Lindsey Halligan, the Donald Trump-affiliated insurance lawyer the Justice Department handpicked to pursue some of the president’s longtime political foes, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, was not lawfully appointed, and therefore, the indictments against them are dismissed.
After reviewing grand jury materials connected to Comey’s case, U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, explained the decision: It all came back to a 120-day deadline for interim attorneys.
As HuffPost reported in April, the Trump administration has been taking advantage of loopholes in appointment rules for interim or temporary U.S. attorneys to install Trump loyalists. By law, when a U.S. attorney steps down for whatever reason, their interim replacement can only stay in the position for 120 days — or until a judge in the relevant district decides that the interim attorney should be appointed or the court makes an appointment of its own.
“Ms. Halligan was not appointed in a manner consistent with this framework,” Currie wrote.
Therefore, the judge continued, “all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment” are considered “unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside.”
Comey’s team had alleged that Halligan was unqualified to hold her role as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia due to how she was appointed. (In a separate argument, Comey’s lawyers argued that the administration’s prosecution of the former FBI director is vindictive and selective and should be dismissed on these grounds, as well.)
Attorney General Pam Bondi ushered Halligan into the role of interim U.S. attorney on Sept. 22 after the incumbent U.S. attorney, Trump appointee Erik Siebert, resigned.
Siebert had stepped down rather than submit to a reported pressure campaign to prosecute both Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. He had failed to find sufficient evidence to support allegations that Comey had lied to Congress or that James had committed mortgage fraud, allegations Trump has pressured the Justice Department to investigate.
Just a day after Siebert resigned, Trump publicly called on Bondi to accelerate prosecutions against his enemies, and within 24 hours, Halligan, who has zero prosecutorial experience, was sworn in as the interim prosecutor for one of the most prestigious and busiest judicial districts in the nation. (The Eastern District of Virginia is known as the “rocket docket.”) James has also moved to challenge Halligan’s appointment.
“The 120-day clock began running with Mr. Siebert’s appointment on Jan. 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 Sept. 22, 2025,” Currie wrote.
The judge dismissed Comey’s case without prejudice. Typically, this means that the charges can be refiled by prosecutors later. Given that the statute of limitations had run out on Comey’s case, it’s less clear how the Justice Department may try to pursue him again. The Justice Department did not immediately return a request for comment Monday.
Less than a week after being appointed, and just days before a five-year statute of limitations to pursue charges ran out, Halligan rushed to get a grand jury indictment of Comey. Her prosecution alleged that Comey had lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee about whether he had authorized someone at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports, and that he had lied during that same meeting when he said he wasn’t aware of any plan by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to accuse Trump of ties to Russia to distract from the controversy over her private email server use.
The grand jury initially declined to charge Comey — an extremely rare occurrence because jurors must only find probable cause to charge someone with a crime, a very low bar.
But after Halligan forced grand jurors to stay past normal court hours, they agreed to indict Comey on two counts, not the three that Halligan had originally sought.
Halligan alone signed the indictment. This was highly unusual for a criminal prosecution, since there are typically other attorneys who have worked on the case or an underlying probe who will sign off.
Adding to the weirdness, when a magistrate judge reviewed the indictment, she noted that there were two versions of it published on the court docket: One in which the third charge against Comey had been dropped and another in which the dropped count wasn’t shown at all.
Seeing two versions of an indictment was something that had “never happened before,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Lindsey Vaala told Halligan.
“I’m a little confused as to why I was handed two things with the same case number that are inconsistent,” Vaala said from the bench in September.
Halligan told the judge that while she had prepared a three-count indictment against Comey, she had only signed the two-count indictment.
But both indictments had Halligan’s signature on them.
When Vaala pointed this out, all Halligan could muster in response was “OK, well,” according to court transcripts.
Then, last week, during a bizarre motion hearing, it was revealed by Justice Department lawyers that Halligan never actually reviewed the final indictment against Comey. After she failed to get grand jurors to approve of all counts against the former FBI director, Halligan showed grand jurors an altered version of the indictment instead of a new one as required.
Meanwhile, in a statement after the dismissal, Abbe Lowell, Letitia James’ attorney, said the judge’s order acknowledged what’s been clear from the start of the prosecutions.
“The President went to extreme measures to substitute one of his allies to bring these baseless charges after career prosecutors refused. This case was not about justice or the law; it was about targeting Attorney General James for what she stood for and who she challenged. We will continue to challenge any further politically motivated charges through every lawful means available,” he said.
James’ case also was dismissed without prejudice.
So far, three other interim U.S. attorneys propped up by the Trump DOJ and specifically appointed by Bondi have been disqualified, including Alina Habba in New Jersey, Sigal Chattah in Nevada and Bilal Essayli in California. Judges in each instance found Bondi’s appointment process was out of legal bounds.
Bondi tried to avoid a similar fate with Halligan once Comey challenged Halligan’s appointment and moved to dismiss the indictment on that basis. The attorney general issued an order, signed and dated Oct. 31, appointing Halligan to the “additional position of Special Attorney” to supervise Comey’s indictment, but said her order retroactively applied to Sept. 22, when Halligan was first appointed U.S. attorney.
Although the attorney general has “the power to appoint subordinate officers to assist [her] in the discharge of [her] duties, the Government has identified no authority allowing the attorney general to reach back in time and rewrite the terms of a past appointment,” Currie wrote.
When reached for comment, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, told HuffPost that “the facts of the indictments against Comey and James have not changed and this will not be the final word on this matter.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.