Le juge rejette les accusations contre Comey et James en raison de la nomination illégale du procureur

"...Bondi’s scheme to install Lindsey Halligan as interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia and rush to indict Comey before the statute of limitations expired was thoroughly rejected by a federal judge...."

"...Bondi had overextended herself throughout the fight over Halligan’s appointment, taking unusual and embarrassing steps to try to paper over the flaws in her scheme...."

"...Bondi’s maneuvering only reinforced how ham-handed and inept her scheming on Trump’s behalf had been...."

"...Judged by the perverse standards of the Trump White House, Bondi utterly failed...."

"...Appeals will follow and corrupt re-indictments may come, but for this day Bondi was the Trump’s incompetent henchman who left a string of messes behind for others to clean up...."

"...The dismissal of the Comey indictment, while the right call on the law and the facts, does deprive us of as strong a vindictive prosecution claim as we’re likely to see...."

"...Comey’s legal team had structured its arguments to be the seminal test case for whether Donald Trump could freely use the Justice Department to exact retribution against his foes, with serious implications for the other vindictive prosecutions, both those pending and those still to come...."

"...Watching Comey’s legal team spar in court with B-team DOJ lawyers over the past two weeks was another reminder of how much damage Bondi has done to the Justice Department...."

"...Halligan was too inexperienced to fight this fight, so outside DOJ lawyers were brought in...."

"...They were no match for the Comey team...."

"...While Comey is most often identified as a former FBI director, for the purposes of this case it was always more striking to me that he was a former deputy attorney general, the No. 2, who ran the department day to day...."

"...Being targeted by the department he once ran operationally, while also witnessing the erosion of its professionalism and traditions, made for an especially poignant tableau...."

"...Comey was defended by longtime Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and Michael Dreeben, the former deputy solicitor general who was a legendary Supreme Court advocate and criminal law expert, plus several other highly capable litigators...."

"...The quality of his defense showed in every aspect of the case, especially when contrasted with what Bondi failed to bring to the table...."

"...In bypassing local judges to install Halligan, the Trump administration was seeking to rob both the judicial and legislative branches of some of their prerogatives...."

"...Last week, I wasn’t sure what to make of the reports that the Trump DOJ seemed to be looking into how the bogus mortgage fraud claims against Letitia James and Adam Schiff emerged...."

"...It seemed hard to believe that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was overseeing an investigation into DOJ official Ed Martin and Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency...."

"...It’s still not clear what exactly is going on, but the scenario that makes the most sense and best lines up with the reporting so far is that prosecutors and investigators are trying to get a handle on the origin story of the mortgage fraud nonsense now instead of finding themselves surprised later...."

"...It all blew out into the open on Thursday when a potential witness named Christine Bish went public about being questioned by prosecutors that morning at the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, Maryland (where an important hearing in the Abrego Garcia civil case happened to be underway)...."

"...She was generally disgruntled that their questioning of her was not focused on Schiff’s conduct...."

"...Since then reports have understandably been focused on the weird tactics Martin and Pulte used, including the possible use of intermediaries, to gin up the mortgage fraud claims...."

"...But the Trump DOJ has circled the wagons and it’s looking less likely now that Martin and Pulte are the targets of any investigation: “Martin and Pulte are not being investigated by a grand jury, according to a person familiar with the investigation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly,” the WaPo reports...."

"...“We’ve never dealt with this. This is really chilling.”–former Army JAG Geoffrey Corn, on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s unprecedented investigation into Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) for exercising his First Amendment rights as a retired Navy captain..."

"...At the end of his first term, President Trump fired Christopher Krebs as head of DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for publicly saying that the 2020 election was free from fraud...."

"...In his second term, Trump revoked Krebs’ security clearance and has gutted CISA, whose duties included protecting election infrastructure...."

"...The agency was mostly sidelined in this year’s elections, leaving election officials scrambling to fill the gaps going into next year’s midterms...."

"...Greg Sargent and I had a quick conversation about all of the breaking news yesterday afternoon — from the Comey/James dismissals to Hegseth’s retaliation against Kelly:..."