Acting U.S. attorney was serving illegally when he subpoenaed Letitia James, appeals court rules
A divided Second Circuit panel held on August 21 that John Sarcone III was not lawfully serving as acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, invalidating subpoenas he issued to New York Attorney General Letitia James. Judge Guido Calabresi wrote that delegating the office’s full duties to Sarcone as “Special Attorney” and First Assistant was “an unlawful circumvention” of the statute’s exclusivity provision, and that the government’s reading “rewards evasion and penalizes compliance”; Judge Michael Park dissented. Sarcone’s interim term had expired in July 2025, meaning he held the post unlawfully for more than a year while investigating James, who had brought the New York civil fraud case against the President. It is the third appellate rejection of the administration’s workaround appointments, with parallel challenges pending in California, New Jersey, and Virginia.