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New updates in the Comey and James cases. Both indictments dismissed because Lindsey Halligan was not lawfully appointed as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and so all her actions as such are void and without effect. Comey and James opinions. Though the two are substantially identical, having both been authored by the same judge. These dismissals are without prejudice meaning the government can try and secure further indictments. Although, in Comey's case this faces some additional hurdles since the statute of limitations for his offense expired several days after the first indictment against him was secured.
Note that a similar dispute is playing out in New Jersey with respect to the appointment of Alina Habba as United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey and in Nevada with respect to Sigal Chattah's appointment as United States Attorney for the District of Nevada. These cases are a little more complicated than Halligan's due to implications of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act but they arose due to circumstances like what Halligan is facing now.
At the heart of these disputes is 28 USC 546 which provides:
The dispute is principally about whether the Attorney General is permitted to make successive 120-day appointments or whether the Attorney General gets a single 120-day appointment and then when that expires the District Court makes the appointment as to who shall be United States Attorney. In Halligan's case Erik Siebert had already been appointed for 120 days earlier this year and was appointed by the district court upon expiration of that appointment. He then resigned under pressure to prosecute James and Comey, whereupon Bondi purported to appoint Halligan under 28 USC 546. Naturally, the court finds that Attorney General Bondi has had her 120 day appointment and so authority to appoint a new USA for EDVA lies with the district court.
A similar disqualification happened in the central district for California, bringing the total to 4.
Team R has a majority in the senate. They should be running every single US Attorney through confirmation instead of stepping on rakes with this fighting over acting/interim US Attorneys. I understand the admin's "just do things" approach, but getting hung up on procedural stuff like this is amateur hour.
The exact mirroring is eerie, though. Some of Jack Smith's cases against Trump got dismissed because his appointment was considered unlawful by the District Judge (and Clarence Thomas).
It did ultimately lead to the clusterfuck that's happening now, though. If Bondi could have appointed a special counsel to investigate Trump's enemies, she likely would have done so. But because of the Smith decision, she had to push the interim appointments laws beyond where the court was willing to take them and throw the district offices into disarray as a consequence. There is effectively no one in charge of four offices at this point, though I can imagine that the career supervisors there will keep things running in the meantime, at least as far as routine matters are concerned.
Aren't courts supposed to appoint US attorneys if the AG's choices can't secure Senate confirmation?
In theory, yes. In theory, there's also someone already in the office who would automatically become Acting US Attorney in the event of a vacancy without an appointment. In practice, both of these are the same person—a career prosecutor who anticipates outlasting the current administration and would prefer to prosecute boring criminal cases rather than participate in Trump's revenge tour. So what happens is the Administration appeals the court ruling and fires whoever the court appoints, or tries to use some backdoor shenanigans to appoint their preferred candidate to a position where she'd automatically take over as US Attorney upon her own disqualification, creating confusing arguments where one holds multiple titles at once. At least this is how it's playing out in New Jersey. I'd offer a more detailed explanation but I'm not entirely sure I understand Pam Bondi's reasoning so I'll hold off.
The upshot here, though, is that the Trump Administration is going to continue to insist that Halligan is the US Attorney for the EDV, despite a court ruling saying she isn't. Imagine if you got an email from your company saying that your boss was no longer employed there, but he continued to show up and was assigning your team work that would cost the company a lot of money. When you email top leadership they tell you he doesn't work there anymore, but when you email his immediate supervisor you're told that he does and just continue the way things have always been. How much work do you think gets done in that situation? How long can the company continue to operate amid the uncertainty? How efficient will any work be? Now assume that this guy is also entirely unqualified for the job and was hired for the position because he was his boss's college roommate and he occasionally makes bizarre decisions that no one in the company can justify. You have absolutely no idea what's going on. What do you think morale is like? This is basically what's going on in New Jersey right now, where the entire office isn't doing anything because nobody knows who has the authority to do anything.
Getting an email from some judge saying that your boss is no longer employed at your company would be quite unusual though; "your company" in this case is the executive branch (c'est Trump!), no?
Within Rov's analogy, "your company" is the US gov as a whole (with Trump being the "immediate supervisor").
Companies that are structured as distinct and separate branches with no overall leader would be... quite unusual. I can't think of any, and if I could I would think it would be extremely unusual for a minor minion of one of the branches to be able to overrule the leader of a different "coequal" one. (and @pusher_robot, I'm pretty sure the DoJ already has their own HR?)
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A better analogy then would be that the SVP of your division says your boss is still employed, but a SVP of a different division which contains HR says he's not
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