NEWS: In a hearing in federal court, prosecutors confirmed that the operative indictment in the case against James Comey

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79. The failure to have a new vote on the indictment likely will end up being a non-issue

Not a popular view I know, but I suspect that what ultimately sinks the indictment, and I do think it should be dismissed, won't be the failure of Halligan to present the two-count indictment to the full grand jury after they had voted on the three count indictment.

As I understand it, the full grand jury initially executed two documents -- the three count indictment originally presented to them by the prosecution and a Form AO191 "Report of a Grand Jury's Failure to Concur in an Indictment." This latter form was edited by hand to indicate that the only part of the 3 count indictment that the grand jury did not concur in was Count 1." Now, admittedly, I don't know for certain when the AO191 form was signed and who made the hand written edit. But assuming, as seems likely, that it was signed at the same time that the grand jury signed the 3 count indictment and was edited by the foreperson to reflect what the grand jury had decided, then the subsequent re-execution of a version of the indictment that only reflected the two counts that the grand jury had agreed to would, in the terms used to assess "harmless error", the error of not showing the 2 count version to the whole grand jury and/or having a re-vote "did not substantially influence the grand jury's decision" since the grand jury had already voted to concur in the 2 counts and they were unchanged from the first indictment.

I will be surprised if Judge Nachmanoff would dismiss the indictment on grounds related solely to the way the indictment was re-executed. And if he did, I think the appeals court would reverse. He's much more likely, I believe, to look at the legal errors and misrepresentations in Halligan's presentation and at the evidence that this is a malicious, vindictive prosecution as grounds for dismissing the indictment and/or a finding that Halligan wasn't authorized to serve as a US Attorney.