A federal judge on Monday tossed the criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, finding that the prosecutor who brought the charges was unlawfully installed — a startling rebuke of how the Justice Department has been handled. The decision centered not on the merits of the allegations, but on the simple rule of law: the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, lacked the lawful authority to sign indictments, so the charges could not stand as filed.
Make no mistake: the way Halligan landed the job was political theater, not a sober exercise of justice. Reports show she was elevated after a Trump-pressured replacement of the prior interim U.S. attorney, raising hard questions about whether the White House tried to manufacture prosecutions against its political enemies. Conservatives should be outraged that political operatives were placed inside our courts to pursue vendettas instead of evidence.
The judge dismissed the indictments without prejudice, a technical outcome that leaves room for refiling but also opens a thicket of legal problems for the government — most notably the run-up of statutes of limitations in Comey’s case. In plain English: the administration rushed to force a case into court before time ran out, and now that rushed gambit has blown up in their faces. This is the predictable consequence when raw politics gets mixed into prosecutorial timing.
Even beyond the appointment defect, serious procedural chaos tainted the Comey prosecution. Federal filings and court hearings revealed grand jury irregularities and admissions by prosecutors that the final indictment may never have been presented properly — mistakes that any honest legal system would treat as fatal. If the Justice Department can’t even follow the basic grand jury rules, it proves the deeper problem: a breakdown in competence and a willingness to shortcut procedure to score political points.
Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz—no knee-jerk Trump cheerleader—warned on the air that a dismissal on technical grounds does not amount to a stamp of innocence for Comey or James, and he’s right. Conservatives proud of the rule of law should welcome a fair fight on the merits, not cheers for a hollow procedural victory; at the same time, this episode exposes the rot of lawfare and the weaponization of our legal institutions against political opponents. We can insist on both accountability and fairness — and we should demand both loudly.
Congress and the next administration must act to stop this cycle of abuse: tighten the rules on interim appointments, enforce prosecutorial standards, and restore checks so no president can shove political appointees into U.S. attorney’s offices to do their bidding. Working Americans deserve a Justice Department that follows the law and defends institutions, not a revolving door for politically motivated prosecutions. If Republicans mean what they say about reforming the swamp, this is the moment to deliver real, lasting change.
