Judge dismisses cases against James Comey and Letitia James

Ex-FBI Director James Comey (Stephan Savoia/AP)

A federal judge has dismissed the criminal cases against former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, concluding that the prosecutor who brought the charges at President Donald Trump’s urging was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.

The rulings from US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie halt at least for now two prosecutions that had targeted two of the president’s most high-profile political opponents and amount to a stunning rebuke of the Trump administration’s legal manoeuvring to install an inexperienced and loyalist prosecutor willing to file cases.

The orders do not concern the substance of the allegations against Mr Comey or Ms James but instead deal with the unconventional manner in which the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, was named to her position as interim US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Defence lawyers said the Trump administration had no legal authority to make the appointment. In two similar rulings, Judge Currie agreed and said the invalid appointment required the dismissal of the cases.

“All actions flowing from Ms Halligan’s defective appointment”, including securing and signing the indictments, “were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside”, she wrote.

Letitia James in October (John Clark/AP)

Ms Halligan, the judge said, has been serving unlawfully in the role since September 22, the day she was sworn in by Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The challenges to Ms Halligan’s appointment are just one facet of a multiprong assault on the indictments by Mr Comey and Ms James, who have each filed multiple motions to dismiss the cases that have not yet been resolved.

Both have separately asserted that the prosecutions were vindictive and emblematic of a weaponised Justice Department. Mr Comey’s lawyers last week seized on a judge’s findings of grand jury irregularities and missteps by Ms Halligan in moving to get his case tossed out, and Ms James has cited “outrageous government conduct”.

The former FBI director said he is grateful that the judge dismissed the case against him on Monday, though he expects his saga is not over.

“I know that Donald Trump will probably come after me again,” Mr Comey said in a video posted online. “I’m innocent. I am not afraid and I believe in an independent federal judiciary.”

Mr Comey said he hopes the case sends a message that “the president of the United States cannot use the Department of Justice to target his political enemies”.

At issue in Judge Currie’s rulings is the mechanism the Trump administration employed to appoint Ms Halligan, a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience, to lead one of the Justice Department’s most elite and important offices.

Ms Halligan was named as a replacement for Erik Siebert, a veteran prosecutor in the office and interim US attorney who resigned in September amid Trump administration pressure to file charges against both Mr Comey and Ms James.

After Mr Siebert resigned after having served more than 120 days in the role, defence lawyers argued, the judges of the federal court district should have had exclusive say over who got to fill the vacancy.

They said the law does not permit the Justice Department to make successive appointments as an end-run around the courts and the Senate confirmation process. Judge Currie agreed.

“The 120-day clock began running with Mr Siebert’s appointment on January 21 2025. When that clock expired on May 21, 2025, so too did the Attorney General’s appointment authority,” Judge Currie wrote.

“Consequently, I conclude that the Attorney General’s attempt to install Ms Halligan as interim US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was invalid and that Ms Halligan has been unlawfully serving in that role since September 22 2025.

Instead, Mr Trump nominated Ms Halligan while publicly imploring Ms Bondi in a social media post to take action against his political opponents, saying in a Truth Social post that “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”.

Though the defendants had asked for the cases to be dismissed with prejudice, meaning the Justice Department would be barred from bringing them again, the judge instead dismissed them without prejudice. The Justice Department did not immediately comment on next steps, but it is likely to appeal.

Mr Comey was indicted days later on charges of making a false statement and obstructing Congress, and Ms James was charged soon after that in a mortgage fraud investigation.

In a statement, Ms James, a Democrat, said: “I am heartened by today’s victory and grateful for the prayers and support I have received from around the country.”

“I remain fearless in the face of these baseless charges as I continue fighting for New Yorkers every single day,” she said.

Judges have separately disqualified interim US attorneys in New Jersey, Los Angeles and Nevada, but have permitted cases brought under their watch to move forward. But lawyers for Mr Comey and Ms James had argued that Judge Currie’s ruling needed to go even further because Halligan was the sole signer of the indictments and the driving force behind them.

Mr Comey has for years been one of Mr Trump’s chief antagonists. Appointed to the job in 2013 by president Barack Obama, Mr Comey, at the time of Mr Trump’s 2016 election, was overseeing an investigation into whether his presidential campaign had conspired with Russia to sway the outcome of the race.

Furious over that investigation, Mr Trump fired Mr Comey in May 2017 and the two officials have verbally sparred in the years since.

Ms James has also been a frequent target of Mr Trump’s ire, especially since she won a staggering judgment against him and the Trump Organisation in a lawsuit alleging he defrauded banks by overstating the value of his real estate holdings on financial statements.

An appeals court overturned the fine, which had ballooned to more than 500 million dollars with interest, but upheld a lower court’s finding that Mr Trump had committed fraud.