Trump Attorney Makes Embarrassing Error in Letitia James Indictment

MAGA prosecutor Lindsey Halligan is already making basic errors in her indictment of New York Attorney General (and Trump target) Letitia James. In an official court filing Thursday, Halligan listed James’s address as “Brooklyn, New Jersey” instead of New York, where Brooklyn is.

This is a pretty glaring mistake that someone trying to prosecute a state attorney general for false statements to a financial institution should not be making. Halligan, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, also brought forth charges last month against former FBI Director James Comey for lying to Congress, after her predecessor refused to. In that indictment, Halligan too made basic errors, like misspelling words and submitting the wrong documents to the judge.

Halligan, previously Trump’s personal lawyer, is a deeply unqualified pawn whose only mission is to head these obviously politicized legal attacks on people Trump doesn’t like. She had literally never prosecuted anyone before Comey, and has most of her experience in insurance cases.

“When you bring a case against the former director of the FBI, you definitely want it to be the maiden voyage of an insurance lawyer,” Last Week Tonight host John Oliver said sarcastically after Halligan indicted Comey. “What she lacks in prosecutorial experience she more than makes up for in random insurance facts and a shitload of undereye concealer.”

Now those same concerns are bubbling up again as Halligan makes an easily avoidable blunder in her newest politically motivated prosecution. All this from the administration obsessed with merit.

Passing over Donald Trump (in spite of his less-than-subtle appeals), the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday gave Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado the Nobel Peace Prize.

The award’s announcement cautioned that democratic backsliding is accelerating globally—a trend to which Trump has made no small contribution.

The Nobel Committee said it was recognizing Machado for “her tireless work promoting democratic rights” in an “authoritarian state.”

“Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace,” the committee stated. “However, we live in a world where democracy is in retreat, where more and more authoritarian regimes are challenging norms and resorting to violence.”

The “same trends” of repression and consolidation of power seen in Venezuela are happening globally, the committee said: “rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarisation.

“When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognise courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist,” the committee continued.

In these warnings, it’s hard not to hear echoes of the United States today under Trump—the militarization of American cities, weaponization of government against political opponents, violations of civil liberties, deportation of dissidents, and attacks on the press, academia, and other institutions.

Last month, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, a global democracy watchdog, reported that it had flagged twice as many instances of the U.S. government eroding or abolishing “rules, institutions, and norms” that shape American democracy in the first four months of Trump’s second term as in the previous two years. Examples included “efforts to restrict academic freedom, criminalize protest activity, question the legitimacy of certified elections, selectively restrict media access to the executive and circumvent due process norms.”

It’s been three weeks since House Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers back to their districts, and Republicans are getting seriously sick of his WFH strategy. 

During a private conference call with House Republicans Thursday, at least three lawmakers raised concerns about keeping the House out of session after it passed a stopgap funding bill that never made its way through the Senate, sources told MSNBC.  

California Representative Jay Obernolte warned that staying home would make it seem like Republicans were “prioritizing politics over government.”

“I think we’re gonna get to a point where it’s damaging to continue to keep the House out of session,” he said. 

Oklahoma Representative Stephanie Bice said she had “concerns” about lawmakers staying in their districts during the government shutdown, and that constituents probably “wonder why we’re not there,” according to one source. She warned leadership to imagine the optics of staying home next week, when lawmakers could just as easily deliver messaging from Washington. 

North Dakota Representative Julie Fedorchak expressed a similar sentiment, arguing that their messaging would be stronger and more consistent if they weren’t all working from home. 

Some Republicans have already voiced their disapproval publicly. 

California Representative Kevin Kiley fumed at the speaker’s comment Thursday, claiming that the House would likely remain out of session for another week because “we’ve already done our job.”

“What the House has done is pass a 7-week Continuing Resolution. The entire reason a CR is necessary is that Congress has not done its job in passing a timely budget,” Kiley wrote on X. “The Speaker shouldn’t even think about cancelling session for a third straight week.”

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has found herself at odds with party leadership, has slammed Johnson all week for sending lawmakers home.

“I think he should really bring the House back in session for many reasons. We have appropriation bills that need to get passed. There is a new Democrat that’s been elected that does deserve to be sworn in. Her district elected her. We have other bills that we need to be passing,” Greene told CNN Thursday. “Any serious speaker of the House is going to build consensus within his conference behind a plan. It’s not something secret that gets worked on in a committee.”

Earlier this week, Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie suggested that Johnson had scattered lawmakers to the winds to avoid swearing in Democratic Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva, who would be the tie-breaking vote on a petition to discharge the Jeffrey Epstein files in full. When pressed about it on Tuesday, Johnson struggled to explain why he was waiting for the House to be in full session, when she could be sworn in in a short pro forma session. 

Two Republican governors have broken with the Trump administration, condemning the president’s decision to release the National Guard into American cities.

Vermont Governor Phil Scott called it an “unnecessary” and “unconstitutional” move that only “further divides and threatens people.”

“We need stability right now in this country—we don’t need more unrest.… I don’t think our guard should be used against our own people. I don’t think the military should be used against our own people. In fact, it’s unconstitutional,” he told VTDigger on Thursday. “Unless, of course, there’s an insurrection, much like we saw Jan. 6 a few years ago.”

Scott also said he would reject a request to deploy Vermont’s National Guard elsewhere, and that Trump calling for the jailing of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was “wrong on many, many different levels.”

Scott did not support Trump in 2016 and called for his removal from office after the January 6 insurrection.

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has been much more supportive of Trump than Scott has in the past, attending rallies and receiving endorsements from him since 2018. Even he thinks this is a bit much.

“We believe in the federalist system—that’s states’ rights,” he told The New York Times on Thursday. “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.”

“I was surprised that Governor Abbott sent troops from Texas to Illinois,” Stitt continued. “Abbott and I sued the Biden administration when the shoe was on the other foot and the Biden administration was trying to force us to vaccinate all of our soldiers and force masks across the country.… As a federalist believer, one governor against another governor, I don’t think that’s the right way to approach this.”

Stitt, who made the comments shortly before Scott, indicated he isn’t the only Republican governor who disapproves of Trump sending military from other states into the streets of Chicago, Portland, and Washington, D.C.

“Maybe you just haven’t asked the right ones,” he said. Only time will tell.

“This is an achievement of a whole society,” said Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado upon receiving the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. “I am just, you know, one person. I certainly do not deserve this.”

Donald Trump, on the other hand, did not receive the honor, despite believing—and asserting incessantly—that he deserves it more than anyone.

The White House on Friday lamented that the prize was not bestowed upon the man who felt the most entitled to it: “President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives,” wrote Steven Cheung, the notoriously feisty White House communications director, on X. “He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will.”

“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace,” Cheung continued, in a seeming slight to Machado, whom Trump has previously praised for her pro-democracy activism and resistance to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump and his team have vociferously campaigned for the award in recent months, spuriously claiming the president has ended eight wars during his second term. In August, the president reportedly called Norway’s finance minister, Jens Stoltenberg, “out of the blue” to say “he wanted the Nobel Prize.”

World leaders seemingly caught on to Trump’s yearning for a Nobel as a way to the president’s heart, with the rulers of several countries, such as Pakistan, Israel, Guinea-Bissau, Gabon, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, scoring points with him by stating publicly that he deserves it.