previously served as his personal attorney, replaced Erik Siebert, who refused to prosecute James Comey or James. Within days of Halligan’s appointment, she secured an indictment against Comey for false statements to Congress and obstruction. Two weeks later, she persuaded a separate grand jury to indict James for mortgage fraud.
Bower followed up later Saturday night, asking why Halligan was frustrated with reporters’ coverage of the case. Halligan said she wasn’t frustrated and that Anna was the only reporter she had reached out to, while reiterating that Bower’s reporting contained inaccuracies.
“You’re biased. Your reporting isn’t accurate. I’m the one handling the case and I’m telling you that,” Halligan wrote. “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.”
Halligan never clarified exactly what was inaccurate about the reporting of the rental payments. Bower contacted The Times, and they said that the Justice Department took no issue with their story once it was published.
Ahead of publication of their full Signal exchange, Bower gave a heads up to the Department of Justice. Five minutes before the deadline, Halligan responded to Bower’s Signal message saying everything she messaged her was off-record — a condition of anonymity that neither ever agreed to in the entirety of the Signal back-and-forth.
Bower did say that she “certainly would have been willing” to have the conversation with Halligan on-background or off-record.
“By the way — everything I ever sent you is off record. You’re not a journalist so it’s weird saying that but just letting you know,” she wrote. “It’s obvious the whole convo is off record. There’s disappearing messages and it’s on signal. What is your story? You never told me about a story.”
At that point, it was too late.
