Abu Sabet: A federal judge dismissed the cases against two of President Trump’s political adversaries on Monday after finding that the prosecutor Trump handpicked to pursue charges against them was unlawfully appointed.
U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie said Lindsey Halligan, the U.S. attorney selected by Trump to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), was never eligible to assume the post.
A 120-day clock on interim appointments expired during the previous prosecutor’s tenure, the judge said, meaning the authority to appoint a replacement fell with the district’s federal judges, not Attorney General Pam Bondi. “In light of these principles, I conclude that all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment, including securing and signing Mr. Comey’s indictment, constitute unlawful exercises of executive power and must be set aside,” Currie wrote, repeating the paragraph word-for-word in her ruling dismissing James’s case.
She dismissed the indictments without prejudice, meaning the Justice Department could try to bring the charges again with another prosecutor, though the path forward is uncertain.
Halligan is the fourth U.S. attorney loyal to Trump to have been found to be unlawfully serving in her post by a judge.
Comey and James mounted parallel bids to disqualify Halligan from their cases. She was the sole prosecutor who sought their indictments from grand juries, which they claimed rendered the charging document void and required dismissal ahead of their trials. The post opened up for Halligan after the district’s previous top prosecutor, Erik Siebert, resigned rather than — with just days remaining before the statute of limitations was set to expire — cave to pressure to indict Comey over 2020 testimony the ex-FBI director gave Congress.
After Trump pressured Bondi to take legal action against his foes and suggested Halligan for the job, the attorney general appointed her to the post.
The 120-day clock began when Siebert was named the district’s interim U.S. attorney on Jan. 21, meaning it lapsed May 21. However, the district judges unanimously exercised their power under federal law to retain him until the Senate confirms Trump’s nominee.
Abbe Lowell, an attorney for James, had argued that adopting the government’s stance would create a “statutory contradiction” allowing administrations to pick interim U.S. attorneys “over and over again,” and effectively eliminating the judges’ role. Comey attorney Ephraim McDowell suggested the government would “never have any reason to go through Senate confirmation again.”
Prosecutors, meanwhile, said nothing in the law’s text precluded Bondi from making a new appointment at the end of the 120-day period, calling the idea the government would seek to avoid confirming its U.S. attorneys “fanciful.”
Currie, an appointee of former President Clinton, said the law’s text plainly favors the defendants.
“The text and structure of subsection in particular make clear the appointment power shifts to the district court after the 120-day period and does not revert to the Attorney General if a court-appointed U.S. Attorney leaves office before a Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney is installed,” she wrote.
When the judges extended Siebert’s tenure, he was Trump’s nominee. But after he resigned, Halligan was appointed Sept. 22 and is now the president’s long-term pick for the position.
Days after Halligan took over the office, Comey was hit with charges of making false statements and obstruction stemming from 2020 testimony he gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee. His son-in-law, who worked as a prosecutor in the office, resigned in protest.
In a video posted to Instagram, Comey said his prosecution was based on “malevolence and incompetence,” describing it as a reflection of Trump’s Justice Department while hailing the career prosecutors who declined to join the case.
“I know that Donald Trump will probably come after me again, and my attitude is going to be the same: I’m innocent,” he said. “I am not afraid, and I believe in an independent federal judiciary, a gift from our founders that protects us from a would-be tyrant.”
Though Comey’s case was dismissed without prejudice, it’s not clear the Justice Department will be able to pursue charges again, if it wishes to do so.
The statute of limitations on the counts he faced were days from running out when he was indicted, and in a footnote, Currie wrote that an invalid indictment would not toll that clock in the same way that a valid one would. That would mean the statute of limitations on the charges has expired, barring prosecution.
James was charged weeks after Comey, over mortgage fraud allegations linked to her plans for a Virginia home and whether she lied about them, allowing her to obtain favorable loan terms.
She said in a statement following Monday’s decision that she is “heartened” by the victory.
“I remain fearless in the face of these baseless charges as I continue fighting for New Yorkers every single day,” James said.
Lowell, her attorney, said the order acknowledges what’s been “clear” about the case from its start.
“The President went to extreme measures to substitute one of his allies to bring these baseless charges after career prosecutors refused,” he said. “This case was not about justice or the law; it was about targeting Attorney General James for what she stood for and who she challenged.”
He vowed to challenge any further “politically motivated charges.”
Comey and James had pleaded not guilty.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement that the facts of the indictment against Comey and James “have not changed and this will not be the final word on the matter.”
On Fox News, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Currie’s ruling “unprecedented,” claiming the judge sought to “shield” Comey and James from accountability.
She emphasized that the administration stands behind Halligan’s qualifications and believes she was legally appointed.
“I know the Department of Justice will be appealing this in very short order,” Leavitt said, suggesting Comey should be “pumping the brakes on his victory lap.”
Halligan joins the ranks of Trump’s U.S. attorneys for New Jersey, Nevada and the California district that covers Los Angeles who have all been disqualified from some cases by judges, though the rulings are on hold amid appeals.
Still, the Virginia prosecutor faced a dilemma the others did not: Those judges let the indictments move forward against the criminal defendants who challenged the appointments because career prosecutors helped secure the charges. Halligan had no such help.
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