On the Wednesday, November 26, 2025 episode of The Excerpt podcast: Former FBI Director James Comey responded after a judge ordered Department of Justice charges against both Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James to be dismissed. USA TODAY National News reporter Aysha Bagchi joins USA TODAY’s The Excerpt to discuss the ruling.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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James Comey:

I'm grateful that the court ended the case against me, which was a prosecution based on malevolence and incompetence, and a reflection of what the Department of Justice has become under Donald Trump, which is heartbreaking.

Dana Taylor:

That was former FBI director James Comey. On Monday, a judge ordered that charges against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both targets of President Donald Trump, be dismissed. What led to both cases being tossed and where does the Justice Department go from here? Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, November 26th, 2025. For more on the indictments, I'm joined now by USA Today National News reporter, Aysha Bagchi. Aysha, it's good to have you back on The Excerpt.

Aysha Bagchi:

Thanks, Dana. It's good to be here.

Dana Taylor:

Aysha, on what grounds were both cases dismissed? Are the circumstances here unusual?

Aysha Bagchi:

The circumstances here are unusual. The grounds were exactly the same, even though these were two separate cases. That's because these cases were brought essentially by the exact same prosecutor, a woman named Lindsey Halligan. She was appointed as interim US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in late September by Attorney General Pam Bondi, it seemed after prodding from President Trump. And she was the only prosecutor to present the cases to the grand juries that ultimately indicted both James Comey and Letitia James. She was the only prosecutor to sign those indictments. So she really became a crucial kind of fixed point when it came to looking at the indictments that each of these two defendants faced in different cases. And the judge in this case basically decided that Halligan wasn't lawfully appointed.

It kind of was a technical ruling. It has to do with a statute that regulates how interim US attorneys get appointed. That statute says that the Attorney General can appoint someone for about 120 days, and after that, it's supposed to be a district court that appoints the person to fill the vacancy until you have a full appointment where you have the president nominate someone and you have that appointment and go through Senate approval. So basically they said that she wasn't legitimately appointed, and because of that, the judge said that all her actions had to be rolled back, had to be undone, and that included getting the two indictments in these cases.

Dana Taylor:

Let's break down the case against Comey. What were the charges against him? And what was his initial response to those charges?

Aysha Bagchi:

James Comey was charged with lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding. Both those allegations really tied it seems to one incident back in 2020, so five years ago at this point, where he was alleged to have lied to Congress when it came to some statements regarding whether he had authorized someone to act as an anonymous source in a media report. The media report actually had to do with Comey's statements about Hillary Clinton and the investigation into her use of a private email server when she was working as Secretary of State. So he was charged with lying to Congress back at that time. And basically the Trump administration was running up against a five-year deadline to bring charges by September 30th, 2025, or they would miss the deadline to be able to try James Comey.

Dana Taylor:

As we heard Comey address the dismissal in a video statement posted to Instagram, let's listen to some of what he said regarding whether he believes the Trump administration is finished with him.

James Comey:

I know that Donald Trump will probably come after me again. And my attitude is going to be the same: I'm innocent, I am not afraid, and I believe in an independent federal judiciary – the gift from our founders that protects us from a would-be tyrant.

Dana Taylor:

You mentioned the statute of limitations here. Can the Justice Department secure a new indictment?

Aysha Bagchi:

That is an open question. I mean, James Comey's lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, he sent me a statement yesterday basically saying, no, that the clock has run out and this case is over. That doesn't mean that the Trump administration can't make some arguments for why the case should continue. First of all, the Trump administration has said it's going to appeal the ruling. That means that it's still going to argue that Halligan was lawfully appointed, or even if she wasn't lawfully appointed, that that doesn't mean you have to roll back the entire indictment. Even if the Justice Department loses on that issue, it might try to argue that the fact that it got any indictment, even an indictment that ultimately proved invalid by the time of the five-year deadline, means that they should get an extension of another six months in order to bring a new indictment. And they'll be pointing to a specific statute that gives that kind of six-month extension. James Comey's lawyers are going to argue that you don't get that six-month extension because this wasn't a valid indictment to start with. So you don't get to extend the clock longer than you already had in a case like this where you didn't have a lawful prosecutor bringing the charges. So that's probably a legal battle that's still going to play out, but definitely James Comey's position is the clock has run out, this case is over.

Dana Taylor:

Well appearing on Fox News, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt went after Senior US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie. What's the administration's take here?

Aysha Bagchi:

The administration is still strongly behind these cases against James Comey and Letitia James. It is somewhat unique when you look at the Trump administration to see the White House Press Secretary making these kinds of public statements because traditionally what you would usually see is the White House Press Secretary saying, "We defer to the Justice Department when it comes to statements about ongoing legal cases." And the idea behind that is to avoid the appearance of White House interference in questions of law and questions of investigations. But we haven't really seen that here. Karoline Leavitt did make statements about what happened in this case. She said that the Justice Department is going to appeal this ruling. We also saw Pam Bondi, the Attorney General make some public statements where she said that this judge just didn't like Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor here.

Now of course, the judge's opinion doesn't have to do with whether she liked or disliked the prosecutor, it had to do with the lawfulness of the appointment and reading into statutes and looking at legal issues about whether this appointment followed the law in terms of how you get a prosecutor installed in office. But it's very clear that the administration is personally invested in these cases that comes after Donald Trump essentially in late September, called for James Comey and Letitia James to face charges before they were indicted at all. So we see the White House Press Secretary saying that the White House is committed to seeing these cases go forward and they plan to appeal.

Dana Taylor:

Aysha, of course we have to look at these cases through the lens of Donald Trump and how James and Comey both became targets of the President. His press secretary contends he's simply pursuing accountability. But let's start with Comey. Many Democrats saw him as a spoiler when Trump ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016. What happened there?

Aysha Bagchi:

Yes, James Comey was the head of the FBI at the time of the 2016 presidential campaign, and he had made some public statements months before the election took place about an investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. He announced months ahead of the election that the investigation was being closed and that the Justice Department was not going to pursue charges. He said no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges in this type of case and that he wanted Hillary Clinton treated like any other defendant in those types of circumstances. But what really became controversial is just weeks before the November election, he came out again and spoke about how the investigation was being reopened because some new emails had come to light that needed to be looked at. And this was really in the final chapter of that presidential campaign, and he made that statement in spite of a Justice Department policy that basically generally discourages the department from making public statements that could interfere in an election within 60 days of that election.

So it was a really controversial move. He ended up closing the investigation again right around the time of the election, but certainly many people who supported Hillary Clinton were upset with that choice of his and thought that it negatively impacted her campaign in the waning days, the final days of that presidential campaign. So he was a controversial figure for many people on the left at that time, also for people on the right who thought that Hillary Clinton should have faced charges. And then following the election, he stayed on as the FBI director for some time and became a controversial figure on the right because he was heading the FBI at a time when it was conducting an investigation into potential contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government when it came to potential interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Dana Taylor:

And so is that really when the current rift began?

Aysha Bagchi:

That appears to be the case. I mean, Trump, after he was elected, he did say he was going to keep James Comey on as FBI director. But from the statements that the two men have made since, we know that Trump ultimately fired James Comey, it seems that Trump didn't have confidence that James Comey wouldn't investigate Trump or people connected to Donald Trump when it came to potential links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. We do know ultimately that an investigation was conducted by Robert Mueller and he didn't find grounds to bring charges about any collusion between the campaign and the Russian government. But it seems that Trump was concerned about that investigation, and according to Comey, that Trump wanted a type of personal loyalty that Comey was not willing to pledge to the President when he was heading the FBI. And what became very public and really ignited and even more bitter feud in the years that came was Trump summarily dismissing James Comey from heading the FBI.

Dana Taylor:

What about Letitia James? Why did Trump want his Justice Department to go after her?

Aysha Bagchi:

Letitia James went after Trump. That's definitely the attitude that he has about her. She is the New York Attorney General. And it's true that in 2018 when she was campaigning to become New York Attorney General, she said essentially that she was going to look into Donald Trump, that she was going to look for malfeasance involving him or his businesses. That is something that she ended up doing as New York Attorney General. She ultimately sued him civilly, so not a criminal case, not the type of case where he could have spent time behind bars, but a case that could have cost him a lot of money and initially seemed like it was going to cost him a lot of money. She sued alleging that he and his businesses had engaged in years of essentially fraud, where they had misrepresented the value of his assets in order to get better loan terms.

A judge initially said that that was true and awarded the New York Attorney General hundreds of millions of dollars including interest as a result of this kind of fraud. Now on appeal, an appeals court did uphold the judgment about the fraud, but basically kicked out the financial penalty. So it doesn't look like Donald Trump is going to have to pay that penalty now. But he did have to testify in that case, some members of his family had to testify in that case. So really, it seems like his bitterness towards Letitia James goes back to her office's investigation of him.

Dana Taylor:

Is there anyone else, whether a former friend or foe, who the President would like to see indicted?

Aysha Bagchi:

Yes, it seems so. One of the most glaring examples is Adam Schiff, Democratic senator from California. He served on the January 6th committee that looked into what happened when the US Capitol was attacked on January 6th at a time when Donald Trump was denying that Joe Biden had won the 2020 presidential election and his supporters went to the Capitol and essentially ransacked the Capitol as proceedings were taking place to formalize Joe Biden's electoral victory. And Adam Schiff was on that committee investigating what happened at that time. Donald Trump on September 20th, he posted on social media that he essentially wanted James Comey, Letitia James, and Adam Schiff, he called him Adam Shifty Schiff, indicted. He didn't say on what charges, but he said that they were guilty, that they were all guilty. So it does appear that Adam Schiff is being investigated.

We have seen an indictment against former national security adviser, John Bolton, who is also not a friend of the President. He served as Donald Trump's national security adviser in the first Trump presidential administration, but has gone on to criticize Donald Trump and basically said he's unfit for office. It's unclear what's going to happen in that case. That case was brought in a different jurisdiction from the James Comey and Letitia James cases. It involves allegations that John Bolton mishandled classified information. It was brought by some career prosecutors, so that makes that case look a little different from the James Comey and Letitia James cases. But Donald Trump has certainly not expressed any sympathy for John Bolton in that case. One interesting feature is that Donald Trump himself faced charges that he had mishandled classified information, and that case was dismissed after Donald Trump won the 2024 election. Now John Bolton, a longtime critic of Donald Trump, is facing some similar charges.

Dana Taylor:

Finally, the name on the tip of everyone's tongue in the world of politics is New York Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani. How does Mamdani factor her in here? I know he was asked about the ruling.

Aysha Bagchi:

Yes, Mamdani had a very quick comment about it. He said he was very excited, so he expressed enthusiasm for it. Letitia James supported Mamdani in his campaign in the general election, so she has kind of stood by him as he was running become New York City's mayor. So he expressed support for it. He's kind of walking maybe a little bit of a tight rope at the moment because he just had a very friendly sort of conference in front of the cameras with Donald Trump in the Oval Office at a time when the two men had previously expressed a lot of bitterness towards each other, and Donald Trump didn't seem very eager to work with Mamdani now that Mamdani has become the next leader of New York City. So he's walking a bit of a tightrope in trying to maintain some good connection with the President, but he expressed enthusiasm for the dismissal of Letitia James' case. Now, Letitia James' case could always come back. She's not facing a statute of limitations that just ran out, so we still have to see what happens there. But Zohran Mamdani did seem happy with what's happened so far.

Dana Taylor:

Aysha Bagchi is a USA Today national news reporter. So great to have you back. Thank you.

Aysha Bagchi:

Thanks, Dana.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer, Kaely Monahan, for production assistance, our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. I'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA Today's The Excerpt.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: DOJ charges against James Comey and Letitia James dismissed | The Excerpt

Reporting by Dana Taylor, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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