Breaking: Judge Throws Out DOJ Cases Against James Comey, Letitia James

novembre 24, 2025

A judge threw out the Trump administration’s cases against former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James Monday after determining that the prosecutor who brought them was illegally appointed.

U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie granted Comey’s request to dismiss the indictment against him on the grounds that Attorney General Pam Bondi illegally appointed interim U.S. Attorney for eastern Virginia Lindsay Halligan.

Comey and James’s attorneys argued that Halligan was illegally appointed because the Justice Department had already used its interim appointment authority on the acting U.S. Attorney who Halligan replaced. Their attorneys also cited Trump’s public instruction to Pondi to prosecute his political enemies as evidence that the cases were politically motivated.

Comey was charged in September with lying to Congress in 2020 about whether he had authorized a leak of classified information as FBI director. James was charged with falsely claiming that a home she purchased in Norfolk, Va. was her primary residence in order to secure more favorable loan terms.

The cases against Comey and James were dismissed without prejudice, meaning they could be re-filed. But the statute of limitation has passed for the false statements case against Comey, potentially inhibiting the Trump administration’s efforts to bring the charges again.

A former White House staffer with no prosecutorial experience, the Trump administration installed Halligan to lead the cases against Comey and James in Virginia when the acting U.S. Attorney hesitated to do so. Erik Siebert, a career prosecutor who Bondi appointed to be acting U.S. Attorney for eastern Virginia, resigned after President Trump criticized him for not bringing charges against James.

Currie indicated the authority to appoint an interim prosecutor is now in the hands of the federal court in eastern Virginia until the Senate confirms Bondi’s next pick for the role. Halligan’s lack of experience and widely criticized handling of the Comey case could make it difficult to get her through the GOP-controlled Senate.

“Ms. Halligan was not appointed in a manner consistent with this framework. The 120-day clock began running with Mr. Siebert's appointment on January 21, 2025. When that clock expired on May 21, 2025, so too did the Attorney General's appointment authority. Consequently, I conclude that the Attorney General's attempt to install Ms. Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was invalid and that Ms. Halligan has been unlawfully serving in that role since September 22, 2025,” Currie concluded.

Right before Comey was indicted in September, Trump urged Bondi to bring charges against the former FBI director, a longtime political opponent of Trump’s. Trump fired Comey in 2017 because of the intelligence community’s role in perpetrating false claims of collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Comey has been an outspoken Trump critic ever since.

James became a prominent Trump opponent when she brought New York’s civil fraud case against him during his 2024 presidential campaign. In August, an appellate court tossed New York judge Arthur Engoron’s $464 million judgement against Trump issued last year, a move that Trump called a total political victory. Trump routinely criticized James’s case as a political stunt, given her past campaign promise to go after Trump.