All the Reasons James Comey's Case Will Never Go to Trial:
Note: If this case is dismissed it will not be brought again. The Statute of Limitations has expired.
•President Trump hates Comey very deeply, and that hatred is the only reason this criminal case exists. The defendant’s conduct in question has been reviewed multiple times by multiple investigations, none of which concluded that charges were remotely appropriate. Yet Trump has spent much of the last decade tweeting and making public statements demanding the prosecution of Comey—whom he has hated since the time of the Russia investigation and who has been a political critic of the president for much of the last eight years.
•When Trump’s interim U.S. attorney in Virginia declined to bring the case, the president forced him out and replaced him with Halligan for the specific reason that she would bring the case against Comey (and Letitia James). He did all this in public; his hatred of Comey (and James) and his demands that they be prosecuted were the explicit reasons stated for the personnel changes.
•The case against Comey was so weak that none of Halligan’s staff at the Eastern District of Virginia would work on the case. A number were fired as a result. Others have quit. And Halligan—an insurance lawyer—presented the matter to the grand jury herself. She did so with the five-year statute of limitations, which was set to expire in a few days, looming before her. The indictment should be dismissed, the defense argues, because presidential hatred of a person is not a legitimate ground for prosecuting him, and presidential hatred of Comey is the but-for cause of this prosecution. Halligan is merely an instrument of Trump’s hatred.
•She is also, the defense argues, an illegal instrument. Halligan was not lawfully appointed as interim U.S. attorney, and she thus had no business being in front of the grand jury at all. The reason is that 18 U.S.C. § 546 creates a specific process for appointing interim U.S. attorneys, and Halligan’s appointment violated it. The attorney general had appointed Halligan’s predecessor, Erik Siebert, to the job on Jan. 21. And that appointment had started a 120-day clock ticking under 18 U.S.C § 546(c)(2), after which the district court—not the Justice Department—had exclusive power to appoint the interim U.S. attorney. That clock ran out May 21, 2025, at which point the court reappointed Seibert as a “United States attorney to serve until the vacancy is filled.” Siebert was removed on Sept. 19, 2025, by forced resignation, and the district court at that point was the only legitimate appointing authority.
•Instead of waiting for the court’s next selection—who presumably would have been a professional unwilling to bring such a case—Attorney General Pam Bondi, under relentless public pressure from Trump, named Halligan, a White House aide who had no prosecutorial experience but had represented Trump personally, even though the 120-day clock had long-since expired. The indictment should be dismissed, the defense contends, because Halligan had no more lawful authority to it in the first place than say, you do.
•Not only was Halligan appointed illegally, she didn’t know what she was doing either. Within a few days of her purported appointment, she was in the grand jury room—by herself because none of her staff were willing to work on the case. The grand jury rejected one of the three charges she asked it to return. To get the grand jury to return an indictment on the other two charges, she had to keep it in session significantly after hours. And even then, the grand jury barely voted to issue the charges. She signed and returned both the rejected indictment and returned one—which is not how you do these things. Along the way, she appears to have presented evidence that would be covered by the attorney-client privilege (the specifics of this allegation are redacted in the filing), and she may have committed other irregularities. The grand jury transcript, the defense argues, needs to be scrutinized to make sure none of her rookie mistakes, incompetences, or malice towards the defendant infected the proceedings and would require dismissal.
•The indictment she obtained after all of these irregularities is defective on its face. It accuses Comey, for example, of lying in response to a question it mischaracterizes and that, in turn, refers to an exchange in a hearing three years earlier that the questioner garbled. The questions contain so many compounding layers and a lack of clarity that they simply cannot support a charge of false statements. What’s more, Comey’s answers, which amounted to standing by his testimony from three years earlier, were literally true—and thus cannot support a false statements conviction as a matter of law. The indictment should be dismissed, the defense contends, because the alleged facts simply don’t support the notion a crime took place.
•The indictment is hopelessly vague and offers no real sense of what Comey is being accused of. If the charges are not dismissed outright, the defense seeks clarity in the form of a bill of particulars as to precisely what statement Comey made that is allegedly false, what evidence contradicts it, what evidence might show that any error in his testimony was intentional and material, and how any of this might have obstructed the relevant congressional proceeding. This motion reads like a kind of dare to the prosecution: I double-dog dare you to lay out precisely what you’re accusing Comey of, the defense is saying; because I know—and you know—that you’ll sound like an idiot as soon as you do.
•President Trump hates Comey very deeply, and that hatred is the only reason this criminal case exists. The defendant’s conduct in question has been reviewed multiple times by multiple investigations, none of which concluded that charges were remotely appropriate. Yet Trump has spent much of the last decade tweeting and making public statements demanding the prosecution of Comey—whom he has hated since the time of the Russia investigation and who has been a political critic of the president for much of the last eight years.
•When Trump’s interim U.S. attorney in Virginia declined to bring the case, the president forced him out and replaced him with Halligan for the specific reason that she would bring the case against Comey (and Letitia James). He did all this in public; his hatred of Comey (and James) and his demands that they be prosecuted were the explicit reasons stated for the personnel changes.
•The case against Comey was so weak that none of Halligan’s staff at the Eastern District of Virginia would work on the case. A number were fired as a result. Others have quit. And Halligan—an insurance lawyer—presented the matter to the grand jury herself. She did so with the five-year statute of limitations, which was set to expire in a few days, looming before her. The indictment should be dismissed, the defense argues, because presidential hatred of a person is not a legitimate ground for prosecuting him, and presidential hatred of Comey is the but-for cause of this prosecution. Halligan is merely an instrument of Trump’s hatred.
•She is also, the defense argues, an illegal instrument. Halligan was not lawfully appointed as interim U.S. attorney, and she thus had no business being in front of the grand jury at all. The reason is that 18 U.S.C. § 546 creates a specific process for appointing interim U.S. attorneys, and Halligan’s appointment violated it. The attorney general had appointed Halligan’s predecessor, Erik Siebert, to the job on Jan. 21. And that appointment had started a 120-day clock ticking under 18 U.S.C § 546(c)(2), after which the district court—not the Justice Department—had exclusive power to appoint the interim U.S. attorney. That clock ran out May 21, 2025, at which point the court reappointed Seibert as a “United States attorney to serve until the vacancy is filled.” Siebert was removed on Sept. 19, 2025, by forced resignation, and the district court at that point was the only legitimate appointing authority.
•Instead of waiting for the court’s next selection—who presumably would have been a professional unwilling to bring such a case—Attorney General Pam Bondi, under relentless public pressure from Trump, named Halligan, a White House aide who had no prosecutorial experience but had represented Trump personally, even though the 120-day clock had long-since expired. The indictment should be dismissed, the defense contends, because Halligan had no more lawful authority to it in the first place than say, you do.
•Not only was Halligan appointed illegally, she didn’t know what she was doing either. Within a few days of her purported appointment, she was in the grand jury room—by herself because none of her staff were willing to work on the case. The grand jury rejected one of the three charges she asked it to return. To get the grand jury to return an indictment on the other two charges, she had to keep it in session significantly after hours. And even then, the grand jury barely voted to issue the charges. She signed and returned both the rejected indictment and returned one—which is not how you do these things. Along the way, she appears to have presented evidence that would be covered by the attorney-client privilege (the specifics of this allegation are redacted in the filing), and she may have committed other irregularities. The grand jury transcript, the defense argues, needs to be scrutinized to make sure none of her rookie mistakes, incompetences, or malice towards the defendant infected the proceedings and would require dismissal.
•The indictment she obtained after all of these irregularities is defective on its face. It accuses Comey, for example, of lying in response to a question it mischaracterizes and that, in turn, refers to an exchange in a hearing three years earlier that the questioner garbled. The questions contain so many compounding layers and a lack of clarity that they simply cannot support a charge of false statements. What’s more, Comey’s answers, which amounted to standing by his testimony from three years earlier, were literally true—and thus cannot support a false statements conviction as a matter of law. The indictment should be dismissed, the defense contends, because the alleged facts simply don’t support the notion a crime took place.
•The indictment is hopelessly vague and offers no real sense of what Comey is being accused of. If the charges are not dismissed outright, the defense seeks clarity in the form of a bill of particulars as to precisely what statement Comey made that is allegedly false, what evidence contradicts it, what evidence might show that any error in his testimony was intentional and material, and how any of this might have obstructed the relevant congressional proceeding. This motion reads like a kind of dare to the prosecution: I double-dog dare you to lay out precisely what you’re accusing Comey of, the defense is saying; because I know—and you know—that you’ll sound like an idiot as soon as you do.
