# Judge Throws Out Comey and James Indictments Over Prosecutor’s Appointment
*Event date: 2025-11-24*
By IO Digest Desk
A federal judge’s decision to dismiss the criminal indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James has turned two politically explosive prosecutions into a constitutional dispute over who had authority to bring them in the first place.
On November 24, 2025, U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie ruled that Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor who presented the cases, had not been lawfully appointed and therefore lacked authority to seek the indictments. NBC News reported that Currie threw out both cases after finding that Halligan acted alone before the grand jury and signed the indictments herself. In the judge’s view, that defect was not technical or procedural. It went to the legal validity of the prosecutions from the start.
Currie’s ruling, as described by NBC, said Halligan had no lawful authority to present Comey’s indictment and that actions flowing from her defective appointment were unlawful exercises of executive power. The judge issued a similar ruling in the James case. Because Halligan was the only prosecutor to secure and sign the indictments, Currie concluded the indictments should be voided.
The decision lands in a broader political context that shaped both the prosecutions and the reaction to their collapse. NBC reported that Halligan, a former Trump attorney and former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience, was appointed interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia at President Donald Trump’s direction after he urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute Comey and James. That sequence gave the appointment challenge unusual weight because the two defendants are prominent political adversaries of Trump.
The Justice Department moved quickly to resist the implications of the ruling. Bondi said the government would take all available legal action, including an immediate appeal, and defended Halligan as an excellent attorney. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt separately said the administration’s position is that Halligan was legally appointed. Their statements make clear that the dismissal is not the end of the case, but the opening of a new battle over appointment power and the reach of executive authority.
The defendants framed the ruling as more than a personal victory. Comey said the prosecution reflected malevolence and incompetence and argued that the case mattered because a president should not be able to use the Justice Department against political enemies. James said she remained fearless in the face of what she called baseless charges. Her attorney, Abbe Lowell, said the order confirmed that the president had gone to extreme measures to install an ally after career prosecutors declined to proceed.
The dismissals were entered without prejudice, which means the cases could in theory be brought again. But NBC reported that a fresh filing could trigger another difficult legal argument. Comey’s lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, said the ruling suggests the five-year statute of limitations has run because the indictment is void. The Justice Department, by contrast, has argued that a federal statute allows prosecutors to return with a new indictment within six months after dismissal, even if the limitations period has expired. Comey’s lawyers counter that the six-month grace period should not apply when the original prosecutor had no power to indict at all.
NBC also noted the ruling may reach beyond these two cases. Another defendant prosecuted by Halligan’s office, Mohammad Sharifullah, has challenged her authority as well, though his indictment was returned by Halligan’s predecessor. A similar dispute over Alina Habba’s role in New Jersey has already left other cases in limbo.
That broader uncertainty is what gives Currie’s decision its importance. The ruling did not resolve the merits of the allegations against Comey or James. Instead, it questioned whether the government crossed a constitutional line before the cases even began. If appellate courts agree, the damage will extend beyond two dismissed indictments and into the architecture of politically sensitive federal prosecutions.
