Federal judge dismisses the Comey and James indictments because the prosecutor was unlawfully appointed.

The two indictments, the showpieces, the ones the President had been promising for years, the ones the press shop had been reading out loud at the lectern, the ones charged personally against the former FBI Director and the New York Attorney General: dismissed. Both. Same judge. Same morning. Same reason. The reason is in a federal statute. The statute is six pages long. The relevant clause has been on the books since 1948.

Hon. The reason is that the prosecutor was not legally a prosecutor.

Lindsey Halligan was an attorney with no criminal-prosecution experience. She had previously worked as a personal lawyer for the President. She was named the interim United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in late spring. Federal law, the statute 28 U.S.C. § 546(c), says an interim U.S. Attorney can hold the post for one hundred and twenty days, and after that the Attorney General has to either get them confirmed by the Senate or replace them. The clock ran. Nobody got confirmed. Nobody got replaced. Halligan kept signing indictments anyway.

Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, on Monday, on a motion to dismiss filed by both defense teams, did the math. The math said: she was past the cap. The math said: every act she took after the cap, including signing the Comey indictment and signing the James indictment, was ultra vires. That is a fancy way of saying without authority. The indictments are void.

Both cases were dismissed without prejudice, which means the government can theoretically refile them. But for the Comey count, the statute of limitations on the alleged false-statement charge has already run. The case is, for practical purposes, over. The Letitia James case can be refiled but only if a new prosecutor wants to bring a bank-fraud case that one judge has already decided was too thin to be brought by a person legally allowed to bring cases.

I have worked the late shift long enough to know what it looks like when management gives a job to the friend of the boss. The job gets done sloppy. The receipts don’t add up. The safe gets opened by the wrong key. Eventually a serious adult comes by, looks at the books, and walks the friend out.

The serious adult, this week, was a federal judge. The friend of the boss is, as of Monday, no longer a federal prosecutor. The Justice Department has filed an appeal. The Justice Department has, on its hands, two collapsed cases and a national press story whose lede is “The President’s Personal Lawyer Was Indicting His Enemies Past The Statutory Cap.”

You ever notice how the people who shout “rule of law” the loudest are also the people who ran out the prosecution clock by handing the file to a friend.

That ought to concern you.