Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley criticized Lindsey Halligan, President Donald Trump's illegally appointed prosecutor, after a judge dismissed two cases she brought against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
After United States District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled that the indictments against Comey and James were invalid on Monday, Fox News host John Roberts noted that Attorney General Pam Bondi had issued a memo to declare that she had "ratified" the indictments in an attempt to insulate the charges in case Halligan was found to be illegally appointed.
"I mean, did the judge take this into consideration? Can the judge still throw out the cases if they'd been ratified by the Attorney General?" Roberts asked Turley.
"He can in the sense that novelty is not good when it comes to criminal indictments," Turley explained. "And there was a lot of novelty in the final day to get this indictment through. They were right up against the clock. And particularly with Comey, they had rejected one of the counts. And so Halligan sort of put together the other two counts rapidly and then submitted that."
In the end, Halligan's last-minute shenanigans to secure indictments had no bearing on the dismissals.
"This is something that a number of us raised when the indictment first came out," Turley pointed out. "Under federal law, the president has 120 days to use an interim U.S. attorney, an acting U.S. attorney. That time was effectively used up by her predecessor. And reportedly, he was shown the door because he had misgivings about some of these charges."
The Fox News analyst suggested that Trump's Department of Justice scored a "small victory" because the judge dismissed the indictments without prejudice, meaning the government could bring the charges again in the future if the statute of limitations had not expired, as they had in Comey's case.
"The Justice Department has some good faith arguments that the reading of that law is wrong," Turley said of a possible appeal. "But I think a lot of judges would have raised the same concern. The general view has been that you sort of get one bite at the apple. You've got 120 days."
