WASHINGTON — The U.S. Justice Department is considering bringing new charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter, Dec. 2, 2025.
This conversation came on the heels of a federal judge dismissing both high-profile cases last week, after ruling the Trump administration illegally installed the prosecutor who won the original Comey convictions and brought a companion case against James. Now, officials are weighing whether to request new grand juries in Virginia to return fresh charges or concentrate on an appeal of the ruling that unravelled the prosecutions.
The new discussions were first reported in a Reuters article that said senior leaders at the Justice Department have been reviewing whether prosecutors who were correctly appointed could legally reintroduce the cases, despite their official rejection by federal courts.
Previous Comey indictments erased after illegal appointment ruling.
The original Comey charges, filed by a Virginia grand jury in late September, alleged that the former FBI boss lied to Congress and obstructed a congressional proceeding over his 2020 testimony on the Russia investigation. Court records and a press release from the Justice Department have indicated that James was indicted in October on bank fraud and false-statement charges on mortgage paperwork for a Norfolk property. Both have pleaded not guilty and said the cases were politically motivated.
U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie tossed out both slates of charges without prejudice on Nov. 24, finding that an acting U.S. attorney, Lindsey Halligan, had taken office in conflict with the Constitution’s Appointments Clause and federal statutory law. Her view said that Halligan, a former Trump business lawyer with no previous prosecutorial experience, did not have lawful authority to present evidence or sign the Comey indictments and the James indictment, wiping out all her work.
Currie’s decision, initially detailed by ABC News, was conditional upon the possibility that prosecutors could try again, provided that a properly appointed U.S. attorney be involved in potential new grand jury presentations. The judge emphasised that Halligan’s participation could not be cured in retrospect by having Justice Department officials approve it after the fact.
Statute of limitations clouds potential new Comey indictments.
But if Justice Department leaders decide on a reboot, any new Comey indictments could hit a brick wall: the statute of limitations. The statute of limitations for the purported crimes lapsed Sept. 30, only days after Halligan first won charges, and defence attorneys say that it should not be able to be reset now that her appointment was found nullified. Some legal analysts say that leaves James, not Comey, as the more plausible target for a new case.
Judge Currie ruled in favour of Halligan, and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi says she will take “all available legal action” to keep the cases active — including perhaps appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, should it come to that. But senior career officials have warned that reviving the Comey indictments could invite more courtroom losses and feed criticism that the department is being exploited as a tool of Trump to punish his political enemies, according to people briefed on internal deliberations.
Protracted battle over Trump-era payback campaign influences next steps.
The prosecutors’ cases against Comey and James were part of a sprawling crackdown on those who have been critical of Trump by federal law enforcement authorities that has had a string of setbacks. A recent Reuters investigation has detailed a series of missteps in multiple cases against perceived foes, from botched evidence disposal to failed efforts at securing convictions, stoking allegations that prosecutors are waging a vendetta rather than neutral law enforcement.
Previous reporting in outlets such as the Guardian and Democracy Docket flagged concerns about the rushed manner in which Halligan had been appointed and over how the grand jury process played out in Virginia, where career prosecutors allegedly refused to take part in the Comey indictments or the James case. Those irregularities, critics say, presaged the Currie decision and make any fresh bid to charge Trump’s foes even more politically fraught.
Long before Currie’s ruling, legal scholars had doubts whether the original indictments filed by Comey were strong enough, given anaemic charging documents and veiled references to grand jury evidence. Both a November piece in Lawfare and an independent September analysis at CAFE argued that the case seemed flimsy for so high-profile a target, making it even more fraught to pursue new indictments against Comey after the appointment error swiped the slate clean.
Comey and James, for now, are both free to go about their lives; the cases that once stood as symbols of Mr Trump’s willingness to lash out at his enemies hang in a holding pattern. The Justice Department may do that with a fresh round of indictments against Comey and a renewed push against James, or it does not, opening the door as to how far it is willing to go in its own defence of prosecutions launched by an unlawfully appointed prosecutor that have already drawn sharp rebukes from the federal bench.
