Donald Trump’s attempt to weaponize the Justice Department against his political foes has collapsed spectacularly. Minutes after federal Judge Cameron Currie dismissed the criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey, she also threw out the case against New York Attorney General Letitia James. The reason? The prosecutor at the center of both cases, Lindsey Halligan, was never lawfully appointed.
Halligan had been fast-tracked into one of the country’s most powerful prosecutorial roles. But Currie made it clear: “Ms. Halligan was not appointed in a manner consistent with this framework.” The judge added that “all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment” are “unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside.”
The debacle exposes how far the Trump administration pushed the law to install loyalists. Interim U.S. attorneys are supposed to serve for only 120 days unless a court formally appoints them. Instead, Halligan was sworn in by Attorney General Pam Bondi just 24 hours after Trump publicly demanded prosecutions of his perceived enemies.
Halligan had no prosecutorial experience but immediately targeted Comey, rushing a grand jury indictment days before the statute of limitations expired. Her charges alleged that Comey lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee about an FBI anonymous source and about Hillary Clinton’s alleged plans to distract from her private email server.
The case was chaotic from the start. The grand jury initially refused to indict. Halligan forced jurors to stay late, ultimately securing a two-count indictment — down from the three she originally sought. She signed it alone, an unusual move in criminal cases. When a magistrate judge noticed two conflicting versions of the indictment on the court docket, Halligan reportedly could only say, “OK, well.”
Justice Department lawyers later admitted that Halligan never even reviewed the final indictment. The result: two high-profile cases left vulnerable to legal challenge.
James’ attorney, Abbe Lowell, said the dismissals confirm what critics have long argued: Trump’s prosecutions were political. “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.”
Both Comey’s and James’ cases were dismissed without prejudice. Comey’s statute of limitations has expired, making refiled charges unlikely.
Halligan’s fiasco is not an isolated incident. Three other interim Trump-loyal attorneys — Alina Habba in New Jersey, Sigal Chattah in Nevada, and Bilal Essayli in California — were similarly disqualified for improper appointments. Even attempts to retroactively fix Halligan’s role failed. Currie wrote that the attorney general “has identified no authority allowing the attorney general to reach back in time and rewrite the terms of a past appointment.”
For now, Trump’s revenge campaign lies in ruins, undone by procedural chaos and legal rules even his own Justice Department could not bend.