The FBI raid on the office of a Virginia state senator Wednesday in Portsmouth, Virginia, was reportedly spurred on by a former Justice Department lawyer who thought it would help Republicans in the midterms.
MS NOW reports that Lindsey Halligan, who was forced to leave the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia earlier this year for being illegally appointed, had been pressuring prosecutors to charge L. Louise Lucas, a leader among Virginia Democrats who pushed for redistricting in the state.
“Louise Lucas is a … fairly prominent legislator in her state, but not known nationally, and the FBI and the Department of Justice have been investigating her for several years—three years, I’m told by a source familiar with the probe—and that investigation has been looking at evidence suggesting that she solicited or accepted bribes,” MS NOW senior investigative correspondent Carol Leonnig said on the network Wednesday.
Reporter: When Lindsay Halligan, a former lawyer of Trump's, had been running the U.S. Attorney Office in the Eastern District of Virginia, she had been pressuring prosecutors to bring charges against Louise Lucas. Halligan believed it would be good for the White House before the… pic.twitter.com/ec81OwRbc9
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Leonnig said that according to her source, when Halligan “had been running the U.S. attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia, she had been pressuring and pushing prosecutors to bring charges against Lucas, believing that that would be important, a high-priority case.”
“I’m told that Halligan believed it would be good for the White House to be able, before the midterms, to accuse a prominent state Democrat in Virginia with bribery,” Leonnig added. “Prosecutors based out of Norfolk were not sure this was the strongest case in the world, but Halligan felt very strongly that it should be pressed.”
The FBI has not yet publicly commented on the reasons for the raid. Lucas is an ally of Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, and gained notoriety on social media for posting memes in support of Virginia’s redistricting effort and going toe-to-toe with Republicans like President Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz. The raid of her office got instant coverage on Fox News, likely because a senior member of the DOJ, possibly acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, tipped them off. Was Lucas specifically targeted on trumped-up charges?