When the Prosecutors Need Prosecuting

Comedy, Chaos, and the Collapse of Competence

By LONNIE KING

There’s a certain kind of headline you almost wish were satire. Last week, it wasn’t.

Lawfare reporter Anna Bower published screenshots of an extraordinary exchange: Lindsey Halligan, the U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia—appointed under Trump—direct-messaging her on Signal about a live case.

The problem wasn’t just that Halligan was contacting a journalist about an active prosecution (a serious ethical red flag in itself). It’s that she did so like a teenager trying to walk back an embarrassing text.

“By the way—everything I ever sent you is off record,” Halligan wrote.
“You’re not a journalist, so it’s weird saying that, but just letting you know.”

That’s not how journalism—or professionalism—works. And that’s what makes this story both hilarious and horrifying at the same time.

First, the Comedy

There’s comedy in the sheer awkwardness of it all.

Imagine a federal prosecutor—someone entrusted with interpreting and upholding the law—apparently unaware of how “off the record” even works.

It’s the political equivalent of shouting “Delete that!” after sending an incriminating email. You can almost picture the frantic scrolling, the desperate double-check to see if Signal has a “take-back” feature for dignity.

In any other era, this might have been a punchline on Veep. Today, it’s a Tuesday.

In fact, the whole thing plays out like a deleted scene from The Death of Stalin, that brilliantly bleak satire starring Jeffrey Tambor and Steve Buscemi.

In that film, the Soviet leadership’s scramble to appear competent after Stalin’s death becomes a grotesque comedy of errors—full of whispered panic, misplaced loyalty, and desperate self-preservation.

Every character is terrified of saying the wrong thing, yet somehow manages to say (or do) the worst possible thing at exactly the wrong time.

Sound familiar?

That’s the kind of bureaucratic farce we’re watching unfold in real life: people wielding immense power, tripping over basic protocol, and mistaking improvisation for leadership. It’s absurd until you remember that in both the movie and our moment, the stakes aren’t fictional.

The punchline always lands on the people living under the chaos.

But Then, the Terror

What’s funny for a second becomes terrifying when you remember: these people wield real power. Halligan’s texts weren’t harmless social blunders; they were communications from a sitting U.S. attorney in a politically charged case involving New York Attorney General Letitia James.

That means the person jokingly redefining journalism also holds the authority to sign subpoenas, seek indictments, and decide who gets prosecuted.

And that’s the part that should chill every one of us.

Because when the people entrusted to uphold justice can’t handle the basic boundaries of ethical communication, they’re not just unqualified—they’re dangerous.

And what’s worse, it’s not limited to prosecutors. It’s part of a broader culture of power without maturity.

We’ve seen it in Pentagon briefings where figures like Pete Hegseth have berated or blacklisted reporters for asking questions that didn’t flatter the administration. We’ve seen it in Karoline Leavitt—Trump’s communications director—who recently snapped at a journalist with a “your momma” insult and insisted they weren’t a “real reporter.”

When people with national platforms wield that kind of tone and authority, it stops being juvenile banter. It becomes intimidation disguised as swagger, and it corrodes the very institutions they claim to defend.

A Pattern, Not a Punchline

It would be comforting to treat this as an isolated gaffe, but it’s not.

Trump’s appointees—from cabinet secretaries to communications directors—often seemed to operate with a stunning disregard for how institutions are supposed to work. The rules, the norms, the professional standards—those weren’t guardrails. They were optional suggestions, easily overridden by ego or improvisation.

We’ve arrived at a moment when the highest office in the land communicates like a middle-school group chat. The President of the United States shares memes of himself wearing a crown, dropping cartoon excrement on political enemies and American landmarks alike—and people who should be horrified instead laugh or cheer.

It would be comical if it weren’t so clarifying: this is what happens when immaturity becomes identity, and spectacle becomes qualification. These aren’t fringe behaviors anymore; they’re hiring criteria.

And that’s the through-line here. The incompetence isn’t the point—it’s the method.

Undermine trust in process, make professionalism look elitist, and eventually, no one remembers what “normal” was supposed to look like.

What We Lose When We Laugh Too Long

It’s tempting to just laugh it off. The screenshots, the clumsy backpedal, the “you’re not a journalist” line—it’s all too absurd not to. And, make no mistake about it: I love to laugh at the buffoonery and listen to pundits and talking heads (like Jon Stewart and Seth Meyers) to can make me laugh out loud about it.

But the erosion of seriousness in public life has real costs. The further we slide into performative government—where loyalty outranks literacy and showmanship replaces skill—the more we normalize incompetence as ideology.

So yes, this story is hilarious. But like most tragedies in slow motion, the laughter fades fast.

Postscript: Calling It What It Is

I know most of you already know my political leanings and will, because of that, write this off as just another shot at a Republican administration. But I want to ask you to set that aside for a moment and consider how embarrassingly incompetent this would look under any administration.

Whether anyone believes me or not, I would level the same amount of criticism at this level of impropriety and ineptitude even if I agreed with every policy they stood for.

To me, it’s like being a fan of a sports team—you can have undying loyalty to the colors, but if you’re reasonable, you don’t ignore the fumbles and blown coverages just because you bought the jersey. You call it what it is, even when it’s your team. (Houston Texans, I’m looking at you.)

Because at the end of the day, accountability shouldn’t be partisan. It’s just good coaching—for democracy.

Grace and grit to you (I think we’re gonna need more grit)! — LK