A federal judge has dismissed charges filed by President Trump’s Justice Department against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
United States District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie said the appointment of the interim U.S. attorney who secured the indictment, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawful.
Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern breaks down what the decision means.
5 questions with Mark Joseph Stern
The judge’s dismissal here has to do with the prosecutor in these cases and how she was appointed. Can you explain?
“A federal statute says that when a U.S. attorney position becomes vacant, the attorney general of the United States can fill that position with an interim U.S. attorney, but only for 120 days, and it says that once those 120 days are up, the federal district court then names the individual who acts as U.S. Attorney.
“The Trump administration interpreted this to allow the attorney general to just appoint a new interim U.S. attorney after those 120 days are up.
“So, Trump had appointed one interim U.S. attorney here. The term was close to expiration, and then he appointed Lindsay Halligan rather than allowing a district court to name a replacement, and today a federal judge found that that was unlawful, that Halligan could not be appointed, that a district court had to make the appointment, and that means everything Halligan did, including the indictments of Tish James and James Comey, are invalid and have to be tossed out.”
Remind us of who Lindsay Halligan is.
“Lindsay Halligan was a personal attorney for Donald Trump who previously practiced insurance law in Florida and has no experience with prosecution.
“In fact, when she presented this indictment of Comey to the grand jury, it was the first time she had ever prosecuted a case.
“I don’t think that that had any impact on the legal reasoning here, but it does show the wisdom of the statutory scheme that Congress really wanted to ensure that these were qualified individuals holding these incredibly powerful jobs, exercising the power of the executive branch, and didn’t want any random person doing it.
What is the significance of this moment?
“This is a huge decision and a major rebuke to the Trump administration from the court, and it’s not the first time that his attempt to put loyalists in U.S. attorneys offices have been rebuked.
“He faced a similar problem in New Jersey when he tried to put his associate Alina Habba, in the U.S. attorney’s position. He was shot down by a court there for the exact same reason; that case remains pending.
“And I think that the message that the judiciary is sending is that the president and the attorney general just cannot endlessly cycle through unqualified loyalists in an effort to prosecute and imprison people they happen to dislike for political reasons.
“Congress set up these offices to be bastions of professional conduct who would execute and enforce the law in a reasonable and thoughtful way. And that is why there is this limit, in the law that says that you can’t just put in a kind of random person off the streets, because you think that they’re right for the position.
“This either has to go through the Senate, or it has to go through a federal court. Neither of those things happened here. So, I think this is a good day for the rule of law in that it ensures that the folks exercising wielding prosecutorial authority on behalf of the United States can’t just be someone who happened to defend the president during his criminal trial. It has to be someone who has some kind of expertise, who has some kind of good judgment, such that either the Senate confirms them, or the federal courts approve them.”
Remind us briefly about the cases against James Comey and Letitia James and what happens now.
“These are extraordinarily weak cases, and I think they show why Trump put Lindsay Halligan in this position in the first place, he and Pam Bondi, his attorney general.
“The case against James Comey accuses him of lying to Congress, but the factual allegations are extraordinarily weak, as his attorneys have shown. If you look at what he said to Congress, it doesn’t look like a lie at all. It looks like he in fact told the truth and his statement was sort of butchered and distorted by Halligan’s office to make it look like perjury, which it was not.”
“There’s a similar issue with the indictment against Tish James, the attorney general of New York, who did investigate and bring a civil case against Trump successfully.
“She seems to have accurately represented her mortgage to the banks when obtaining a loan, but Halligan’s office again sort of distorted the facts in the record to make it look to a grand jury as though she had falsified paperwork and committed a federal crime.
“This is unprofessional conduct. It’s alleged to be extremely unprofessional and improper. If it’s true, then I think it’s clear that Halligan violated the oath to the office that she never actually lawfully held.”
Can these prosecutions be brought back with a different prosecutor, or are they done?
“Quite possibly. They were dismissed without prejudice, which means that a lawfully acting prosecutor could still bring them again.
“Now there’s a problem with the statute of limitations in the Comey case. The statute of limitations on that alleged crime has run. There is a grace period in federal law that arguably applies. It may not. That is going to be a battle ahead, but there is a real chance that the Comey case may simply be dead.
“The Tish James case, we’ll see if another prosecutor who was appointed lawfully and legitimately is even willing to try to bring an indictment. But if so, there is a chance that she could see herself reindicted. Those cases are not entirely over, but this is a serious blow to them.”
This interview was lightly edited for clarity.
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Jill Ryan produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Mark Navin. Michael Scotto adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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