Left: Attorney General Pam Bondi appears before a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025 (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein). Center: Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York John Sarcone III (U.S. Department of Justice). Right: New York Attorney General Letitia James speaks during a press briefing, Feb. 16, 2024, in New York (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File).
In federal court, dotting i's and crossing t's is generally the best practice, but on Friday, the DOJ botched the name of its most recently invalidated acting U.S. attorney while urging a judge to halt a major setback for a criminal grand jury probe of New York Attorney General Letitia James' office.
The DOJ has looked on for months as judges across the country found six of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's interim or acting U.S. attorneys were unlawfully appointed, causing varying degrees of damage to the Trump administration's priorities.
With Lindsey Halligan in the Eastern District of Virginia, criminal cases against Letitia James and ex-FBI Director James Comey were thrown out of court in their entirety. Halligan only stepped aside this week as judges in the district, increasingly concerned that she was still holding herself out as the interim U.S. attorney in court filings, started the process for replacing her.
On the Northern District of New York, Senior U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield ruled two weeks ago that John Sarcone was the acting U.S. attorney in name only, that his grand jury subpoenas' of James' office were "invalid" and "quashed," and that he was disqualified from "any further involvement in prosecuting or supervising the instant investigations, regardless of his title."
As Law&Crime has reported, those subpoenas were issued as part of the DOJ's criminal investigation into her office's civil fraud lawsuit against President Donald Trump and his family business and the Democratic AG's lawsuit against the NRA.
On Friday, the DOJ filed documents asking Schofield, a Barack Obama appointee, to put the adverse ruling on ice as the government appeals, making the case that Sarcone, if not as acting U.S. attorney, is at least a special attorney wielding Bondi's delegated authority and is legally the first assistant U.S. attorney, like Ryan Ellison in New Mexico.
The DOJ submits Sarcone's Letitia James subpoenas shouldn't have been ruled "invalid and unenforceable" based on a defect in title, which the government still contends isn't defective.
There was another problem: To make its case, the DOJ cited a decision issued nine days ago that went against one "Raymond" Ellison.
DOJ cites "Raymond" Ellison to support John Sarcone (court documents).
The decision from Senior U.S. District Judge David Nuffer, which correctly referred to the prosecutor as "Ryan" Ellison throughout, noted that he "is not, and was never, a validly acting as United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico" and "has been invalidly claiming to serve in that capacity since his resignation as interim United States Attorney" back in August.
"Mr. Ellison may not perform the functions and duties of the United States Attorney as Acting United States Attorney. And any claim, assertion, or statement of Mr. Ellison, the USAO, or the administration that he is the Acting United States Attorney, or interim United States Attorney, or United States Attorney is improper and inaccurate," the judge made clear.
The unlawful appointment finding follows various DOJ losses and appeals over Bondi's temporary top prosecutor installments of Alina Habba in New Jersey, Sigal Chattah in Nevada, Bill Essayli in California, Sarcone, and Halligan.
When Ryan Ellison responded publicly to the ruling, he accepted that his acting U.S. attorney "designation" was deemed "invalid," also emphasizing that the judge added, as seen in Essayli's case, that he was "validly designated as First Assistant United States Attorney and, in that capacity, could continue supervising the United States Attorney's Office for the District of New Mexico."
Ryan Ellison (U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Mexico).
But as the DOJ set in motion its attempt to revive the Letitia James subpoenas, it cited directly to "Raymond" Ellison's slightly salvaged fate as applicable to Sarcone's circumstances.
"The Attorney General also designated Mr. Ellison as First Assistant United States Attorney, as she did here [with Sarcone]. Although the district court determined that the Section 515 delegation could not authorize Mr. Ellison to perform all the functions of the United States Attorney, it nevertheless determined that this delegation authorized Mr. Ellison to perform the functions of a First Assistant United States Attorney, including supervising and conducting legal proceedings in that district," the DOJ said. "As a result, the district court refused to invalidate actions taken by Mr. Ellison within the scope of those delegable functions and refused to disqualify him from performing the lawful duties of a First Assistant United States Attorney."
The DOJ stated that Sarcone is at minimum validly serving as first assistant and special attorney and thus Judge Schofield "should not have quashed the grand jury subpoenas," making a stay pending appeal warranted.
"Despite this Court's contrary ruling, there is a sufficiently serious legal question concerning the validity of the Attorney General's delegation to warrant a stay pending appeal," the motion concluded.
Notably, the DOJ represented that it "will not seek to enforce the two subpoenas at issue" if Schofield grants the stay pending appeal.
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