Judge's 'subtext' revealed in dismissals of Trump's indictments of Comey and James
When a federal judge ordered the dismissal of the Justice Department's criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday, he left some key "subtext" in the opinion that shows the courts are fully aware of the deeper purpose in the Trump administration bringing the cases, reporter Sam Stein told MS NOW's Chris Jansing.
"I think it is worth pointing out that although in paragraph two, the judge gets to the point that the attempt to install Miss Halligan as interim U.S. attorney was invalid, it's interesting ... to read the first paragraph of this ruling by the judge," said Jansing. "I'm going to read it in its entirety: 'On September 25th, 2025, Lindsay Halligan, a former White House aid with no prior prosecutorial experience, appeared before a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, having been appointed interim U.S. attorney by the attorney general just days before, Miss Halligan secured a two-count indictment charging former FBI Director James Comey with making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding.'"
"Even though, again, this is about her being appointed illegally ... he did manage in sentence one to say, former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience," said Jansing. "I wonder what you make of this ruling."
"Oh, it's funny, I noticed that too," said Stein. "In a way, it seemed not a little gratuitous, right? There wasn't a necessity to make a point of the fact that she had no prosecutorial experience prior to this. And yet, if you read on in the indictment, it's clear that the subtext is that the judge knows this is a political act, and that what they were doing here was rushing Haligan's appointment in order to get the indictment, in order to get in front of the statute of limitations for the Comey case specifically. Letitia James' thing is another matter entirely."
"And that obviously factored into some of the decision-making, right?" he continued. "Because the appointment itself, the judge ruled, was illegal ... I think the point that was being made was that this is inherently political."
"Now, I don't know if that matters legally here, but I did notice that in the first sentence, and certainly it stood out," Stein added. "And look, I think if we take this outside the realm of the courtroom, yeah, this was a rush job by the administration. And obviously, they got rid of the other attorney running the Eastern District of Virginia in order to install Halligan in order to get this indictment. Trump posted that he wanted it done. It got done, but now it's backfired spectacularly."
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