Judge dismisses Comey, James indictments after finding that prosecutor was illegally appointed

WASHINGTON AP A federal judge has 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 U S District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie amount to a stunning rebuke of the Trump administration s efforts to target Trump s political opponents It also highlights its legal maneuvering to hastily install a loyalist prosecutor willing to file the cases The orders make Lindsey Halligan the latest Trump administration prosecutor to be disqualified because of the manner in which they were appointed Both defendants had inquired for the cases to be dismissed with prejudice meaning that the Justice Department would not be able to bring them again But the judge instead dismissed them without prejudice though it was not straightaway clear if or how the Justice Department might attempt to revive the prosecutions Monday s order deals exclusively with 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 majority elite and essential offices Halligan was named to the job in September after a different interim U S attorney Erik Siebert was effectively forced out amid pressure from the Trump administration to file charges against Comey and James After Siebert resigned Comey s lawyers argued the judges of the federal court district should have had special say over who got to fill the vacancy Instead Trump nominated Halligan while publicly imploring Bondi in a social media post to take action against his political opponents saying in a Truth Social post that JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED NOW Comey was indicted days later on charges of making a false report and obstructing Congress and James was charged soon after that in a mortgage fraud scrutiny Judges have separately disqualified interim U S attorneys in New Jersey Los Angeles and Nevada but have permitted cases brought under their watch to move forward But lawyers for Comey and James had argued that Currie s ruling needed to go even further because Halligan was the sole signer of the indictments and the driving force behind them Comey has for years been one of Trump s chief antagonists Appointed to the job in by President Barack Obama Comey at the time of Trump s electoral contest was overseeing an review into whether his presidential campaign had conspired with Russia to sway the outcome of the race Furious over that analysis Trump fired Comey in May and the two bureaucrats have verbally sparred in the years since James has also been a frequent target of Trump s ire especially since she won a staggering judgment against him and the Trump Organization in a lawsuit alleging he defrauded banks by overstating the value of his real estate holdings on financial statements An appeals court overturned the fine which had ballooned to more than million with interest but upheld a lower court s finding that Trump had committed fraud