Left: Attorney General Pam Bondi appears before a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025 (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein). Center: Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York John Sarcone III (U.S. Department of Justice). Right: New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks during a press briefing, Feb. 16, 2024, in New York (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File).
In federal court, meticulous attention to detail is crucial, yet on Friday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) stumbled, misspelling the name of its recently nullified acting U.S. attorney. This error occurred while the DOJ urged a judge to pause a significant setback in a criminal grand jury investigation involving New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office.
For months, the DOJ has witnessed courts nationwide ruling that six of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s interim or acting U.S. attorneys were appointed unlawfully. These rulings have caused varying impacts on the Trump administration’s agenda.
In the Eastern District of Virginia, with Lindsey Halligan at the helm, criminal cases against Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey were entirely dismissed. Halligan only stepped down this week as judges, alarmed by her continued claims as the interim U.S. attorney in court documents, initiated the process of finding her replacement.
Two weeks ago, in the Northern District of New York, Senior U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield declared that John Sarcone was merely an acting U.S. attorney in title. She deemed his grand jury subpoenas on James’ office as “invalid” and “quashed,” disqualifying him from any further involvement in the investigations, regardless of his designation.
According to Law&Crime, these subpoenas were part of the DOJ’s criminal probe into her office’s civil fraud lawsuit against former President Donald Trump and his family business, as well as the Democratic Attorney General’s lawsuit against the NRA.
On Friday, the DOJ submitted documents requesting Judge Schofield, appointed by Barack Obama, to suspend the unfavorable ruling while the government appeals. They argued that even if Sarcone is not acting U.S. attorney, he serves as a special attorney with Bondi’s delegated authority and legally acts as the first assistant U.S. attorney, akin to Ryan Ellison in New Mexico.
The DOJ submits Sarcone’s Letitia James subpoenas shouldn’t have been ruled “invalid and unenforceable” based on a defect in title, which the government still contends isn’t defective.
There was another problem: To make its case, the DOJ cited a decision issued nine days ago that went against one “Raymond” Ellison.
DOJ cites “Raymond” Ellison to support John Sarcone (court documents).
The decision from Senior U.S. District Judge David Nuffer, which correctly referred to the prosecutor as “Ryan” Ellison throughout, noted that he “is not, and was never, a validly acting as United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico” and “has been invalidly claiming to serve in that capacity since his resignation as interim United States Attorney” back in August.
“Mr. Ellison may not perform the functions and duties of the United States Attorney as Acting United States Attorney. And any claim, assertion, or statement of Mr. Ellison, the USAO, or the administration that he is the Acting United States Attorney, or interim United States Attorney, or United States Attorney is improper and inaccurate,” the judge made clear.
The unlawful appointment finding follows various DOJ losses and appeals over Bondi’s temporary top prosecutor installments of Alina Habba in New Jersey, Sigal Chattah in Nevada, Bill Essayli in California, Sarcone, and Halligan.
When Ryan Ellison responded publicly to the ruling, he accepted that his acting U.S. attorney “designation” was deemed “invalid,” also emphasizing that the judge added, as seen in Essayli’s case, that he was “validly designated as First Assistant United States Attorney and, in that capacity, could continue supervising the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico.”
Ryan Ellison (U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico).
But as the DOJ set in motion its attempt to revive the Letitia James subpoenas, it cited directly to “Raymond” Ellison’s slightly salvaged fate as applicable to Sarcone’s circumstances.
“The Attorney General also designated Mr. Ellison as First Assistant United States Attorney, as she did here [with Sarcone]. Although the district court determined that the Section 515 delegation could not authorize Mr. Ellison to perform all the functions of the United States Attorney, it nevertheless determined that this delegation authorized Mr. Ellison to perform the functions of a First Assistant United States Attorney, including supervising and conducting legal proceedings in that district,” the DOJ said. “As a result, the district court refused to invalidate actions taken by Mr. Ellison within the scope of those delegable functions and refused to disqualify him from performing the lawful duties of a First Assistant United States Attorney.”
The DOJ stated that Sarcone is at minimum validly serving as first assistant and thus Judge Schofield “should not have quashed the grand jury subpoenas,” making a stay pending appeal warranted.
“Despite this Court’s contrary ruling, there is a sufficiently serious legal question concerning the validity of the Attorney General’s delegation to warrant a stay pending appeal,” the motion concluded.
Notably, the DOJ represented that it “will not seek to enforce the two subpoenas at issue” if Schofield grants the stay pending appeal.
