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Notes -
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 lot of IMO naive discussion under this post. Lawfare is a rigged game and discussing bias political outcomes as if they were normal legal procedures is silly.
Trump: “2+2=4”
Judge: “Actually, 2+2=5. Case dismissed!”
Commentariat: “How could Trump screw up this badly? Why doesn’t Trump have competent lawyers? Does Trump hire too many bimbos? Why was his 2+2=4 case so weak?”
Etc etc
So…why do you think Trump’s the one saying “4”?
Because in subsequent interviews Comey has constructively admitted to submitting false testimony on multiple occasions. He frames it as working within the system, a "we knew where the evidence was we just needed a Judge's blessing to go get it" sort of situation. But what it boils down to is that he knowingly submitted false statements and/or fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree to secure warrants.
Specifically, we now know that wire-tapping of Trump associates on suspicion of Russian Collusion was secured under false pretenses, and that Comey knew this to be the case when he testified otherwise in September of 2020.
This is the first thing which makes me, if not exactly sympathetic to Trump, then at least unsympathetic to Comey.
Criminal procedure exists for a reason. There are plenty of jobs in the world where you can do just fine by sometimes taking shortcuts instead of doing everything by the book. Criminal investigations is not one of them. If you find yourself lying to a judge so that they will bless you violating someones constitutional rights, or engaging in parallel construction, then you are the villain. If you can't do your job while keeping within the law, then at least be honest, quit your job, wear a batman mask and beat up suspects in the night, don't pretend to serve the law while breaking it.
Sure, Trump going after you is roughly orthogonal to you having acted in a criminal manner, and this very much does not scale to a systemic solution, but if your allegations are true then I would consider a conviction at least a happy accident, like a bolt of lightning striking a serial killer.
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