Lawsuit from James Comey’s friend could disrupt plans to re-indict the former FBI director

James Comey’s friend and former lawyer Daniel Richman A lawsuit was filed against the Ministry of Justice Because of evidence collected from him years ago and recently used in the criminal case against Comey that could destabilize the Trump administration. Close plans to re-indict former FBI director.

The evidence the Justice Department gathered from Richman’s online accounts, iPhone, iPad and hard drive from 2019 and 2020 was becoming a serious issue in the criminal case against Comey in Northern Virginia, which was dismissed last month.

Richman, the Columbia University law professor, is asking the Washington, D.C.-based federal court to issue an emergency order requiring the Justice Department to halt access to Richman’s files and hold a hearing on whether the Justice Department violated Richman’s constitutional rights.

He says the fact that the Justice Department still has access to his files is a “callous disregard” of his Fourth Amendment rights, which protect against unwarranted searches and government seizures.

“There is no legal basis for the government to retain any images of Professor Richman’s computer on the Hard Drive or elsewhere,” his lawsuit states. “The government’s conduct has deprived Professor Richman of his constitutional rights, and unless his property is returned, Professor Richman’s injury will continue.”

Richman’s new requests in court now allow a judge to delve deeper into allegations of prosecutorial missteps in the Comey case that were not fully uncovered or prosecuted before it was dismissed last Monday, or to suppress evidence that prosecutors may want to use as they try to reshape charges against Comey related to his 2020 congressional testimony.

D.C. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a lawyer with experience in national security cases and a Bill Clinton appointee, has not yet responded to Richman’s lawsuit, according to court records. The Ministry of Justice also did not respond. Original search warrant records from years ago, when the Justice Department sought permission to obtain Richman’s email, iCloud, other accounts and other data, are also still under seal in D.C. District Court.

In many ways, Richman’s lawsuit picks up where Comey’s lawsuit left off before it was dismissed.

Before Comey’s team handed down the indictment against the former FBI director in late September, it was gaining ground with arguments that the Justice Department and FBI mishandled evidence and the grand jury. President Donald Trump has publicly said he wants the Justice Department to prosecute Comey, and the indictment comes days before federal charges are likely to end.

Comey pleaded not guilty before the charges were dismissed. The indictment alleged that she misled Congress about her interactions with Richman in 2020, and an Alexandria, Virginia, grand jury heard evidence from the Richman files, according to court records.

A federal magistrate judge in Virginia wrote last month that the Justice Department had taken a “cavalier attitude toward fundamental tenets of the Fourth Amendment” in using years of evidence from Richman before Comey’s grand jury this year, and that prosecutors had ultimately “been able to nix all the information seized from Mr. Richman and seemingly be able to do so again at will in the government’s eyes.”

Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick said the original search warrants for the investigation into the national defense leak, called Arctic Haze, did not give federal investigators the authority to seize evidence related to crimes for which Comey is accused of lying to Congress in his 2020 testimony.

Fitzpatrick stated that the evidence obtained from Richman had also been dormant for years and that the Department of Justice did not receive permission to re-access this evidence to investigate Comey this year. In addition, the magistrate judge took issue with the Justice Department’s failure to put evidence through a proper process to filter out potential confidential discussions between attorneys and their clients — in this case Comey was a client of Richman and others years ago. Comey’s team said they had I never had access to the evidence before he was charged.

The Arctic Haze investigation never resulted in a criminal case, and Richman was never charged.

“Although the Arctic Haze investigation concluded definitively in 2021, the government remains indefensibly in possession of Professor Richman’s Files to this day,” Richman’s attorneys wrote in their new brief filed in D.C. District Court. They add that the Justice Department’s approach to evidence “exemplifies exactly the kinds of government abuses that the Fourth Amendment is intended to protect.”

The Comey criminal case ended abruptly when a separate judge ruled that Trump-backed attorney Lindsey Halligan, who served as the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia and only presented the case to a grand jury in late September, did not have prosecutorial powers at the time.

The dismissal largely eliminated the possibility of the defense team’s investigation into Halligan and the investigators’ approach because the criminal case was closed before Comey’s team had access to grand jury records and before Comey could formally object to the use of evidence in the case. The Justice Department said it planned to appeal the decision invalidating Halligan’s work, but that appeal was not filed. The grand jury event, where the Ministry of Justice is trying to prepare a new indictment, may come first.

If the judge in D.C. federal court doesn’t block the Justice Department from tapping Richman’s evidence again, Richman’s team asks the court to hear depositions and other information “to determine the precise contours of the government’s conduct, why it did it, and whether it constituted callous disrespect or willful misconduct.”

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