For months, the Trump administration’s unorthodox strategy to install and retain loyalists in key prosecutorial positions while bypassing Senate approval has roiled courts, drawn legal challenges and earned condemnation from federal judges.

Now, it threatens to imperil one of the cases the president cares about most.

Lawyers for former FBI director James B. Comey on Monday asked a judge to dismiss the case against him, arguing that President Donald Trump’s handpicked prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, was illegally appointed.

Their request bears similarities to other recent challenges that have sought to disqualify Trump’s U.S. attorney appointees in New Jersey, Nevada, New Mexico and Los Angeles. Already, federal courts have ruled that two of them are serving unlawfully.

The legal question

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