ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Attorneys representing two prominent adversaries of former President Donald Trump are set to petition a federal judge on Thursday to dismiss charges against their clients. They will argue that the prosecutor responsible for their indictment was appointed unlawfully.
The legal team is contesting the appointment of Lindsey Halligan as the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. This is part of a broader strategy by former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James to have their cases thrown out before reaching trial.
Central to Thursday’s court proceedings are the intricate constitutional and statutory regulations that dictate how U.S. attorneys, who serve as principal federal prosecutors nationwide, are appointed.
Typically, these positions are filled by candidates nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. However, the Attorney General can bypass this process by appointing an interim U.S. attorney for up to 120 days. Comey and James’s legal representatives argue that after this period, the decision to appoint a replacement lies solely with the federal judges of the respective district.
In this case, that process was not followed.
Following the resignation of interim U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert in September, amid pressure from the Trump administration to press charges against Comey and James, Attorney General Pam Bondi—responding to Trump’s public insistence—appointed Halligan to the position.
Siebert had been appointed by Bondi in January to serve as interim U.S. attorney. Trump in May announced his intention to nominate him and judges in the Eastern District unanimously agreed after his 120-day period expired that he should be retained in the role. But after the Trump administration effectively pushed him out in September, the Justice Department again opted to make an interim appointment in place of the courts, something defense lawyers say it was not empowered under the law to do.
Prosecutors in the cases say the law does not explicitly prevent successive appointments of interim U.S. attorneys by the Justice Department, and that even if Halligan’s appointment is deemed invalid, the proper fix is not the dismissal of the indictment.
Comey has pleaded not guilty to charges of making a false statement and obstructing Congress, and James has pleaded not guilty to mortgage fraud allegations. Their lawyers have separately argued that the prosecutions are improperly vindictive and motivated by the president’s personal animus toward their clients, and should therefore be dismissed.
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