Conversely, the Justice Department says the indictment against Comey was reviewed by a full grand jury.

Contrary to what the Justice Department represented in court and in written filings Wednesday, federal prosecutors said Thursday that the entire grand jury reviewed the indictment against former FBI Director James Comey.

U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, who brought the charges, testified Wednesday that the grand jury that indicted Comey voted to indict him on two of the three counts presented in the original indictment, but that the final revised indictment reflecting the two counts on which Comey was ultimately charged was not reviewed by the full grand jury, only by the jury foreman and another grand jury.

Comey’s attorney, Michael Dreeben, argued Wednesday that the issue with the grand jury indictment clearly required the judge to dismiss the case.

In court filings Thursday, Justice Department officials changed course.

“The official transcript of the September 25, 2025 proceeding before Judge Vaala conclusively refutes that claim and establishes that the grand jury voted on, and validated, the two-count indictment,” prosecutors wrote in a document.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tyler Lemons had also testified in court Wednesday that the full grand jury did not see the final indictment.

“Let me be clear that the second indictment, the operative indictment in this case that Mr. Comey faces, is a document that was never shown to the entire grand jury or presented in the grand jury room; is that correct?” U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff asked.

“Standing here in front of you, your honor, yes, that’s my understanding,” Lemons said.

Comey was accused in September of lying to Congress after Trump forced his resignation former federal prosecutor Erik Siebert and installed Halligan, a White House staffer with no prosecutorial experience, and then asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to act “NOW!!!” to prosecute Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Representative Adam Schiff. Comey has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

A lawyer for Comey argued during Wednesday’s hearing that by replacing Siebert with his former employee and lawyer, and publicly calling for his political enemies to be impeached, Trump was “manipulating the prosecutorial machinery” and committing an “egregious violation of fundamental constitutional values.”

Halligan and other Justice Department officials, after Wednesday’s hearing, launched unusually public attacks on the judge overseeing the case by mischaracterizing comments he made Wednesday.

“Personal attacks, like Judge Nachmanoff referring to me as a ‘puppet,’ do not change the facts or the law,” Halligan said in an exclusive statement to the New York Post.

“A federal judge should be neutral and impartial. Instead, this judge launched an outrageous and unprofessional personal attack against US Attorney Lindsey Halligan in open court yesterday. “The Department of Justice will continue to follow the facts and the law,” Justice Department spokesman Chad Gilmartin said in a statement. posted in ‘X’ Thursday.

The statements refer to an exchange between Judge Nachmanoff and Comey’s attorney in which Nachmanoff questioned whether his position was that Halligan was serving as a “puppet” or “stalking horse” for President Donald Trump in his retaliation orders against Comey.

But Nachmanoff never directly claimed that Halligan was a “stooge” and did not argue in court when Lemons flatly rejected that characterization.

“So your opinion is that Ms. Halligan is a stalking horse or a puppet, for lack of a better word, doing the president’s bidding?” Judge Nachmanoff asked Dreeben during the exchange.

“Well, I don’t want to use language about Ms. Halligan that suggests anything other than that she did what she was told to do,” Dreeben responded. “The president of the United States has the authority to direct prosecutions. She worked in the White House. She was surely aware of the president’s directive.”