Comey's challenge of Lindsey Halligan is the latest bid to derail Trump's top prosecutors [View all]
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
The GOP had used a similar argument against Jack Smith in questioning his validity as a "Special Prosecutor".
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