“Everybody knows that James Comey lied to Congress. It’s as clear as day,” Leavitt told Fox News. “This judge took an unprecedented action to throw these cases out to shield James Comey and Letitia James from accountability based on a technical ruling. The administration disagrees with that technical ruling.”
Halligan, who had no prosecutorial experience and was leading her first case, was separately excoriated by a magistrate in the Comey case for making “fundamental misstatements of the law” when obtaining the indictment from a grand jury.
New York Attorney-General Letitia James also had the case against her thrown out by a federal judge.Credit: Bloomberg
Trump ordered Attorney-General Pam Bondi to appoint Halligan to the post after her predecessor Erik Siebert declined to pursue charges against Comey or James, citing a lack of credible evidence in both cases.
Shortly after her appointment, Halligan alone secured indictments against Comey and James after other career prosecutors in the office refused to participate.
Both pleaded not guilty. James had been indicted on charges of bank fraud and lying to a financial institution.
Loading
Siebert was appointed in an interim capacity after the Joe Biden-appointed prosecutor resigned. Siebert was never confirmed by the Senate and served under arrangements enabled by district judges. But it meant Bondi had effectively used up her one opportunity to appoint an interim attorney, the court found.
Lawyers for the Justice Department argued the law allowed the attorney-general to make multiple interim appointments for US attorneys. Still, Bondi sought to shore up the cases by issuing a retroactive order that installed Halligan as a “special attorney” assigned to both prosecutions.
Bondi’s order was issued on October 31 and backdated to September 22, three days before Comey was indicted.
Currie found this was not valid. “The government has identified no authority allowing the Attorney-General to reach back in time and rewrite the terms of a past appointment,” she wrote.
“Regardless of what the Attorney-General ‘intended’, or ‘could have’ done, the fact remains that Ms Halligan was not an ‘attorney authorised by law’ to conduct grand jury proceedings when she secured Mr Comey’s indictment.”
The challenge to Halligan’s appointment was one of several efforts lawyers for Comey and James have made to have the cases against them thrown out. Both also argued that the cases are “vindictive” prosecutions motivated by Trump’s animosity.
with AP, Reuters
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
