As certain because the solar will rise, the Justice Division goes to determine a option to reindict former FBI Director James Comey and New York Lawyer Basic Letitia James—as a result of why let a bit factor just like the regulation stand in the way in which of President Donald Trump’s retribution calls for?
Each the Comey and James indictments have been tossed out when Trump’s favourite former actual property lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, was booted from her place atop the Japanese District of Virginia. However since these have been dismissed with out prejudice, the DOJ can refile them.
Former FBI Director James Comey
There are a number of nakedly determined choices right here. The DOJ may simply skip interesting Halligan’s disqualification, although that appears odd in mild of Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi’s robust speak about doing so.
Nevertheless, since Bondi had already named Halligan a “special attorney” in control of the Comey and James circumstances, Halligan may current to a grand jury in that function. Positive, but it surely isn’t like calling Halligan “special attorney” as an alternative of “acting attorney” goes to make her any higher at her job.
The opposite alternate options for looking for a brand new indictment can be to have precise, competent prosecutors current to the grand jury. However Halligan already needed to get particular visitor prosecutors from outdoors of her district to assist as a result of everybody else declined to the touch this mess.
In the meantime, FBI Director Kash Patel—presumably the dumbest individual in Trump’s administration—gave away the sport in an interview with the Epoch Occasions.
“The judicial process can make whatever determination it wants, but we at the FBI and our partners at the DOJ have numerous options to proceed, and we’re executing on all those options. So we’re not done,” Patel mentioned.
He additionally did a bit teaser announcement that after Thanksgiving, there can be “multiple responses” from federal regulation enforcement.
It’s just like the administration tasked Patel with giving Comey and James a blueprint, ought to the DOJ handle to wrangle new indictments, to succeed on their claims that they need to be dismissed.
Whereas the DOJ can seemingly simply reindict James on the trumped-up mortgage fraud prices—effectively, if they will discover a grand jury to agree—it faces an issue doing so with Comey.
Lindsey Halligan
The fees in opposition to Comey have been primarily based on his alleged lies to Congress in 2020 about one thing he mentioned in 2017, which was already a really slender reed to hold a prosecution on. Halligan received in just below the five-year statute of limitations, which has since run.
There’s a federal regulation that usually permits the federal government to refile, even when the statute of limitations has run, inside six months of the dismissal of the indictment. However right here’s the place issues get messy.
Comey’s legal professional, Patrick Fitzgerald—no slouch on this division—mentioned that the dismissal “indicates that because the indictment is void, the statute of limitations has run and there can be no further indictment.”
The choose who threw Halligan out of a job mentioned in a footnote to her opinion that an invalid indictment “cannot serve to block the door of limitations as it swings closed” and that if the dismissed indictment is void, “there is no legitimate peg on which to hang such a judicial limitations-tolling result.”
And if the indictment was voided, it functionally by no means existed, so the federal government doesn’t get that further six months. However we are able to all speculate about this, however we received’t actually know the way this can play out till the DOJ manages to convey a brand new indictment and Comey inevitably challenges it.
Isn’t it enjoyable to reside in a time the place day by day is each a constitutional regulation disaster and requires us all to be taught arcane particulars about statutes of limitation?
