Comey's challenge of Lindsey Halligan is the latest bid to derail Trump's top prosecutors

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: CNN Politics

PUBLISHED Oct 9, 2025, 5:00 AM ET


Before FBI Director James Comey heads to trial in January over charges of lying to Congress, his team plans to put the prosecutors — and specifically President Donald Trump’s handpicked interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan — on the defensive.

Comey’s strategy, as outlined in court on Wednesday, will focus on attacking Halligan’s authority as the US Attorney of the Eastern District of Virginia as part of efforts to convince the court to dismiss the charges against him.

The coming challenge to remove Halligan from the case is just one in a wave of recent criminal defense lawyers around the country calling into question Trump’s use of top prosecutors who haven’t been confirmed by the Senate. Some of those challenges have been successful.

Halligan may make the Comey case especially vulnerable, in that she was the only prosecutor to take the indictment through a grand jury, and was sworn in by the administration to lead her office just days before.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/09/politics/trump-halligan-doj-appointment-challenged-comey

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The GOP had used a similar argument against Jack Smith in questioning his validity as a "Special Prosecutor".

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Replace the rule of law with incompetent hacks and feed all power to the billionaires.

It's a cycling of demolition of the existing order so they can install the New Incompetents. This enables the fascists and billionaires to run the show. SCOTUS was overthrown over the years and is effectively neutralized. They have even neutered themselves.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. If Halligan is a "top prosecutor" in tRump's regime then it's dangerous but laughable. . . . nt

[Gimpyknee]

3. FAFO

[ancianita]

4. As Sheldon Whitehouse says, they're at ""equal parts gangster and gong show."

They're too stupid to know there's no comparison between Smith and Halligan. As of VA Eastern District Judge Michael Nachmanoff is as stupid as they are to even think that the Smith comparison is somehow relevant.

[FormerOstrich]

5. The headline says it all

but not about the content but about the subliminal...

Comey's challenge of Lindsey Halligan is the latest bid to derail Trump's top prosecutors

The headline is intended to make it seem that there is some conspiracy of an ongoing effort to sabotage. When the facts are they are challenging the corrupt way unqualified prosecutors are being used for political ends. I vote for derailing corrupt efforts for sure...but the headline doesn't indicate that.

[wiggs]

6. Exactly right. That's what I thought when first seeing the headline. nt

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. Was Lindsey Halligan Validly Appointed as United States Attorney?

There was a prior acting US Attorney for this district who was fired by trump. Evidently, that means that trump/Bondi can not appoint another acting US Attorney

Link to tweet

https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/was-lindsey-halligan-validly-appointed-as-united-states-attorney/

There is a lot that is outrageous about the process that resulted in yesterday’s indictment of James Comey. I will focus here on what appears to be a fatal legal flaw.

As I understand the facts, it seems highly doubtful that Lindsey Halligan has been validly appointed as United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. If her appointment is invalid, so is her indictment of Comey.

Section 546 of Title 28 of the United States Code authorizes an Attorney General to appoint an interim United States Attorney for a term of 120 days. Under section 546(d), once the 120-day term expires, “the district court for such district may appoint a United States attorney to serve until the vacancy is filled.”

Acting Attorney General James McHenry evidently appointed Erik Siebert as interim United States Attorney on January 21, 2025. After his 120-day term expired, the judges of the Eastern District of Virginia appointed him to continue to serve.

On May 6, President Trump nominated Siebert to be United States Attorney. His nomination had advanced to the Senate floor when Trump learned that Siebert had “told senior Justice Department officials that investigators found insufficient evidence to bring charges against [New York attorney general Letitia] James and had also raised concerns about a potential case against Mr. Comey.” Siebert then resigned as interim United States Attorney, or Trump fired him. (Trump insists on the latter: “He didn’t quit, I fired him!”)

Can the Attorney General make a second interim appointment under section 546 when the first interim appointment has expired? The most natural reading of section 546 is that the authority to make the interim appointment then lies with the district court. And that’s evidently the position that the Department of Justice itself adopted in a 1986 Office of Legal Counsel opinion written by none other than Samuel Alito. That opinion itself might not be in the public domain, but a 1993 OLC opinion (p. 3 n. 5) states that the Alito opinion “suggest[s] that the Attorney General may not make successive interim appointments pursuant to section 546.”

Both Comey and James will be challenging these indictments based on the fact that Halligan was not validly appointed . If Comey wins this argument, then the Statute of Limitations will have run on his so-called crimes