‘Anna, Lindsey Halligan Here.’

This week, Lindsey Halligan, the Trump-appointed prosecutor overseeing retaliatory cases against James Comey and Letitia James, became the subject of a bar complaint. The watchdog organization Campaign for Accountability has demanded an investigation into her professional conduct, including a bizarre Signal exchange she had with Lawfare reporter Anna Bower, who documented the back-and-forth in a recent feature. Halligan texted Bower for two days, and only at the tail end did she insist the conversation was off the record—which isn’t how journalism works. Bower was so baffled that, at the start of the exchange, she didn’t even believe it was real:

The user on the other end had selected a setting to make all messages in the chat disappear after eight hours, so I took screenshots of the exchange as it happened to make sure a record of the back-and-forth was preserved. Those screenshots are all available here.

Even as I took this precaution, I assumed the exchange was a hoax because, while it is not unusual for lawyers to reach out to me about my reporting or commentary, it is highly unusual for a U.S. attorney to do so regarding an ongoing prosecution—particularly in a high-profile case in which her conduct is already the subject of immense public scrutiny. Halligan has publicly said little about the cases she is pursuing against the president’s enemies. And I didn’t believe she would message me to complain about a tweet that merely summarized other journalistic coverage of grand jury testimony.