Devlin Barrett

And that becomes one of the bases for this challenge because...

One of the things that's very unusual about both these cases is that a new prosecutor parachutes in Lindsay Halligan and within a matter of days delivers indictments essentially on her own that her own office didn't think had merit.

So both Letitia James and James Comey fight back on a number of legal arguments, but they share one argument in particular, which is that

Lindsay Halligan's appointment was never lawful is just not right.

She shouldn't be the U.S.

attorney, can't be the U.S.

attorney.

Why?

Because normally what's supposed to happen is that a U.S.

attorney is supposed to be nominated by a president, confirmed by a Senate.

And if for whatever reason that can't happen, you know, there's a process to pick a temporary replacement for a limited period of time.

And as you might remember, I already said there was someone already serving in that role on a temporary basis.

So Lindsay Halligan becomes sort of a double temporary U.S.

attorney.

The defense argument here is actually a pretty simple one, which is like you can't just keep adding temporaries on top of temporaries at the same time that lawyers for Comey and lawyers for James are fighting about the Halligan appointment, which is kind of a technical issue.

They're also waging a much bigger fight in some ways over the very premise of what just happened, meaning they're arguing that this is vindictive prosecution.

They're arguing that but for Trump's dislike of these two human beings for political reasons.

there would never have been a criminal case against either of them.

And that's obviously an important issue in the whole larger picture of what's happening in the Justice Department, what's happening in the Trump administration.

Right.