U.S. District Court Judge Cameron McGowan Currie has dismissed the indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, ruling that President Donald J. Trump’s appointment of Lindsey Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was invalid. Judge Currie stated that “all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment,” including the indictments, “were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside.”

Halligan, a former White House adviser, had been appointed after the Trump Administration removed its previous pick for interim U.S. attorney, reportedly because he refused continued pressure to pursue cases against Comey and James.

“The implications of a contrary conclusion are extraordinary,” Judge Currie wrote, noting that accepting the appointment as valid “would mean the Government could send any private citizen off the street—attorney or not—into the grand jury room to secure an indictment, so long as the Attorney General approves after the fact. That cannot be the law.”