{"id":312445,"date":"2025-11-25T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T09:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/312445\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T09:00:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T09:00:08","slug":"us-judge-drops-cases-against-james-comey-letitia-james-dw-11-24-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/312445\/","title":{"rendered":"US judge drops cases against James Comey, Letitia James \u2013 DW \u2013 11\/24\/2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

A US<\/a> federal judge on Monday dismissed the criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey<\/a> and New York Attorney General Letitia James<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Judge Cameron McGowan Currie\u00a0concluded\u00a0that the prosecutor,\u00a0Lindsey Halligan, who brought the charges at President Donald Trump<\/a>‘s behest, was illegally appointed by the US Justice Department.<\/p>\n

The ruling dismisses\u00a0two cases Trump had publicly called for as he pressured the Justice Department<\/a> to go\u00a0against high-profile figures who had criticized him and led probes into his conduct.<\/p>\n

Why was Halligan deemed not fit for purpose?<\/p>\n

Halligan, a former personal lawyer to Trump, was named interim US\u00a0Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in September, taking\u00a0over both cases despite having no previous experience in prosecutions.<\/p>\n

Monday’s ruling comes after both Comey and James accused the Justice Department of violating the US\u00a0Constitution’s Appointments Clause and federal law when\u00a0appointing Halligan.<\/p>\n

Judge Currie found that Halligan “had no legal authority” to bring indictments against the accused.<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0Currie dismissed the cases “without prejudice,” meaning\u00a0the Justice Department will have the\u00a0opportunity to seek new indictments with a different prosecutor at the helm.<\/p>\n

Currie wrote that in appointing Halligan, the Justice Department had used\u00a0“unlawful exercises of executive power.”<\/p>\n

What have been the reactions of Comey and James?<\/p>\n

“I am heartened by today’s victory and grateful for the prayers and support I have received from around the country,” James said in a statement. Her attorney, Abbe Lowell, said James would “continue to challenge any further politically motivated charges through every lawful means available.”<\/p>\n

Meanwhile,\u00a0Comey said in a video posted on\u00a0Instagram that he’s “grateful that the court ended the case against me, which was a prosecution based on malevolence and incompetence and a reflection of what the Department of Justice has become under Donald Trump.”<\/p>\n

Edited by: Wesley Dockery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A US federal judge on Monday dismissed the criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-312445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}