Prosecutors may move to oust James Comey’s defense lawyer
Federal prosecutors signaled Sunday that they may fire James Comey’s lead defense attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, over Fitzgerald’s alleged meddling in statements made to the media shortly after President Donald Trump fired Comey from his post as FBI director in 2017.
Inside A presentation on Sunday eveningProsecutors argued to U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff that Fitzgerald, Comey’s lawyer and close friend, may have an insurmountable conflict of interest as a result of the disclosures.
Fitzgerald is representing Comey in a criminal case filed last month in Virginia at Trump’s behest; Here, Comey faces two felony charges of making false statements and obstructing federal prosecution.
Prosecutors asked the judge to quickly approve a proposal for a “filter team” in Comey’s criminal case that would examine evidence that could clarify Fitzgerald’s role in the eight-year-old disclosures without violating Comey’s attorney-client privilege.
prosecutors He presented his “filter team” to the court last weekHowever, the new application stated that this request was particularly urgent because of Fitzgerald’s role in Comey’s disclosure of information that authorities later deemed classified.
“Based on publicly disclosed information, the defendant used his current lead defense attorney to improperly disclose confidential information,” prosecutors Tyler Lemons and Gabriel Diaz wrote. “This fact raises an issue of conflict and disqualification for the current lead defense attorney.”
Details are brief in the new filing, but there are references Department of Justice Office of Inspector General report A 2019 report found that Fitzgerald acted as an intermediary when Comey tried to get information to the media about what he saw as Trump’s improper efforts to get Trump to pledge loyalty to him in the days before his firing.
About a month after Comey was fired, He admitted during testimony in the Senate He said he asked another lawyer and friend, Columbia law professor Daniel Richman, to provide versions of his notes to The New York Times in an effort to get a special counsel appointed to investigate Trump’s conduct.
Inspector general report It turned out that some of the information Comey shared with his lawyers was confidential and faulted him for sharing sensitive investigative information with outsiders and the media, but also found no evidence “that Comey or his attorneys released classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.”
The report also said the FBI took action to delete materials it received from Fitzgerald’s email accounts, and that Fitzgerald, the former U.S. Attorney in Chicago, cooperated “voluntarily and immediately.”
During the first Trump administration, the Justice Department declined to prosecute Comey or anyone else over the handling or disclosure of notes on Comey’s conversations with Trump.
But last month Comey was accused For making false statements and obstructing Congress. The accusations appear to be related to Comey’s denial of involvement in other leaks during testimony to a Senate committee in 2020.
Fitzgerald declined to comment Sunday on the prosecution filing, which came a day before Comey’s lawyers are scheduled to file their first substantive motions in the case. Comey’s lawyers will seek to dismiss the case on grounds of selective and vindictive prosecution, as well as the fact that Lindsey Halligan, the Trump-appointed prosecutor who filed the case, was not lawfully appointed as interim attorney for the U.S. Eastern District of Virginia.
Filter squads are a relatively routine but controversial aspect of many high-profile criminal cases involving government officials and other defendants who are lawyers or whose lawyers come under the scrutiny of investigators. The team’s mission is to review the contents of phones or computers seized during a criminal investigation and screen out any materials that may be subject to attorney-client privilege, executive privilege or other restrictions on prosecutors’ ability to access them.
Prosecutors did not give judge a copy of Inspector General reportbut offered a link to a version of it available on the nonprofit Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General said earlier this month that the website had been frozen and then taken offline in an effort to shut down the Council of Inspectors General for Integrity and Efficiency, an umbrella group of the Trump administration.
