President Trump’s handpicked federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia is scrambling to present a case against James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, to a grand jury before a deadline early next week, according to officials familiar with the situation.
Lindsey Halligan, a former defense lawyer for Mr. Trump who was hastily appointed after the president forced out her predecessor last week, is racing to draft an indictment under withering pressure from the White House. The president has demanded the department go after one of his foremost enemies, even though career prosecutors determined there was insufficient evidence to indict Mr. Comey.
Prosecutors have been looking into whether Mr. Comey should be charged with lying to Congress in connection to the F.B.I. investigation of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia, which the president claims was a witch hunt aimed at destroying him.
Ms. Halligan, who had no experience as a prosecutor before her recent appointment, could seek to bring charges as early as Thursday, but is expected to take action by Tuesday, when the statute of limitations on Mr. Comey’s congressional testimony expires, according to officials who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Even if Ms. Halligan meets her deadline, there is no guarantee the grand jury will determine that the government has met the evidentiary threshold to indict Mr. Comey.
It is not clear if a career prosecutor would be willing to present the case to the grand jury — or if Ms. Halligan or another Trump-allied political appointee would appear in court.
“Perjury is a very difficult crime to prove,” said John P. Fishwick, who served as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia from 2015 to 2017. “The department must show that a particular statement was false and that the defendant knew it was false at the time he or she testified. Because of the difficulty of proof, it is not often pursued.”
Career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia investigated Mr. Comey and informed Mr. Trump’s political appointees at the Justice Department that there was insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction, according to several people briefed on those discussions.
Over the past week, Mr. Trump has greatly intensified his pressure campaign on the Justice Department by publicly demanding that top officials prosecute Mr. Comey and Letitia James, the New York attorney general who accused Mr. Trump of inflating the value of his assets.
It is not clear where prosecutors may seek to bring a case against Mr. Comey. The headquarters for the district is in Alexandria, but investigators have been active in other parts of the state, according to two people familiar with the situation.
On Friday, Erik S. Siebert, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney overseeing both investigations, stepped down after Mr. Trump told reporters he had lost faith in Mr. Siebert’s willingness to bring criminal charges.
In his place, the president installed Ms. Halligan, who had been serving as a White House aide.
Mr. Siebert had recently told senior Justice Department officials that investigators found insufficient evidence to bring charges against Ms. James, and had also raised concerns about a potential case against Mr. Comey, according to officials familiar with the situation.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who runs the day-to-day operations of the Justice Department, had privately defended Mr. Siebert against officials, including William J. Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who had urged that he be fired and replaced with a prosecutor who would push the cases forward, according to a senior law enforcement official.
Devlin Barrett contributed reporting.