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Lindsey Halligan, President Donald Trump’s comically incompetent US attorney, is out, and along with her, the indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. So what’s next?
In the near future, of course, you can expect unhinged howling from the administration. White House superflack Karoline Leavitt is being very cool and normal about this, going on Fox News yesterday to complain and threaten James Comey.
“Everybody knows that James Comey lied to Congress. It’s as clear as day. And the judge took an unprecedented action to throw these cases out to shield James Comey and Letitia James of accountability based on a technical ruling.”
She followed this with “maybe James Comey should pump the brakes on his victory lap.”
Leavitt’s statement about Comey really highlights that the administration isn’t thinking of these cases as the government prosecuting a defendant. Instead, it’s Trump locked in a personal battle with Comey, and it’s just unfair that judges won’t let him win.
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What happens next depends a lot on how much the government wants to go the mat on the legality of Halligan’s appointment and the now-dismissed indictments. If Trump were merely evil, rather than evil and fully unhinged, it would make the most sense to cut Halligan loose, making her the face of this failure, and stop trying to prosecute Comey and James.
It does not, however, look like that will be the government’s approach. Per Leavitt, Halligan is not only “extremely qualified but she was, in fact, legally appointed.”
Sigh.
The government can appeal the dismissal of the indictments, but that necessitates proving that Halligan was lawfully appointed. Put another way, the decision here didn’t turn on any challenge to the indictments themselves. Rather, the indictments are out because Halligan never had the authority to bring them in the first place. On appeal, the fight would therefore be limited to the appointment issue.
But if a higher court were to resuscitate the Comey and James charges by reinstalling Halligan as some form of US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, she’s still stuck with the fact that these indictments are garbage. Getting Halligan back in only fixes the Halligan problem, not the indictment problem.
The DOJ has already signaled that it’s determined to keep Halligan in her role, with Bondi announcing she had made Halligan a “special US Attorney, so she is in court, she can fight in court just like she was.”
This is ridiculous, of course, as this court ruling means Halligan is not allowed to work on any cases, period, as she’s