AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Over the past two months, a prosecutor handpicked by President Trump has secured indictments against two of Trump's perceived enemies - former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Today, attorneys for Comey and James argued in federal court that the prosecutor was improperly appointed and their cases should be dismissed. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas was in the courtroom and joins us now. Hi, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hi there.
CHANG: OK, so just remind us what these cases against Jim Comey and Tish James are about.
LUCAS: So first, just to be clear, Comey and James were charged separately, so these are two separate cases.
CHANG: Right.
LUCAS: Comey was charged in September with false statements and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The case against him stems from testimony that he gave Congress back in 2020. He has pleaded not guilty. Letitia James, meanwhile, she was charged in early October with bank fraud and false statements to a financial institution. Those charges are tied to a house that she bought in Virginia in 2020. She has also pleaded not guilty.
But these cases against the both of them were presented to a grand jury by Lindsey Halligan. Halligan is a former White House aide and insurance lawyer who Trump handpicked to be the interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia after career prosecutors there had concluded that the evidence was too weak in both instances to move forward with the case. Now, both Comey and James are challenging the legality of Halligan's appointment, and so that's why their attorneys were in one courtroom together today, making their case before a federal judge.
CHANG: OK. And what did they say?
LUCAS: Well, there's a lot of overlap in what their attorneys had to say, but the heart of this particular legal dispute centers on laws that govern the temporary appointment of a U.S. attorney. I don't want to get too far into the weeds here, but the statute allows the attorney general to appoint an interim U.S. attorney for 120 days. Once those 120 days run out, if there's no Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney, then the local federal court can appoint its own candidate until the Senate confirms someone.
Now, both Comey and James argue that that 120-day limit is a one-time thing. In other words, the attorney general can't keep making interim appointments each with a 120-day time limit because that would gut the Senate's role in confirming U.S. attorneys. Now, the Justice Department, for its part, it argues that that interpretation is wrong. It says the attorney general can make multiple 120-day interim appointments, and it says the clock restarts with each one.
CHANG: OK. And now explain how does that factor specifically into the cases against Comey and against James?
LUCAS: Well, the key fact here is that someone already served for 120 days as interim U.S. attorney during this Trump administration. Trump pushed that person out in September after he had expressed reservations about pursuing these two specific cases, but because he had served on an interim basis for the full 120 days, Comey and James say that legally that means that Halligan cannot, and that means that Halligan was unlawfully appointed. And because of that, they say, the indictments that she secured against Comey and James are invalid and should be dismissed. Now, DOJ, for its part, it says that this dispute is at best - it called it a paperwork error, and it says Halligan has the full authority to pursue these prosecutions.
CHANG: OK. Well, Ryan, you were in the courtroom today. Did you get a sense of how the judge is going to rule?
LUCAS: Well, the judge presiding today was Judge Cameron McGowan Currie. She's usually based in South Carolina, but she was assigned to hear the legal challenges to Halligan's appointment. Now, Currie sounded skeptical of some of the Justice Department's positions. I wouldn't read into that too much. Today's hearing lasted only a little over an hour, and Judge Currie said at the end that she planned to rule on the matter before Thanksgiving, so we should have an answer in the next couple of weeks.
CHANG: That is NPR's Ryan Lucas. Thank you so much, Ryan.
LUCAS: Thank you.
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