Americans who believe in the rule of law, as most do, must have been heartened by a recent ruling from a federal judge in Virginia dismissing indictments against two leading targets of President Trump’s crude campaign of vengeance against his perceived enemies.

U.S. District Judge Cameron Mc- Gowan Currie quashed trumped-up indictments, pun intended, against former FBI director James Comey and Letitia James, the sitting attorney general in New York state. Currie ruled that the single federal prosecutor who presented the cases against them to a grand jury had been illegally appointed as the interim U.S. attorney for Eastern District of Virginia.

At Trump’s behest, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Lindsey Halligan to replace a previous interim U.S. attorney who was terminated after he determined there was not enough evidence to indict Comey or James.

Currie held that the attorney general can only appoint one interim U.S. attorney to fill a particular vacancy, for a maximum of 120 days. Successive interim appointees are not allowed under the law. Otherwise, an attorney general could appoint serial interims without one ever having to undergo confirmation in the U.S. Senate.

The Senate’s power to provide “advice and consent” on top federal officeholders was one of the checks and balances written into the Constitution to avoid a president taking on the unchecked powers of a king.

Currie’s ruling is yet another federal court decision that should by now tell Trump he cannot do whatever he wants, however he wants, whenever he wants, as if he were elected king. But this president is apparently a slow learner when it comes to understanding he is the temporary chief executive of the people’s company, not a privately held company like the many businesses he has run, sometimes into the ground.

The aborted prosecutions of Comey and James were egregious examples of Trump’s overreach and abuse of his powers. The president publicly called for the prosecutions, repeatedly, and had installed in office a personal attorney of his who’d never prosecuted a case in her life. She is unqualified by any reasonable standard to be a U.S. attorney.

Currie was nominated by Bill Clinton and, of course, Trump is denouncing her as some kind of knee-jerk partisan. That’s what he always says when a judge at any level rules against him. He’s projecting himself on to federal judges, assuming they think and function as he does.

Even Chief Justice John Roberts, no Democratic loyalist, has declared that federal judges are not defined by which president appointed them.

Currie, who normally sits on the bench in South Carolina, was brought in to hear the case so judges in eastern Virginia would not be thrust into the uncomfortable situation of ruling on the validity of the appointment of a prosecutor whose office routinely brings cases before them.

Currie’s ruling is not the first time lower federal courts have ruled that Trump executive actions and policies are illegal, even when it comes to the appointments of interim U.S. attorneys.

District court judges in New Jersey, Nevada and central California have similarly decided interim appointments of U.S. attorneys in those places were unlawful. The Trump administration is appealing those rulings, as Bondi indicated the administration would with Currie’s decision on Halligan.

The eventual outcome of appeals in those four cases will tell the country much about the fortitude of the Supreme Court to stand as a bulwark against a wannabe king.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, where the cases involving Comey and James may be first headed, has traditionally been of the more conservative appeals courts.

But courts, in general, are sticklers when it comes to rules and procedures, having their own that they enforce rigorously.

Every time a lower court stands up against Trump’s overreach and criminality it is tremendously refreshing to see. It is equally disappointing when an appeals court or the Supreme Court goes against established law and gives him unprecedented power to dismantle the democracy and freedom that our country is supposed to stand for.

When it comes to Comey, if the appeal is rejected he cannot be re-indicted because he was indicted just days before the five-year statute of limitations ran out on charges that he lied to Congress as FBI director in 2020 about leaking information to news media about sensitive investigations.

James, however, could conceivably be charged in another, valid indictment on bank fraud for allegedly making false statements on a home mortgage application.

One pattern with Trump is he doesn’t give up easily. So, expect him to try, try and try again to punish these two perceived enemies, if only by forcing them to spend time, energy and resources to defend themselves and their reputations against bogus, vindictive prosecutions.

The career prosecutors in eastern Virginia, civil servants whose adherence to the law is supposed to stand above whatever their party leanings might be, didn’t think there was enough of a case against Comey or James. If either should come to a trial on the merits, it’s reasonable to expect federal judge — notwithstanding whichever president nominated them — would agree. But less certain is what a jury might decide.

There’s a chance the MAGA tide in America is receding. The off-year elections this month suggested that that is the case. Republicans in Congress, reading public opinion accurately, caved and approved the release the investigative files on sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. Even Trump caved on that one and signed the bill. One of his former acolytes in Congress, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, has decided to abandon her Georgia seat in January.

The tide looks to be turning, but it won’t be clear if it has turned all the way until the mid-term congressional elections a year from now. A Democratic majority in one or both chambers of Congress needs to be elected to body check Trump during his last two years in office.

Ronald Mitchell
Editor and Publisher, Bay State Banner