Florida Bar officials have walked back earlier statements suggesting they were investigating former Trump aide Lindsey Halligan, telling a watchdog group and The Associated Press in recent days that disciplinary action was pending and then retracting that position on Friday.
In a new statement issued Friday, Florida Bar spokesperson Jennifer Krell Davis said, “The Florida Bar wrote a letter to the complainant erroneously stating that there is a pending Bar investigation” of Halligan. Davis added: “There is no such pending Bar investigation” of Halligan.
Davis said the Florida Bar had received a complaint and was monitoring the “ongoing legal proceedings underlying the complaint,” but she did not provide a detailed explanation for the conflicting descriptions of whether a Bar investigation existed. Halligan responded to emails about the matter Friday evening, saying, “Where’s my apology?”
The discrepancy traces to communications between Florida Bar representatives and the nonprofit watchdog Campaign for Accountability, which had sought an ethics inquiry into Halligan’s conduct while she served in the Justice Department. The group’s request focused on Halligan’s short and turbulent time as acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, an office described as among the Justice Department’s most elite prosecution units.
Campaign for Accountability said it received a letter dated Feb. 4 in which a Florida Bar representative told the group, “We are aware of these developments and have been monitoring them closely. We already have an investigation pending.” The watchdog also said that in a Thursday email to The Associated Press, Davis described an “open file” on Halligan but declined to comment further, saying “as active Florida discipline cases are confidential.”
On Friday, the executive director of the Campaign for Accountability, Michelle Kuppersmith, said the Florida Bar had not told the organization that its earlier assertion was erroneous. She said it was “hard to reconcile” the Bar’s latest statement with the earlier letter, adding in a statement: “If there is no longer an investigation into Halligan, the question is why not, given that three judges indicated she engaged in conduct that appears to violate ethics rules.”
A law professor who is a member of the Florida Bar, Bob Jarvis of Nova Southeastern University, said one possible reason for the reversal could be that an earlier confirmation of an investigation was unauthorized. Jarvis said such information is typically not made public until after a grievance committee makes a finding that moves a matter forward, a process designed to prevent baseless accusations from damaging someone’s reputation.
The broader context for the ethics complaint is Halligan’s appointment and legal challenges to her authority. Halligan, who had served as one of Trump’s attorneys and had no experience as a federal prosecutor, was installed as acting U.S. attorney in September. Her tenure ended after multiple judges questioned the legitimacy of her appointment and cast doubt on whether she could legally remain in the job.
During her time leading the Eastern District of Virginia office, Halligan pursued cases against two of President Donald Trump’s political appointees, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Comey’s and James’s defense teams raised issues that they said included irregularities in the grand jury presentation, and a judge in November scolded Halligan for “fundamental misstatements of the law,” including what the judge characterized as Halligan’s suggestion to the grand jury that Comey did not have a Fifth Amendment right to not testify.
The prosecutions later were dismissed following legal challenges to Halligan’s appointment. On Friday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on the social platform X that Halligan “not only did nothing wrong — she did a great job,” and she called the Florida Bar “investigation” of Halligan “totally fake news.”