Halligan–Bower Exchange Again Raises Confidentiality Issue
Editor’s Note: Ever since we began training clients in media relations, we’ve strongly cautioned them about the risks of going off the record, speaking on background or using any other variations of sharing sensitive information. It’s nothing like what you see in the movies, where someone says, “This is off the record,” and the reporter simply agrees. That’s pure Hollywood fiction. The article below offers an excellent example of why you should avoid these advanced media techniques unless you truly know what you’re doing.
Bruce Hennes
Halligan–Bower Exchange Again Raises Confidentiality Issue
By Eric Rose and Thom Weidlich, writing for PRCG | Weidlic
Way back in 2019 we highlighted how billionaire Jeff Bezos’s extramarital affair provided a prime opportunity to discuss the rules for requesting confidentiality when talking to a journalist. We now have another such opportunity in the infamous text exchange between interim U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan and journalist Anna Bower.
The text back-and-forth earlier this month between Halligan (pictured, left), the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and Bower (pictured, right), a reporter at Lawfare, perfectly illustrates how not to handle off-the-record communications.
According to media reports and Bower’s own Oct. 20 article on Lawfare (a nonprofit that mostly covers national security), Halligan texted Bower on Oct. 11 in response to her X posts commenting on the coverage of the indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James. The two exchanged messages over two days in which Halligan criticized Bower’s comments and hinted at grand jury material, stating, “I can’t tell you grand jury stuff.”
‘Off Record’
Later, after the conversation had already occurred, Halligan attempted to retroactively declare, “Everything I ever sent to you is off record.” Bower’s response was immediate: “You don’t get to say that in retrospect.”
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