Buh Bye Lindsey!
Judge Cameron Currie has issued her ruling in Jim Comey and Letitia James’ efforts to disqualify Lindsey Halligan as unlawfully appointed.
In both cases, she dismissed the indictments without prejudice.
On September 25, 2025, Lindsey Halligan, a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience, appeared before a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia. Having been appointed Interim U.S. Attorney by the Attorney General just days before, Ms. Halligan secured a two-count indictment charging former FBI Director James B. Comey, Jr. with making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding.
Mr. Comey now moves to dismiss the indictment on the ground that Ms. Halligan, the sole prosecutor who presented the case to the grand jury, was unlawfully appointed in violation of 28 U.S.C. § 546 and the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. As explained below, I agree with Mr. Comey that the Attorney General’s attempt to install Ms. Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was invalid. And because Ms. Halligan had no lawful authority to present the indictment, I will grant Mr. Comey’s motion and dismiss the indictment without prejudice.
But she also ruled that the judges in EDVA will choose the US Attorney until such time as Trump can get one confirmed by the Senate, which might, in theory, lead Erik Siebert to be reinstated.
The power to appoint an interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 546 during the current vacancy lies with the district court until a U.S. Attorney is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate under 28 U.S.C. § 541.
This decision will be appealed. And given that Currie stopped short of dismissing the indictment with prejudice, it may not moot Comey’s other challenges to his indictment (or James’, which are not yet fully briefed).
Update: This language seems to prohibit Bondi from trying to reindict Comey again, but does not moot his other legal challenges.
The Government also fails to meet the second requirement for a valid ratification, i.e., that the principal must have been able “to do the act ratified . . . at the time the ratification was made.” FEC v. NRA Pol. Victory Fund, 513 U.S. 88, 98 (1994) (emphasis in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). In NRA Political Victory Fund, the Supreme Court rejected the Solicitor General’s attempt to ratify the filing of an unauthorized petition for certiorari when the attempted ratification occurred after the filing deadline had already passed. Id. at 98. Similarly here, the Attorney General’s attempt to ratify Mr. Comey’s indictment on October 31 “came too late in the day to be effective,” as the statute of limitations for the charged offenses expired 31 days earlier on September 30.21 Id.
21 Generally, “[t]he return of an indictment tolls the statute of limitations on the charges contained in the indictment.” United States v. Ojedokun, 16 F.4th 1091, 1109 (4th Cir. 2021). “An invalid indictment,” however, “cannot serve to block the door of limitations as it swings closed.” United States v. Crysopt Corp., 781 F. Supp. 375, 378 (D. Md. 1991) (emphasis in original); see also United States v. Gillespie, 666 F. Supp. 1137, 1141 (N.D. Ill. 1987) (“[A] valid indictment insulates from statute-of-limitations problems any refiling of the same charges during the pendency of that valid indictment (that is, the superseding of a valid indictment). But if the earlier indictment is void, there is no legitimate peg on which to hang such a judicial limitations-tolling result.” (emphasis in original)).