Judge in US dismisses cases against James Comey and Letitia James after finding that prosecutor was illegally appointed

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday dismissed the criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, concluding that the prosecutor who brought the charges at President Donald Trump’s urging was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.

The rulings from US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie halt at least for now a pair of prosecutions that had targeted two of the president’s most high-profile political opponents and amount to a stunning rebuke of the Trump administration’s legal manoeuvring to install an inexperienced and loyalist prosecutor willing to file cases.

The orders do not concern the substance of the allegations against Comey or James but instead deal with the unconventional manner in which the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, was named to her position as interim US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Defence lawyers said the Trump administration had no legal authority to make the appointment.

In a pair of similar rulings, Currie agreed and said the invalid appointment required the dismissal of the cases.

“All actions flowing from Ms Halligan’s defective appointment,” including securing and signing the indictments, “were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside,” she wrote.

Halligan, the judge said, has been serving unlawfully in the role since September 22, the day she was sworn in by Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The challenges to Halligan’s appointment are just one facet of a multi-prong assault on the indictments by Comey and James, who have each filed multiple motions to dismiss the cases that have not yet been resolved.

Both have separately asserted that the prosecutions were vindictive and emblematic of a weaponised Justice Department. Comey’s lawyers last week seized on a judge’s findings of grand jury irregularities and missteps by Halligan in moving to get his case tossed out, and James has cited “outrageous government conduct.”

At issue in Currie’s rulings is the mechanism the Trump administration employed to appoint Halligan, a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience, to lead one of the Justice Department’s most elite and important offices.

Halligan was named as a replacement for Erik Siebert, a veteran prosecutor in the office and interim U.S. attorney who resigned in September amid Trump administration pressure to file charges against both Comey and James.

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