The orders make Lindsey Halligan the latest Trump administration prosecutor to be disqualified because of the manner in which they were appointed. Both defendants had asked for the cases to be dismissed with prejudice, meaning that the Justice Department would not be able to bring them again. But U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie a instead dismissed them without prejudice, though it was not immediately clear if or how the Justice Department might attempt to revive the prosecutions.
Monday's order deals exclusively with the mechanism the Trump administration employed to appoint Halligan, a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience, to lead one of the Justice Department’s most elite and important offices.
Halligan was named to the job in September after a different interim U.S. attorney, Erik Siebert, was effectively forced out amid pressure from the Trump administration to file charges against Comey and James.
Comey was indicted on charges of making a false statement and obstructing Congress, and James was charged soon after that in a mortgage fraud investigation.
