Nicolle Wallace ripped into Trump-picked interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan after the latter engaged in a conversation about the Letitia James indictment with a legal reporter — and allegedly shared grand jury information in the process.
The political commentator addressed the controversy on Tuesday’s episode of “Deadline: White House,” where she called Halligan’s decision to take part in a 33-hour, on-the-record conversation with legal reporter Anna Bower over Signal not just “bizarre,” but stupid.
“I don’t know whether to deal with the legal issues or the stupidity first,” Wallace said to her guests, Michael Schmidt, a New York Times investigative reporter, and Andrew Weissmann, a former top prosecutor at the Justice Department. “But, the stupidity is just unbelievable here.”
She added: “Now, you could, I guess, legitimately not understand that texting a journalist not about her own reporting, but her summaries [of] someone else’s reporting is something — if you don’t want to see [it] in print, ask the conditions. But, to share grand jury information, to me, seems like something that even in this bizarre, Earth 2 world, could get Lindsey Halligan called into the principal’s office.”
Wallace’s criticism came after Bower, a Lawfare senior editor, detailed her exchange with Halligan — who initiated the conversation after Bower posted on X about The New York Times’ reporting of James’ recent indictment for mortgage fraud. In the multi-day back-and-forth, Bower noted Halligan’s messages “contained language that touched on grand jury matters, even as she insisted that she could not reveal such information.”
Halligan reportedly then tried to tell Bower that “everything I ever sent to you is off record,” but had to be informed that this can’t be requested in “retrospect.”
Watch the full commentary above.
“Deadline: White House” airs weekdays at 4 p.m. ET on MSNBC.
