investigating

March 6 (UPI) — Former Justice Department official Lindsey Halligan is under investigation by the Florida Bar Association for her time trying to prosecute President Donald Trump‘s enemies while acting as a U.S. attorney.

Halligan, Trump’s former personal attorney, brought cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both of which failed. On Nov. 24, U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie in South Carolina dismissed both cases and ruled that Attorney General Pam Bondi‘s installation of Halligan as interim U.S. attorney was invalid. But Halligan continued to work as a U.S. attorney in the Justice Department.

In January, Halligan stepped down from the position after a U.S. District Judge David Novak ordered her to stop “masquerading as a U.S. attorney in Virginia.

The Florida bar, of which Halligan is a member, sent a letter to the nonprofit Campaign for Accountability acknowledging the investigation.

The Campaign for Accountability had requested disciplinary proceedings against Halligan over her conduct while acting as a U.S. attorney in the cases against Comey and James. It sent a similar request to the Virginia bar about Halligan, who worked as an insurance lawyer in Florida before Trump’s second administration.

“We already have an investigation pending,” the Florida bar said in its letter, which was also sent to Halligan, according to a copy reviewed by The Washington Post.

If the Florida bar determines that she acted improperly, she could be disbarred in the state.

The Department of Justice on Wednesday proposed a change to federal regulations for state bar investigations of its attorneys. The proposal was posted to the Federal Register and said, “Before a current or former Department lawyer may participate in any investigative steps initiated by the bar disciplinary authority … in response to allegations that a current or former Department attorney violated an ethics rule while engaging in that attorney’s federal duties, the Department will have the right to review the allegations in the first instance and shall request that the bar disciplinary authority suspend any parallel investigations until the completion of the Department’s review.”

The rule change is necessary because “over the past several years, political activists have weaponized the bar complaint and investigation process,” the memo said.

Halligan, who had no previous trial experience, was appointed to replace Erik Siebert, who resigned the position in September amid concerns he would be forced out for failing to prosecute James.

Interim U.S. attorneys can only stay in their positions for 120 days, and Siebert had already exceeded his time without confirmation.

Feb. 17 (UPI) — Spanish authorities plan to investigate social media giants X, Meta and TikTok over the distribution of child sex abuse materials on their respective social media platforms, the government announced Tuesday.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said there is a pending investigation by state prosecutors into the alleged spread of artificial intelligence-generated material.

“These platforms are jeopardizing the mental health, dignity and rights of our sons and daughters,” Sanchez said in a translated post on X.

“The state cannot allow this,” he said. “The impunity of the giants must end.”

The Spanish government said it is looking at options for holding tech firms accountable for “potential criminal liability of increasingly widespread practices in the digital environment, such as the generation and dissemination of sexual content and child sexual abuse through deepfakes and the manipulation of real images to create others with explicit sexual content, thereby undermining the dignity of the victims,” as reported by The Guardian.

A recently produced report suggested that social media platforms enable the creation and rapid distribution of offensive content that enables their makers to elude detection and potential criminal prosecution.

Meanwhile, the respective social media sites profit from such activities, officials said.

Sanchez said Spain’s Council of Ministers will invoke Article 8 of the Organic Statute of the Public Ministry to ask it to investigate the alleged crimes that the three tech firms might be committing via the creation and distribution of AI-generated child sexual abuse materials using their respective AI tools.

The Spanish probe into the social media giants arose after French authorities raided X’s offices in Paris over similar accusations, but X officials there have denied any wrongdoing.

X recently added Grok AI, which is the creation of Elon Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence company. Musk also owns X.

TikTok offers AI tools, while Meta AI is integrated into Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp platforms.

The issue raises the matter of free speech laws in the European Union and the United States.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission is among European regulatory bodies leading the European Commission’s inquiry into X over the use of the Grok AI tool to generate deepfake and sexualized images of real people, including children.

The investigation is to determine if X is complying with European laws regarding personal data and how algorithms might protect lawbreakers.