A routine hearing in the Justice Department’s prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey veered into uncharted territory on Wednesday, after the Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney overseeing the case acknowledged that a key indictment had never actually gone before a full grand jury.
The admission, delivered quietly by Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, immediately upended the courtroom. It also may have fatally wounded the case against Comey, whose prosecution has long been criticized as politically driven.
Halligan testified that the indictment underpinning the government’s case was never presented to a grand jury — a basic requirement for felony charges in federal court. The revelation is stunning legal observers and it prompted an emergency scramble among Justice Department lawyers.
Former federal prosecutor Harry Litman called it a “HUGE development,” arguing that the lapse created “a whole separate basis for dismissal.”
Comey’s legal team seized on the admission within minutes. Defense attorney Michael Dreeben told the court that the acknowledgment underscored what they had argued from the beginning: that the case was not only selective prosecution, but now, procedurally defective at its core.
“There is no indictment,” Dreeben argued, saying the government had brought a case that failed to clear even the most basic procedural threshold. U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff, visibly frustrated, ordered the Justice Department to respond by 5 p.m., demanding an explanation for how an indictment appeared in open court without ever being voted on.
Legal analysts were stunned. “This is almost unreal incompetence,” wrote legal commentator Chris Geidner, who publishes the legal newsletter Lawdork.
Federal prosecutors have acknowledged that the charges against Comey grew out of an investigation marshaled by Trump allies within the Justice Department, following the former president’s yearslong grievances against the FBI director who documented his interactions with Trump before being fired in 2017.
Trump’s public obsession with Comey has shadowed every stage of the prosecution, and Wednesday’s hearing only sharpened concerns that the case was built on political animus rather than evidence.
Federal prosecutor Tyler Lemons pushed back, insisting that Halligan was “not a puppet” and that prosecutors had acted independently. But the government’s credibility took a significant blow as Halligan herself delivered the testimony that undermined her own office’s case.
The Justice Department must now convince the court that the apparent failure to secure a valid grand jury vote — a foundational requirement for federal criminal cases — does not automatically doom the prosecution. If they cannot, the case against Comey may collapse before it ever reaches trial.
