By Andrew Goudsward
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Monday tossed out criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey based on a procedural error, an extraordinary blow to the Justice Department in a case President Donald Trump sought as part of a campaign against perceived political enemies.
US District Judge Michael Nachmanoff in Alexandria, Virginia, determined that the indictment brought against Comey in September was invalid because the grand jury that approved the charges had not seen the final version of the document.
The sentence is an embarrassing rebuke for Lindsey Halligan, a close Trump ally who took over the investigation as interim US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia despite having no prior prosecution experience. Halligan, Trump’s former personal lawyer, appeared alone before the grand jury after no career prosecutor agreed to sign the case.
PROSECUTION OF CRITICISM OF TRUMP
Comey is one of three prominent critics of the Republican president charged by Trump’s Justice Department in recent months, violating longstanding norms of independence in federal investigations and fueling criticism that Trump is using the legal system to stamp out dissent.
Comey was charged with making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation. Prosecutors alleged he lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee during a 2020 hearing when he said he was behind earlier testimony that he had not authorized FBI leaks about investigations into Trump and his 2016 presidential rival, Hillary Clinton.
Comey has had an antagonistic relationship with Trump since his first term in office in 2017, when the president fired Comey while overseeing an investigation into alleged ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
Comey, who has pleaded not guilty, mounted a range of legal challenges to the case, arguing that Halligan was illegally appointed as interim US attorney, that the case was an improper “vindictive” prosecution engineered by Trump, and that the substance of the perjury allegation was legally flawed.
GRAND JURY OF MISTAKES
But it was a procedural error that ultimately derailed the case.
Nachmanoff pressed prosecutors at a Nov. 19 hearing about whether the grand jury that approved the indictments had seen the final version of the indictment. The grand jury panel rejected a criminal count proposed in the indictment, forcing prosecutors to hastily draft a new version of the document.
Prosecutors admitted at the hearing that the full grand jury had not seen the final version of the indictment, but had approved the language in both cases.
The Justice Department appeared to withdraw that concession the next day, pointing to a court transcript in which the grand jury foreperson had affirmed that the panel had agreed on the final version of the indictment.
Prosecutors argued that the issue was not a reason to dismiss the case.
Halligan’s conduct in the Comey probe came under sustained scrutiny by three different judges involved in the case. A magistrate judge determined that Halligan may have committed other significant legal errors in instructing and presenting evidence to the same grand jury.
The Department of Justice denied that Halligan was involved in any wrongdoing and argued that the magistrate judge’s sentence was based on misinterpretations and assumptions.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; editing by Scott Malone and Bill Berkrot)