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A federal judge on Monday tossed out separate criminal charges against the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, saying the loyalist prosecutor installed by President Trump to bring the cases was put into her job unlawfully.
The twin rulings, by Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, were the most significant setback yet to the president’s efforts to force the criminal justice system to punish his perceived foes. The case dismissals also served as a rebuke to Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had rushed to carry out Mr. Trump’s orders to appoint the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The dismissals, while embarrassing for the White House and the Justice Department, are unlikely to be the last word on an issue of constitutional authority that many legal experts expect could be appealed to the Supreme Court. And the way Judge Currie rendered her decision left open the possibility that another prosecutor could refile the charges against both Mr. Comey and Ms. James.
Judge Currie’s orders center on Mr. Trump’s unorthodox decision to appoint Ms. Halligan to her prosecutorial position in an interim capacity, replacing his previous pick, who was also serving in a temporary role. Within days after assuming her new post, Ms. Halligan rejected the advice of the career prosecutors in her new office and moved single-handedly to indict both Mr. Comey and Ms. James, two of the president’s most reviled targets.
In her rulings on Monday, Judge Currie said that it was unlawful to appoint two interim prosecutors in succession, and dismissed the charges against Mr. Comey and Ms. James without prejudice.
The administration signaled on Monday it would appeal the judge’s ruling, rather than acquiesce to the death of two high-profile cases the president demanded they be brought.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters that the judge “was clearly trying to shield Letitia James and James Comey from receiving accountability” and added that the Justice Department would quickly appeal “this unprecedented action.”
The dismissal of charges without prejudice meant the government could also try to refile them, whatever the outcome of the ultimate legal fight over the appointment of Ms. Halligan, a former White House aide and personal lawyer to Mr. Trump.
In a statement, a lawyer for Mr. Comey, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, said that with the dismissal of the case against his client, “an independent judiciary vindicated our system of laws not just for Mr. Comey but for all American citizens.”
Ms. James’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said the court ruling showed Mr. Trump “went to extreme measures to substitute one of his allies to bring these baseless charges after career prosecutors refused. This case was not about justice or the law; it was about targeting Attorney General James for what she stood for and who she challenged.”
Judge Currie’s ruling stems from a series of machinations that Mr. Trump undertook earlier this fall. Her legal rationale was based in part on the decision by another federal judge, Aileen M. Cannon, to dismiss an indictment against Mr. Trump over concerns about the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel in that case.
In late September, he rushed to oust Ms. Halligan’s predecessor, Erik S. Siebert, the career U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, who had expressed concern that there was not sufficient evidence to indict Mr. Comey and Ms. James. The president then replaced Mr. Siebert with Ms. Halligan, who had no previous experience as a prosecutor.
When Ms. Halligan did the president’s bidding by hurrying to charge Mr. Comey and Ms. James, it was a generational erosion in the tradition of the White House keeping distance from the affairs of the Justice Department.
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