Judge’s disqualification of Lindsey Halligan might impact Abbey Gate prosecution too

The lawyers defending an accused Abbey Gate bombing co-conspirator have also sought to disqualify interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, and it remains to be seen whether a judge's ruling in separate cases that Halligan was not properly serving in her role will impact the already-delayed trial against the accused ISIS-K terrorist.

Earlier in November, the start date for the highly-anticipated trial against Mohammed Sharifullah was already pushed back from early December into the new year, following last month’s firing of the top prosecutor in that case. 

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie tossed the charges against Comey and James without prejudice, after ruling that U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, who brought the charges, had been unlawfully appointed, ruling that Halligan was disqualified from her role as the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia — where the case against Sharifullah was also brought. Being dismissed "without prejudice" means the pair of anti-Trump activists can be charged again without running afoul of the ban against "double jeopardy."

Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday that Halligan’s disqualification will not impact other federal prosecutions being handled by Halligan and her Virginia prosecutor’s office. “We'll be taking all available legal action, including an immediate appeal to hold Letitia James and James Comey accountable for their unlawful conduct," Bondi said at a press conference.

Accused terrorist's lawyers try same playbook as Comey and James

Sharifullah, the purported ISIS-K member charged with providing reconnaissance in the lead up to the Abbey Gate attack of August 2021, in which 13 U.S. service members died, was extradited to the U.S. from Pakistan in March. He was charged that month, and was slated to go on trial in northern Virginia on Dec. 8, but the Justice Department requested a delay to push back the trial date. The new  date is now Feb. 9, 2026.

The defense team for Sharifullah in mid-November had filed its own motion to disqualify Halligan, and on Monday the judge presiding over the Sharifullah case — Judge Anthony Trenga — gave the DOJ until Jan. 20, 2026 to file its response to the defense’s disqualification efforts.

The U.S. attorney’s office saw the removal of a number of prosecutors including Michael Ben’Ary, who had been the lead prosecutor on the case against Sharifullah. Comey’s son-in-law, Troy Edwards, who was also a prosecutor on the Sharifullah case, resigned in late September after his father-in-law was indicted.

It has not been disclosed whether the firing of Ben’Ary or the resignation of Edwards played a role in the delay of the Sharifullah trial, and the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment about why Ben’Ary was terminated and whether his removal was a factor in the DOJ agreeing with the defense to push the trial into February.

The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment about what the disqualification of Halligan might mean for the Sharifullah prosecution.

Lawyers for Abbey Gate co-conspirator says Halligan's legal actions are "void"

Sharifullah’s defense team in mid-November filed a motion titled, “Mr. Sharifullah’s Motion to Disqualify Lindsey Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney.”

“Mohammad Sharifullah, by counsel, moves this Court to disqualify Lindsey Halligan from serving as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia on the grounds that her appointment violates 28 U.S.C. § 546,” Sharifullah’s lawyers said. “As such, the Court should find that Ms. Halligan’s appointment and actions taken purportedly in her capacity as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia are void.”

The alleged ISIS-K member’s attorneys added: “None of the attorneys associated with the Eastern District of Virginia U.S. Attorneys Office who signed or are listed on Mr. Sharifullah’s indictment are currently employed by that office. Ryan White of NSD remains on the case, and John Gibbs and Avishek Panth, Assistant U.S. Attorneys for the Eastern District of Virginia, also represent the government.”

Judge Trenga on Monday ruled that the government must file a response to the motion to disqualify Halligan no later than January 20, 2026.”

Was the U.S. Attorney vacancy properly filled?

The law at the heart of the question of Halligan's disqualification has nothing to do with conflicts of interest or competency. 28 U.S. Code § 546 deals with how federal “vacancies” are to be filled.

The law states: “(a) Except as provided in subsection (b), the Attorney General may appoint a United States attorney for the district in which the office of United States attorney is vacant. (b) The Attorney General shall not appoint as United States attorney a person to whose appointment by the President to that office the Senate refused to give advice and consent. (c) A person appointed as United States attorney under this section may serve until the earlier of — (1) the qualification of a United States attorney for such district appointed by the President under section 541 of this title; or (2) the expiration of 120 days after appointment by the Attorney General under this section.”

Bondi in late October issued a memorandum seeking to protect her selection of Halligan as interim U.S. attorney.

Bondi argued that, on Sept. 22, “I exercised the authority vested in the Attorney General by 28 U.S.C. § 546 to designate and appoint Lindsey Halligan as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.” Bondi added: “For the avoidance of doubt as to the validity of that appointment, and by virtue of the authority vested in the Attorney General by law, including 28 U.S.C. § 509, 510, and 515, I hereby appoint Ms. Halligan to the additional position of Special Attorney, as of September 22, 2025, and thereby ratify her employment as an attorney of the Department of Justice from that date going forward.”

The Attorney General said that “as Special Attorney, Ms. Halligan has authority to conduct, in the Eastern District of Virginia, any kind of legal proceeding, civil or criminal, including grand jury proceedings and proceedings before United States Magistrates and Judges.”

Halligan — as the interim U.S. attorney — has had her name appear on a number of Sharifullah court filings submitted by the DOJ since September, including: October filings related to the appearance of assistant U.S. attorney Avi Panth as a prosecutor on the case; a submission for a protective order related to the Classified Information Procedures Act; and a motion for a protective order related to classified information tied to the case, as well as the November motion to seal the joint request by the DOJ and the defense team to delay the trial date.

A number of court filings are also sealed, so it is not known if further DOJ submissions bear her name.

“Monster” extradited from Pakistan to the United States for prosecution

Sharifullah's capture – in a joint effort between Pakistani intelligence and the U.S. spy agencies – was announced by President Donald Trump at a joint session of Congress in March. President Donald Trump has thanked Pakistan for “helping arrest this monster.” 

FBI Director Kash Patel tweeted shortly after Trump's announcement that "tonight the FBI, DOJ, and CIA have extradited one of the terrorists responsible for the murder of the 13 American soldiers at Abbey Gate during the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. One step closer to justice for these American heroes and their families."

It was reported that Sharifullah confessed to the FBI that he played a key reconnaissance role in the bombing at the gate of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, during U.S. troops' final evacuation from the country. 

Sharifullah also claims to have trained ISIS-K gunmen for a deadly attack on a concert hall in Moscow in 2024 and to have facilitated a bombing that targeted Canadian embassy security guards in Kabul in 2016.

The Aug. 26, 2021, Abbey Gate attack, in which a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest, killed 11 Marines, one Army soldier, one Navy corpsman, and an estimated 170 Afghan civilians, while wounding dozens of other U.S. troops and scores of Afghans in the crowd. A Navy Corpsman is a medical professional who provides medical care in various settings, from hospitals to the battlefield, and works alongside the Marine Corps and Navy.

Comey drama intersects with Abbey Gate case

In July, Judge Trenga had initially set Sharifullah's trial date for December 8.

The indictment against Comey was brought in September by Halligan. The former Trump personal lawyer and Trump White House aide replaced Siebert, who had resigned from the U.S. attorney’s office days before the indictments were announced, allegedly following pressure from the Trump administration to bring charges against Comey.

Comey was charged in September with a count of making false statements to the Senate when he denied ever authorizing FBI officials to leak to the media about the bureau’s Hillary Clinton investigation. He was also charged with obstruction of a congressional investigation.

Halligan’s office later announced in October that it had also indicted James related to allegations of bank fraud and false statements made to financial institutions, similar to the same allegations she prosecuted against Trump.

Human Events reported that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche “personally rejected a sweetheart plea deal” from Ben’Ary for Sharifullah “which would’ve given the bomber a light sentence after he killed service members.”

The DOJ, with the agreement of Sharifullah’s lawyers, in early November filed a sealed motion to continue the trial date for the Abbey Gate case. The next day, Trenga ordered that “the trial date in this case is continued” until February of next year.

Halligan’s disqualification further complicates things

Judge Cameron McGowan Currie for the U.S. District Court for South Carolina, who was handling the Halligan appointment controversy related to DOJ’s prosecution of Comey and James, ruled Monday that Halligan was disqualified from the role.

Currie, nominated by then-President Bill Clinton and confirmed by the Senate in 1994, wrote that “Mr. Comey contends Ms. Halligan’s unlawful appointment renders all her purported official actions void ab initio [from the beginning]. He therefore argues the case must be dismissed because Ms. Halligan was not lawfully exercising executive power when she appeared before the grand jury alone and obtained his indictment [...] I agree.”

“The appointment of Ms. Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney violated 28 U.S.C. § 546 and the Appointments Clause of the U.S. Constitution,” the judge ruled on Monday. “All actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment, including securing and signing Mr. Comey’s indictment, were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside. The Attorney General’s attempts to ratify Ms. Halligan’s actions were ineffective and are hereby set aside.”

Comey posted a video on Monday arguing that “I know that Donald Trump will probably come after me again. My attitude is going to be the same: I’m innocent. I am not afraid. And I believe in an independent federal judiciary.”

“I am heartened by today’s victory and grateful for the prayers and support I have received from around the country. I remain fearless in the face of these baseless charges as I continue fighting for New Yorkers every single day,” James said in a statement.

The DOJ had sought to combat the efforts by Comey and James to disqualify Halligan in court filings in early November.

“Although Defendants frame their arguments in constitutional terms, all agree that U.S. Attorneys are inferior officers whose appointment the Constitution permits Congress to vest ‘by Law’ in a ‘Head of Department’ like the Attorney General […] All further agree that Congress, in 28 U.S.C. § 546, did in fact vest the Attorney General with the power to appoint U.S. Attorneys for at least 120 days,” the DOJ told the court this month. 

“The sole question is whether Section 546 authorized the Attorney General to appoint interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan in the circumstances here: where a previous interim U.S. Attorney vacated office after serving 120 days and being reappointed by the district court. Section 546’s text supplies a straightforward answer: Yes.”

The DOJ added: “In all events, the government has endorsed the prosecutions, and the Attorney General has personally ratified the indictments to obviate any question as to their validity. At minimum, any dismissal should be without prejudice to permit the government to seek new indictments now that the Attorney General has cured any arguable flaw in Ms. Halligan’s authority to prosecute.”

Statute of limitations won't save Comey

18 U.S. Code § 3288 states that “whenever an indictment or information charging a felony is dismissed for any reason after the period prescribed by the applicable statute of limitations has expired, a new indictment may be returned in the appropriate jurisdiction within six calendar months of the date of the dismissal of the indictment or information [...] which the new indictment shall not be barred by any statute of limitations.”

It is thus possible that this is far from the end of the Comey and James prosecutions.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday that Trump’s reaction to the dismissal of the Comey and James cases was that “we’ve seen this before — we’ve seen partisan judges take unprecedented steps to try to intervene in accountability before. But we’re not going to give up, and I know that the Department of Justice intends to appeal these rulings very soon.”

“I’m not worried about someone who has been charged with a very serious crime,” Bondi said in response to Comey’s video. “His alleged actions were a betrayal of public trust.”

Bondi also insisted that Halligan’s disqualification “does not” threaten other cases.

“We have made Lindsey Halligan a special U.S. attorney, so she is in court — she can fight in court just like she was, and we believe that we will be successful on appeal,” Bondi said. “And I’ll tell you, Lindsey Halligan — I talked to all our U.S. attorneys, the majority of them, around the country, and Lindsey Halligan is an excellent U.S. attorney, and shame on them for not wanting her in office.”

The DOJ will respond to the Sharifullah defense team’s efforts to disqualify Halligan by January.

Sharifullah's confession, other facts raise probable cause, judge says

The FBI has said Sharifullah was read his "Miranda rights" by the FBI in March and that the accused terrorist proceeded to tell them he was recruited into ISIS-K around 2016. The FBI said the terrorist was imprisoned in Afghanistan from approximately 2019 until two weeks before the Kabul airport attack.

Sharifullah has been charged with providing material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization resulting in death, and he faces a potential life sentence.

The bureau said ISIS-K members provided Sharifullah with a motorcycle, funds for a cell phone and instructions on using social media to communicate with them in the lead-up to the attack.

Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick, who handled the early court proceedings against Sharifullah, ruled in March that "I do find probable cause" to continue to hold him for his alleged role.

An FBI agent testified that his FBI colleagues had Sharifullah draw a map of the reconnaissance mission he claimed to have carried out.