Attorney General Pam Bondi is reportedly fuming over the dismissal of the Justice Department’s cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James on procedural grounds, but has nevertheless vowed to refile them.
According to the Daily Mail, U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie, a Clinton appointee, on Monday dismissed indictments brought by Lindsey Halligan, President Trump’s interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, describing Halligan’s actions as “prosecutorial misconduct.”
“Shame on them for not wanting her in office,” Bondi fumed after the ruling. “I’ll tell you, Lindsay Halligan, I talked to all of our US attorneys, the majority of them around the country, and Lindsay Halligan is an excellent US attorney.”
Currie dismissed the cases without prejudice, meaning they can be refiled.
Bondi added: “We have made Lindsay Halligan a special US attorney so she is in court, she can fight in court just like she was, and we believe we will be successful on appeal.”
“We’ll be taking all available legal action, including an immediate appeal, to hold Letitia James and James Comey accountable for their unlawful conduct,” she said, according to the Daily Mail. “I’m not worried about someone who has been charged with a very serious crime. His alleged actions were a betrayal of public trust.”
Currie ruled that a 120-day deadline on interim appointments had expired under the previous prosecutor, meaning Bondi did not have authority to name Halligan to the post and that the appointment should have been made by the district’s federal judges.
“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 in his ruling.
Both Comey and James moved to have their cases thrown out and to disqualify Halligan, arguing that her appointment was invalid. They also asked that the indictments be dismissed with prejudice, which would bar the Justice Department from bringing the same charges again.
But Currie instead dismissed the cases without prejudice.
Comey has been charged with making a false statement and obstructing a congressional proceeding related to his 2020 Senate testimony, in which he denied authorizing FBI officials to leak information to the press.
James, meanwhile, faces charges including bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution over allegedly falsified information on mortgage applications.
Halligan had been appointed interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in September.
Her predecessor, Erik Siebert, who had also been serving in an interim capacity, was pushed out amid pressure from President Trump to bring charges against his political opponents.
Comey’s attorneys argued that once Siebert departed, federal judges—not the Justice Department—should have been responsible for selecting the next interim U.S. attorney under the governing statute.
Trump ultimately proceeded to nominate Halligan while publicly urging Bondi to take action against Comey and James.
Comey was charged a few days later for allegedly providing false information and obstructing Congress, while James was subsequently charged in relation to a mortgage fraud investigation.
Federal judges in New Jersey, Los Angeles and Nevada have previously disqualified interim U.S. attorneys in unrelated cases but allowed prosecutions initiated during their tenures to continue.
Attorneys for Comey and James argued that Currie’s ruling should extend further in this instance because Halligan was the sole signer of the indictments and the central figure behind the decisions to bring the charges.
Both James and Comey worked openly and behind the scenes, respectively, to prosecute Trump and sabotage his first term in the Oval Office.
