There’s plenty we still don’t know about the Justice Department’s case against James Comey, but this much is certain: the showdown between Lindsay Halligan (for the United States) and Pat Fitzgerald (for the defense) presents an epic mismatch of courtroom talent. 

If the case reaches trial – and it might not, given how the President has teed up Comey’s selective prosecution motion with his serial public rants – watch for Fitzgerald to mop the floor with Trump’s unqualified loyalist-turned-prosecutor. Fitzgerald is as good as it gets, a legendary trial tactician who has repeatedly won jury verdicts in the highest-stakes courtroom showdowns of the past thirty years. And Halligan – I’ll try to be nice here – is a charlatan. (I tried.)

Fitzgerald was a prosecutorial prodigy, beginning his career at age 27 in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York in 1988. He spent the next thirteen years taking down mobsters and international terrorists including the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman and others who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and associates of Osama Bin Laden who bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. In 2001, when a U.S. senator from Illinois needed a new U.S. attorney for the Chicago area and asked FBI Director Louis Freeh to identify the best prosecutor in the country, Freeh responded, “Patrick Fitzgerald.” President George W. Bush then nominated Fitzgerald as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and the Senate confirmed him unanimously. 

Fitzgerald became a national presence in December 2003, when he was named special counsel to investigate the Bush administration’s leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. That appointment was made by the Deputy Attorney General of the United States – Jim Comey, who had grown up as an SDNY prosecutor alongside Fitzgerald. Upon the appointment, NBC News ran a piece titled: “Pat Fitzgerald: The steely-eyed sleuth” which cast him as “a prosecutor with no discernible political bent” who “blended toughness and flexibility,” worked exhausting hours, remembered every detail, and was “enormously fair.”  Even as Fitzgerald probed the Bush administration, the President publicly praised him as “a very thorough person [who has] conducted his investigation in a dignified way.”

I know dozens of people who worked with Fitzgerald – I started at the SDNY three years after he left – and have heard nothing but raves. In an interview for my new book, Peter Zeidenberg, who worked on the prosecution team in the Plame case, told me Fitzgerald first met with the staff (which had already been investigating the case for about a month) on a Friday; by Monday, Zeidenberg recalled, “he knew as much about the case as anyone else.” Zeidenberg summed up: “All the accolades about Pat are accurate and deserved.” (Except, perhaps, one: in 2005, Fitzgerald was named to People magazine’s “Sexiest Men Alive” list, losing out on the top slot to Matthew McConaughey. Fitzgerald was ribbed by colleagues for years over his inclusion on the list, and he publicly groaned with embarrassment about the so-called honor.)

Fitzgerald has inspired awe with his courtroom work. During closing arguments in the blockbuster 2007 false statements trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby (which arose from the Plame case), the gifted defense lawyer Ted Wells ended his closing argument with a dramatic flourish: “Don’t sacrifice Scooter Libby… I give him to you. Give him back to me. Just give him back,” Wells implored the jury, choking back a sob. Fitzgerald hopped to his feet and delivered a pointed rebuttal that ended with his own variation on Wells’s dramatic conclusion: “He [Libby] stole the truth from the judicial system. Give truth back.” Zeidenberg told me Fitzgerald improvised the line, which mirrored and rebutted Wells’s final plea to the jury. Despite the convoluted nature of the false statements charges and the opposition of one of the nation’s finest defense lawyers in Wells, Fitzgerald won a conviction. (Libby’s sentence was later commuted by Bush, and Trump issued a full pardon in 2018.) 

If the Comey case reaches trial, Fitzgerald likely will find himself squaring off against Halligan – who, as you read this, is working her tenth day as a prosecutor. (She started last Monday.) The New York Times reported that Halligan made her first-ever court appearance on the Comey matter. She originally went to the wrong courtroom and, when she did find the right place, she stood on the wrong side of the judge. Halligan appeared baffled by basic paperwork relating to the indictment, eventually confusing the magistrate judge by presenting two different indictments. I don’t fault Halligan at all; I was just as clueless at the end of my second week on the job. 

How, then, did Halligan – who was primarily an insurance lawyer – get the prestigious post as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia? Two ways. First, the original prosecutor, Erik Siebert – an experienced DOJ professional who leans conservative and had been put in place by Trump himself – resigned under pressure because he didn’t firmly believe the evidence supported charges against Comey and others on Trump’s enemies list. And, second, Halligan is an unflinching Trump loyalist. She joined the President’s private legal team in 2022, and later oversaw the Trump White House’s review of Smithsonian Museum exhibits to eradicate “corrosive ideology.” Federal prosecutors come to the job with a range of prior experience, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a U.S. attorney who has done so little of substance before landing the top job. 

I can attest from my own experience that the quality of courtroom lawyering absolutely can swing the outcome of criminal trials. At times, I won convictions where I thought that better defense lawyering might have given the jury pause. And I lost a couple cases in part because of remarkable performances by defense counsel. In some cases, the evidence is so strong that any semi-competent federal prosecutor can obtain a conviction (though it’s not yet clear whether Halligan qualifies on that measure). In others, where the evidence is short of overwhelming, a verdict can go either way, and courtroom presentation can make all the difference. 

And the Comey prosecution looks shaky at best. Halligan reportedly convinced only 14 of 23 grand jurors to find probable cause for the two counts that comprise the Comey indictment. (The grand jury rejected a third count altogether.) If Halligan could barely win a majority of grand jurors’ votes with a low burden of proof (probable cause) and no defense counsel present – good luck proving the case to a unanimous jury, beyond a reasonable doubt, with Fitzgerald bringing his decades of courtroom experience to bear on the defense side. 

Fitzgerald retired from active practice of law when he left a large national law firm in 2023. He has spent the past few years living quietly, out of the spotlight. But now he returns dramatically to defend his close friend in a case with unimaginably high stakes – for Comey, the Justice Department, and the President alike. And the prosecutor across the courtroom is nowhere near up to the task.