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Sept. 22, 2025, 6:10 PM EDTBy Peter Nicholas and Matt DixonWASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s insistence that his attorney general bring charges against three perceived political opponents could backfire if any cases get to court, undermining his effort to see them punished, some legal experts said Monday.In a social media post Saturday, Trump pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi about three people who’ve raised his ire and who’ve not faced criminal charges to this point: Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; New York state Attorney General Letitia James; and former FBI Director James Comey.He mentioned that he’d been impeached and indicted multiple times “OVER NOTHING!”“JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED NOW!!!” he wrote. He also cited unspecified “statements and posts” he’d read contending that the trio are “‘guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’”Because of Trump’s exhortation, defense lawyers could argue in court that their clients were targets of selective prosecution and did not receive constitutionally required due process, said Bruce Green, a professor at Fordham Law School who specializes in ethics issues.“If they’re picking these people not because they’re guilty of something … but because the president is out to get them because they’re Democrats and they made his life miserable previously, that’s an impermissible basis,” Green said.Another issue is whether Schiff, James and Comey could ever get a fair trial if it were to come to that, said Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University School of Law.“He is his own worst enemy,” Gillers said of Trump.“Sometimes people make statements, but this is the president of the United States telling the court and an eventual jury that the people on trial before them are guilty. I can’t imagine that a court would let that go to a verdict. The prejudice from that kind of statement is enormous,” Gillers said.John Walsh, who served as the U.S. attorney in Colorado for six years ending in 2016, said in an interview: “It certainly gives the defense an argument that the charges are politically motivated and not based on the merits and the evidence and the argument. Some judges might find that persuasive depending on the motions that take place prior to trial.” But he added that even if the Justice Department understands this reality, officials could be pursuing a strategy that he described as, “Investigation is the punishment.” Enduring a federal investigation is costly to the target and can bring significant harm to one’s reputation, he said. “An investigation is a very serious thing against professionals, yes, there is a cost to even just defend yourself,” he added.Trump’s extraordinary weekend message to Bondi — “Pam,” as he called her — put the attorney general in a tough spot, said Jill Wine-Banks, a former general counsel to the U.S. Army and an assistant special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s.If Bondi accommodates the president and the Justice Department seeks indictments against Schiff, James and Comey, “who’s going to believe it wasn’t done for political purposes?” Wine-Banks asked rhetorically. “And if she doesn’t, she’s going to get fired. So, it’s a lose-lose, no matter what.”Trump tempered his message to Bondi later on Saturday.He posted that Bondi was doing a “GREAT job” while also later telling reporters in a press gaggle: “If they’re not guilty, that’s fine. If they are guilty, or if they should be judged, they should be judged. And we have to do it now.”All three of the people Trump singled out have rankled him for different reasons.Comey led an investigation into Trump’s possible ties to Russian leadership, which concluded that Trump’s campaign did not collude with Russian operatives. Trump fired Comey five months into his first term. Comey declined comment Monday.Schiff, then a House member, led the first impeachment of Trump during the president’s first term. Schiff posted a response to Trump on social media: “There’s no hiding the political retaliation and weaponization. It’s all out in the open.”James brought a successful civil suit against Trump in 2022 that accused him of overvaluing assets, including real estate, in loan applications. The suit’s financial penalty against Trump was later voided.James’ office declined a request for comment.At a press briefing Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt amplified Trump’s condemnation of the trio.“You look at people like Adam Schiff and like James Comey and like Letitia James,” she said, “who the president is rightfully frustrated.”She added that Trump “wants accountability for these corrupt fraudsters who abused their power, who abused their oath of office to target the former president and then candidate for the highest office in the land.”Trump has long contended that he was a victim of a weaponized judicial system when Joe Biden was in office. In his inauguration speech on Jan. 20, he pledged to end such practices. “Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents — something I know something about,” he said. “We will not allow that to happen. It will not happen again.”Bondi made a similar promise during her confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate in January. “Under my watch, the partisan weaponization of the Department of Justice will end,” she said. “America must have one tier of justice for all.”Now, though, critics worry that Trump is erasing post-Watergate norms that were supposed to shield prosecutors from political interference.Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told NBC News in a statement: “The president should not be directing the Attorney General to prosecute those who pursued him over the last six years. Lawfare is corrosive to a democracy and he is doing exactly what he has accused the Democrats of doing to him. We need to stop the cycle of lawfare and escalation. His public statements to the attorney general were not wise and they undermine the citizens’ confidence of our legal system.”A worrying development came last week, critics said, when the federal prosecutor tasked with investigating mortgage fraud allegations against James resigned after Trump said he no longer wanted him to serve in that position. (Trump said he fired the prosecutor, Erik Siebert.)Trump administration officials had been pressing Siebert to investigate potential mortgage fraud charges against James. Two federal law enforcement sources say prosecutors did not believe they had enough evidence to charge James with mortgage fraud over a Virginia home she purchased for her niece in 2023.Those same sources said prosecutors felt there was not enough evidence to charge Comey regarding allegations that he lied to Congress in 2020 about FBI investigations into the 2016 election.Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., a member of the Judiciary Committee, told NBC News: “‘Two wrongs don’t make it right but they do make it even’ is the sort of thing that happens in countries whose Powerball jackpot is 287 chickens and a goat. It’s not supposed to happen in America.”“President Biden’s administration started this ‘lawfare’, as the media calls it, and I worried then that they had unleashed spirits they would be unable to control,” he added. “I questioned Attorney General Bondi about this in her confirmation hearing, and she agreed with me. Any prosecution of a public official has to be based on objective, compelling evidence of criminal behavior, not based on that official’s political ideology.”Peter NicholasPeter Nicholas is a senior White House reporter for NBC News.Matt DixonMatt Dixon is a senior national politics reporter for NBC News, based in Florida.Katherine Doyle, Dennis Romero, Ryan J. Reilly, Michael Kosnar and Chloe Atkins contributed.

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Nov. 13, 2025, 5:00 AM ESTBy Gary GrumbachALEXANDRIA, Va. — When acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan walks into federal court here in Virginia on Thursday morning, it will be Halligan — not the criminal defendants she hopes to prosecute — at the center of the court’s attention.Former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both frequent targets of President Donald Trump, filed separate motions in their respective cases, arguing that Halligan is unlawfully serving as acting U.S. attorney and therefore the indictments against them should be thrown out. In a rare joint hearing, attorneys for Comey and James will argue this together before U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie, who is traveling up from the District of South Carolina.Currie is hearing this joint oral argument session, not a judge from the Eastern District of Virginia, to avoid any potential intradistrict conflict of interest.Halligan, who was part of Trump’s legal team in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case but has no prior prosecutorial experience, was sworn in to the job as interim U.S. attorney in one of the nation’s busiest federal court districts on Sept. 22. That’s three days after Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney who had been serving in the role since Jan. 21, resigned after being pressured to indict Comey and James.The indictments against Comey and James came after Trump publicly urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against Comey, James and another of the president’s adversaries, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. Comey and James both pleaded not guilty to their respective charges.“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” the president wrote in a Sept. 20 Truth Social post. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”According to federal statute, individuals may only serve for 120 days after being appointed U.S. attorney, unless confirmed by the U.S. Senate before then. The Senate had not confirmed him, but district judges of the Eastern District of Virginia exercised their own independent appointment authority to legally retain Siebert as an interim U.S. attorney beyond the 120-day limit.It is that 120-day limit that James and Comey’s attorneys argue should not start back at zero with the appointment of Halligan.“If the Attorney General could make back-to-back sequential appointments of interim U.S. Attorneys, the 120-day period would be rendered meaningless, and the Attorney General could indefinitely evade the alternate procedures that Congress mandated,” Comey’s attorney Patrick Fitzgerald wrote in a motion to dismiss the indictment against his client.Comey was charged in late September with making a false statement to Congress during a September 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Asked by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about testimony he gave in 2017 asserting that he did not authorize the leak of information to the media about an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation, Comey said, “I stand by the testimony.”Trump first clashed with Comey during his first term over the then-FBI director’s handling of the federal investigation Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. Comey was fired in May 2017 and has been an outspoken critic of Trump since then.The Justice Department laid out in court papers that it believes the indictment of Comey — signed only by Halligan and unsealed days before the five-year statute of limitations expired — should survive this challenge to Halligan’s appointment regardless of what Currie decides, because of U.S. Code 3288, the statute that governs this very issue.“Whenever an indictment or information charging a felony is dismissed for any reason after the period prescribed by the applicable statute of limitations has expired, a new indictment may be returned in the appropriate jurisdiction within six calendar months of the date of the dismissal of the indictment or information,” the statute reads in part.This six-month grace period, legal experts tell NBC News, may be the DOJ’s key to a continued prosecution of the former FBI director. The bank fraud charge that James, who sued Trump and his businesses for fraud in 2022, is facing is well within the 10-year statute of limitations.Bondi has taken steps in recent weeks to shore up Halligan’s position.On Oct. 31, Bondi issued a formal order retroactively appointing Halligan to the position of “special attorney” within the Department of Justice as of Sept. 22 — three days before Comey was indicted — and wrote, “Should a court conclude that Ms. Halligan’s authority as Special Attorney is limited to particular matters, I hereby delegate to Ms. Halligan authority as Special Attorney to conduct and supervise the prosecutions” of Comey and James.”Halligan is also facing several Bar Association complaints in Florida and Virginia, filed by the left-leaning watchdog group Campaign for Accountability.“Ms. Halligan’s actions appear to constitute an abuse of power and serve to undermine the integrity of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and erode public confidence in the legal profession and the fair administration of justice,” the complaint says.Several other U.S. attorneys appointed by Trump are also facing legal challenges to their appointments.In late September, a federal judge in Nevada ruled that acting U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah should be disqualified from serving in that role due to violating the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.In August, a federal judge in New Jersey ruled that Alina Habba was “not lawfully holding the office of United States Attorney” due to the 120-day interim appointment expiration, and that her actions since July as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey may be declared void.Gary GrumbachGary Grumbach is an NBC News legal affairs reporter, based in Washington, D.C.

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