Dear listeners,
This week, both James Comey and Letitia James continue to seek dismissal of the criminal charges brought against them, and one argument they’ve both made will be considered jointly by a judge from another state.
Comey and James argue that Lindsey Halligan was not legally appointed as interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. If the president’s opportunity to make interim appointments has expired, the judges of a district are allowed to make a new appointment. The judges overseeing their cases don’t want to rule on the legality of an appointment that might otherwise fall to them; so, instead, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie of the District of South Carolina will consider the issue. This issue is also live in Los Angeles; a judge all the way in Hawaii is handling the challenges to Bill Essayli’s appointment to run prosecutions for the Central District of California, but that office’s prosecutions are less exposed to this line of attack because Essayli hasn’t been acting alone as much as Halligan has. (Indeed, one matter Judge Currie seems to be looking into is exactly which tasks related to the indictment Halligan handled personally.)
We also discuss a lesson from the Barry Bonds steroids case that could be relevant for Comey, and we look at a complaint James has made about Halligan’s communications about grand jury proceedings to reporter Anna Bower of Lawfare.
That, plus a look at Ninth Circuit action in the national guard cases and a look at a sloppy defamation lawsuit from Paul Ingrassia, constitutes this week’s free show.
Beyond the paywall, we talk about an effort from the D.C. bar to impose new burdens on law firms that might, theoretically, enter into settlement deals with the government — and why it would be a tall order to turn the bar’s abstract memo on the topic into actual disciplinary action against the firms that entered actual settlements. You’ll also get our conversation about when a state could prosecute an ICE officer for breaking state law (not never, is the short answer), and our discussion of how some judges are now getting in trouble for their misuse of AI in drafting opinions.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
