On Tuesday, James Comey criticized the Department of Justice for what he called hypocrisy, as he addressed a three-judge panel about the attempts to revive his “fatally flawed” prosecution for false statements and obstruction. The former FBI director argued that these efforts are bound to fail.

In a brief submitted to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Comey described his indictment as “fatally flawed,” due to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s improper appointment of Lindsey Halligan as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Bondi did not remedy this issue within the required timeframe, further complicating the situation.

Comey contended that since Halligan lacked the legal authority to act when she independently secured the indictment, the DOJ should not be given another opportunity to jeopardize his freedom. He stated, “The government attempts to justify its illegal actions by suggesting it might have appointed Ms. Halligan differently. However, this argument fails to hold water, especially where fundamental constitutional rights and individual liberty are concerned. The United States cannot pursue charges and prosecutions through someone unauthorized to wield governmental power. This court should uphold this position.”

In November, Senior U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie dismissed criminal charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. She concluded that Bondi’s appointment of Halligan was unlawful and rejected Bondi’s belated attempt to legitimize Halligan’s actions by bestowing a special attorney title. Bondi argued that this last-minute move “resolved any potential issues,” claiming that even if Halligan wasn’t legally interim U.S. attorney, she was still authorized by Bondi to oversee the office and carry out prosecutions.

Halligan, who was the sole presenter and signature on the grand jury indictments, assumed her role in September. Despite lacking prosecutorial experience, she had the endorsement of her former client, President Donald Trump, as the statute of limitations loomed for Comey and career prosecutors opposed pursuing charges.

Halligan, the lone presenter and signer of the grand jury indictments, was installed into her role in September — with no prosecutorial experience to her name but with the express endorsement of her former criminal defendant client President Donald Trump — as the statute of limitations neared for Comey and career prosecutors sided against bringing charges.

After the dismissals, the DOJ struck out in renewed efforts to indict James and had to deal with a separate quagmire in its pursuit of Comey. Halligan in the meantime continued identifying herself on court documents as interim U.S. attorney, sparking the ire of a federal judge who saw it as “direct defiance” of Currie’s “binding court orders.”

Although Halligan stepped aside on Jan. 20 as judges in the Eastern U.S. District of Virginia began the process for replacing her, the subsequent court-appointed replacement was fired swiftly.

The challenges at the 4th Circuit have continued, however, with the DOJ still maintaining Halligan’s appointment was at most a “paperwork mistake” that Bondi fixed — and certainly not a reason to jettison the indictments, which were “nonetheless valid.”

“The appointment error alleged here therefore boils down to the idea that the Attorney General cited the wrong statute in authorizing Halligan to seek and obtain the indictments at issue here. Even if that paperwork mistake was legal error, it was not one that prejudiced defendants; and it has in any event been cured several times over by Attorney General orders ratifying Halligan’s actions before the grand juries and her signature on the indictments,” the government said. “The Court should reverse.”

Comey’s legal team has responded that there’s nothing Bondi can do to salvage the case now, and he noted the government’s position here “sharply contrasts” with the DOJ’s embrace of the Appointments Clause violation-based end to the Mar-a-Lago classified documents prosecution of Trump.

“The government’s claim that the defective appointment of Ms. Halligan is a ‘paperwork error’ rendered inconsequential by the retroactive invocation of Section 515 sharply contrasts with the government’s position in United States v. Trump, where the appointment of a Special Counsel pursuant to Section 515 (and other provisions) was at issue,” the filing said. One statute Jack Smith cited to support his appointment — 28 U.S. Code § 515 — is also one that Bondi invoked to retroactively name Halligan as special attorney.

The footnote specifically pointed to a Jan. 23 filing on the Mar-a-Lago docket, in which Miami U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones backed Trump and his ex-co-defendants, representing that it was the DOJ’s position that special counsel Smith’s Volume II was an “illicit product of an unlawful investigation and prosecution” that “belongs in the dustbin of history,” kept from the public. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon went on to scold Smith for producing the report after she found he was unlawfully appointed, construing that as a “breach” of her dismissal of Trump’s indictment.

For Comey, following the logic of Trump v. United States, Halligan’s actions were “void” from the get-go and so was everything that followed. Belated attempts to make her a government attorney under a different title didn’t change that, the brief concluded.

“The government cannot now escape the consequences of its decisions by retroactively appointing Ms. Halligan to a lesser office than the one she purported to occupy when she presented the case to the grand jury,” Comey summed up, adding that the Supreme Court has “repeatedly held that actions taken by someone who lacks a valid appointment are void.”