Dem Judge Dismisses Comey, James Indictments; WH: DOJ to Appeal

A federal judge has dismissed the criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The rulings from U.S. District Cameron McGowan Currie, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, were "without prejudice," which means the cases can be refiled and reindicted with another prosecutor.

"This judge took an unprecedented action to throw these cases out to shield James Comey and Letitia James from accountability based on a technical ruling, and the administration disagrees with that technical ruling," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

"I know the Department of Justice will be appealing this in very short order, so maybe James Comey should pump the brakes on his victory lap."

Notably, there is a five-year statute of limitations with the Comey case, a complication that does not exist with the James case. Outside of the appeal, it was not immediately clear how the Justice Department might attempt to revive the prosecutions.

Currie ruled the prosecutor who brought the charges under President Donald Trump's administration was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.

"I believe the Supreme Court's Appointments Clause jurisprudence provides the answer to the with-or-without-prejudice question," Currie wrote in the Comey ruling.

Currie rejected Comey's legal argument that "urges me to exercise my supervisory powers and dismiss his indictment with prejudice: A with-prejudice dismissal is necessary, he argues, to 'vindicate the interests protected by the Appointments Clause' and to 'deter the government from using unlawful appointments to effectuate retaliation against perceived political opponents.'"

The orders make interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan the latest Trump administration prosecutor to be disqualified because of the appointment manner.

Trump and the White House have long rebuked what he called the obstruction of his administration through political bias and legal technicality wrangling.

"I am heartened by today's victory and grateful for the prayers and support I have received from around the country," James wrote in a public statement shared with Newsmax.

"I remain fearless in the face of these baseless charges as I continue fighting for New Yorkers every single day."

Both defendants had asked for the cases to be dismissed with prejudice, meaning that the Justice Department would not be able to bring them again, but Currie rejected that.

The challenge to Halligan's appointment was one piece of a multiprong assault on the indictments by both Comey and James, who had each sought to have their cases dismissed on grounds that the prosecutions were vindictive.

Comey's lawyers had also seized on irregularities in the grand jury process in seeking to get the prosecution thrown out. Each of those requests remains pending.

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 most elite and important 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 exclusive say over who got to fill the vacancy.

Instead, Trump nominated Halligan while publicly imploring Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action, saying in a Truth Social post that "JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!"

Comey was indicted days later on charges of making a false statement and obstructing Congress, and James was charged soon after in a mortgage fraud investigation.

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.

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 2013 by President Barack Obama, Comey, at the time of Trump's 2016 election, was overseeing an investigation into whether his presidential campaign had conspired with Russia to sway the outcome of the race.

Furious over that investigation that he calls the Russia hoax, Trump fired Comey in May 2017, and the two officials have verbally sparred in the years since.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.