Will Chamberlain

And so now these indictments can't stand.

Now, with respect to have you seen anything like this before?

I mean, I just heard the conversation.

We did see the Mar-a-Lago case being dismissed.

on similar but different grounds.

The legal grounds of why the Jack Smith Mar-a-Lago indictment was ultimately dismissed with Jack Smith's unlawful appointment is different here, but similar broadly.

Prior to these two indictments, not really, right?

Usually, DOJ follows proper process and procedure.

And now we see what happens when DOJ attempts to do an end run around those procedures.

The cases have now been dismissed and probably delivered a humiliating defeat to the Trump administration.

And just to be clear, we're talking about today's opinion says very clearly, in both opinions, there's a Comey opinion, there's a James opinion, they're substantively identical, that Lindsay Halligan was unlawfully appointed under the federal statute that was used as the basis for her appointment.

That allows the attorney general to appoint an interim U.S.

attorney for 120 days.

And basically what the judge is saying here is you already had somebody in that position for 120 days.

You can't use these 120-day periods successively.

When that 120-day period is over, you've got two choices.

You can either let the district judges appoint someone on their own or...

the president can nominate someone and the senate can confirm them but you can't do what lindsey halligan did here which is effectively walk off the street from the white house with no prosecutorial experience and then charge a case only to have this issue being raised by defendants and the attorney general saying after the fact oh everything that she did is totally fine by me i fully endorse it what the judge is saying here is not only was she unlawfully appointed from the beginning

But the attorney general does not have the right sort of ex post to say that's OK with me.

So in order to get there, you say that no matter what, they first have to appeal it.