ILLEGAL APPOINTMENT: The Judge Who Exposed the Justice Department's Deep State Fix
The ruling landed in the halls of Washington like a tactical nuclear strike—not a technical failure, but a verdict of systemic, calculated constitutional treason.
A federal judge has exposed the ultimate corruption: the intentional and documented hijacking of the federal justice system, executed through a bureaucratic sleight of hand designed to install political operatives, bypass all constitutional checks, and weaponize the prosecutorial power of the state against perceived political enemies. This is the moment the apparatus of political retribution was caught red-handed.
The target was accountability. The trophy was the dismissal of criminal cases against two of the administration’s most vocal critics, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. The cases did not collapse under the weight of weak evidence or clever defense lawyering; they were obliterated because the prosecutor who brought the charges, Lindsey Halligan, was ruled by the court to be illegally serving in her role as the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
This is not a technicality. This is judicial confirmation that the nation’s highest law enforcement agency, at the behest of the Executive Branch, was operating with an unlawful, shadow prosecutor—a political fixer installed to do a job that career prosecutors refused to touch. The judicial response was appropriately savage: all actions flowing from this appointment were declared "unlawful exercises of executive power and must be set aside."
The mask is off. The fix was in.
I. THE FIX IS IN: FROM WHITE HOUSE AIDE TO UNAUTHORIZED PROSECUTOR
The narrative begins with a clear motive for political vengeance. For months, the pressure had been mounting on the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) to deliver indictments against prominent figures who had opposed the administration. The case against Letitia James, for instance, had been overseen by the existing interim U.S. Attorney, Erik Siebert. Siebert, according to reports, had reportedly concluded that the evidence against James simply did not meet the ethical or legal standards required for federal prosecution. He was a professional adhering to the rule of law.
This adherence proved fatal to his tenure.
When the professional prosecutor failed to deliver the required political scalp, the axe fell. Siebert was summarily forced out of his role. His replacement, hastily installed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, was not a career prosecutor, not a veteran of the U.S. Attorney’s office, and not an official with any relevant prosecutorial experience in a district as critical as the EDVA.
The replacement was Lindsey Halligan, a former White House aide and one of the president's former personal lawyers. She arrived in Virginia and, almost immediately, the dormant cases against Comey and James sprang to life. Within days of her arrival—an appointment characterized by many as a brazen political maneuver—the indictment against Comey was secured. Shortly thereafter, James was indicted on allegations of mortgage fraud. The connection was clear, direct, and—as the court would soon prove—illegally executed. The administration needed a sword, and they simply bypassed the constitutional armory to manufacture one in the dark. Halligan was that sword.
II. THE ANATOMY OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL FRAUD: DECONSTRUCTING § 546
The core of this systemic corruption rests entirely on the blatant subversion of a specific federal statute: 28 U.S.C. § 546, which governs how vacancies in the office of U.S. Attorney are to be filled. The text of this law is unambiguous, yet the administration’s lawyers attempted to interpret it as a political blank check.
The law grants the Attorney General limited power to fill a U.S. Attorney vacancy. It is a temporary, emergency measure, not a permanent tool for installing political cronies.
The Statutory Limit:
The law states that a person appointed by the Attorney General under this section may serve until the earlier of (1) the qualification of a Presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney, OR (2) the expiration of 120 days after appointment.
The Fail-Safe Mechanism:
Crucially, 28 U.S.C. § 546(d) provides the constitutional fail-safe: "If an appointment expires under subsection (c)(2) [the 120-day limit], the district court for such district may appoint a United States attorney to serve until the vacancy is filled."
This mechanism is the lock on the gate of executive overreach. After 120 days, the power to appoint shifts exclusively to the judiciary, maintaining the constitutional system of checks and balances.
The defense for Comey and James argued, correctly, that the 120-day clock started when the vacancy first occurred and limited the total tenure of all interim appointments. Since Siebert had already served the maximum period, the power to appoint a successor lay solely with the federal judges of the EDVA.
The Justice Department, however, advanced the absurd and self-serving argument that the 120-day limit applied on a "per-appointment basis." Under their interpretation, the Attorney General could simply wait for the clock to run out on one interim U.S. Attorney, then immediately appoint a new interim U.S. Attorney, starting a fresh 120-day clock. Repeat this process indefinitely, and the Executive Branch never needs to seek Senate confirmation, and the courts never gain their statutory authority.
As Judge Cameron McGowan Currie excoriated in her opinion: "I conclude that the attorney general's attempt to install Ms Halligan... was invalid... [because] it would simply allow the attorney general to indefinitely appoint someone on an interim basis." This interpretation, she rightly concluded, flies in the face of the "text, structure, and history" of the law.
III. THE 2007 PRECEDENT: PROOF OF A REPEAT OFFENSE
This is not the first time the Justice Department has played this game, and the history is key to proving the administration’s action was a deliberate, cynical policy, not an oversight.
The modern text of 28 U.S.C. § 546 is itself a monument to past corruption. The language of the 120-day limit and the transfer of power to the court was established by the Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act of 2007.
- The Origin of the Fix: This law was passed by Congress in response to a notorious scandal where the Bush administration had illegally removed several U.S. Attorneys and attempted to use its temporary appointment authority to install politically convenient replacements without Senate confirmation.
- The Legislative Intent: The purpose of the 2007 Act was crystal clear: to strip the Executive Branch of the unilateral power to staff the nation’s top prosecutor posts indefinitely and force the President to seek Senate consent. It was a legislative firewall against executive abuse.
When the administration deployed the "per-appointment" theory, they were not just misinterpreting the law; they were attempting to resurrect the exact abuse that Congress had specifically acted to outlaw in 2007. They were seeking to return to a pre-2007 world of unchecked presidential power over law enforcement.
This history refutes any defense that the action was taken in good faith. It demonstrates a conscious, willful choice to ignore the intent of Congress, the lessons of history, and the explicit checks built into the statute. It is an act of institutional sabotage.
IV. THE APPOINTMENTS CLAUSE AND THE UNLAWFUL EXERCISE OF POWER
The judicial rebuke went beyond the simple statutory violation of § 546. Judge Currie also ruled that Halligan’s appointment violated the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article II, Section 2, Clause 2).
U.S. Attorneys are designated as "Officers of the United States." The Constitution demands that principal officers be appointed by the President "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate." This core requirement ensures accountability.
By usurping the role of the district court—the body granted exclusive appointment power after 120 days—the administration violated the constitutional structure that governs how government officials are given power.
In a desperate, last-ditch attempt to salvage the sinking indictments, the Justice Department revealed that they had also given Halligan a separate, retroactive designation as a "Special Attorney." This was an attempt to claim that even if she wasn't the U.S. Attorney, she still had the authority to present the case to the grand jury.
Judge Currie tore this defense to shreds, stating that the implications of such a position were "extraordinary" and would mean that the Government could:
"...send any private citizen off the street — attorney or not — into the grand jury room to secure an indictment so long as the Attorney General gives her approval after the fact. That cannot be the law."
The court’s verdict confirms that the Executive Branch was not merely skirting the edges of the law; it was attempting to manufacture legal authority out of thin air to prosecute political enemies. This is the hallmark of a system more loyal to a single man than to the Constitution he swore to uphold.
V. THE AFTERMATH: COMPROMISED JUSTICE AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF NULLITY
The practical result of the ruling is clear: the cases against Comey and James are dismissed. The indictments secured by an illegally appointed prosecutor are rendered nullities. The judge’s order that "all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan's defective appointment... must be set aside" means that her prosecutorial work in the EDVA stands as a stain on the district’s history.
The legal and ethical implications stretch far beyond these two cases:
- The Unconfirmed Agenda: For every day Halligan served, every charging decision, every plea deal, every investigation she authorized was carried out by an official whose legal authority was, at best, illegitimate and, at worst, an unlawful exercise of power. The true cost of this corruption may be the instability introduced into every case handled by her office during her unlawful tenure.
- The Accountability Gap: The ability of the Executive Branch to repeatedly defy Congress and the judiciary in its appointment of top law enforcement officials demonstrates an institutional cynicism that must be rooted out. The AG's willingness to violate the law to install a former personal lawyer with "no lawful authority" to pursue indictments shows a terrifying disregard for the independence of the Justice Department.
The dismissal of these cases provides the documentation needed to expose the inner workings of the apparatus of political retribution. It is the judicial confirmation that the administration attempted a constitutional end-run to install its chosen enforcers and weaponize the government. This was not a procedural error; it was a systemic corruption designed to ensure the law served the ruler, not the people.
The fight is only beginning. Installment II will detail how this single, damning ruling is just one piece of a national blueprint of subversion deployed across multiple jurisdictions to cement unaccountable power.
Source Material:
- Judge dismisses cases against James Comey, Letitia James after finding the prosecutor was illegally appointed [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/judge-dismisses-cases-against-james-comey-letitia-james-after-finding-the-prosecutor-was-illegally-appointed]
- Judge tosses cases against Comey and James, rules prosecutor appointment unlawful [https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/24/halligan-appointment-comey-james/]
- Judge dismisses James Comey and Letitia James cases, finding prosecutor's appointment invalid [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/james-comey-case-dismissed-judge-lindsey-halligan/]
- 28 U.S. Code § 546 - Vacancies - Cornell Law School [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/546]
- Text - S.214 - 110th Congress (2007-2008): Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act of 2007 [https://www.congress.gov/bill/110th-congress/senate-bill/214/text/rs]
- The Appointments Clause - U.S. Constitution - FindLaw [https://constitution.findlaw.com/article2/annotation13.html]
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