The Justice Department said on Friday that it would appeal the dismissals of its criminal cases against James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, and Attorney General Letitia James of New York, two frequent targets of President Trump.
The move could provide the department with a path to revive charges against Mr. Comey and Ms. James after the courts threw up a number of roadblocks to the administration’s bid to bring new indictments against them. It came weeks after Attorney General Pam Bondi pledged to do so.
Any appeal would be handled by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in Richmond, Va. Because the cases raise questions about the boundaries between presidential power and congressional authority, they could ultimately go to the Supreme Court.
Late last month, a federal judge, Cameron McGowan Currie, dismissed both cases on the grounds that the U.S. attorney handpicked by Mr. Trump to seek charges, Lindsey Halligan, had been unlawfully appointed. Ms. Halligan used that job to immediately obtain indictments against two of Mr. Trump’s longtime foes, even though career prosecutors in the office believed the evidence did not merit charges.
Ms. Bondi promptly vowed to take “all available legal action, including an immediate appeal.” But the Justice Department took weeks to do so, seeking first to bring charges again against Ms. James and Mr. Comey, only to be stymied by federal grand juries and judges.
Prosecutors twice failed to convince two separate grand juries to indict Ms. James. And a federal judge ordered the department to erase evidence it used to bring its case against Mr. Comey.
In September, a grand jury in Alexandria indicted Mr. Comey, charging him with lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation over testimony he gave in 2020. The next month, a grand jury charged Ms. James, accusing her of misleading financial institutions to get better terms on a mortgage for a property she bought in Norfolk, Va., in 2020.
In November, Judge Currie ruled that Mr. Trump and Ms. Bondi had violated the appointments clause of the Constitution by selecting Ms. Halligan to serve as the interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. She replaced a different interim U.S. attorney who had been dismissed after he declined to pursue the case against Mr. Comey.
Citing the same reasoning, the judge dismissed indictments against Ms. James and Mr. Comey.
Judge Currie ruled that allowing Ms. Halligan to serve as the interim U.S. attorney this way would make meaningless the constitutional requirement that such positions be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Ms. Halligan’s role is particularly important to the indictments of Mr. Comey and Ms. James, because she served as the sole prosecutor in presenting the cases to the grand juries that voted to indict.
Alan Feuer contributed reporting.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
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