A federal judge on Friday ordered the Justice Department to return data it seized in 2017 from a close friend of former FBI Director James Comey’s, concluding that the agency violated the constitutional rights of law professor Daniel Richman and had improperly used the material to indict Comey.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly heavily criticized Justice Department prosecutors, ruling that the data and material, an image of Richman’s hard drive along with emails from his iCloud and Columbia University email accounts, was handled with “callous disregard” for Richman’s rights.
The order is another blow to the Justice Department and prosecutors from the Eastern District of Virginia, after U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie ruled last month that former Trump attorney Lindsey Halligan was not lawfully appointed as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia when she single-handedly presented the Comey case to a grand jury.
The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday in response to the ruling, or on whether it will seek new indictments against Comey.
Earlier this week, prosecutors filed a motion in the case arguing that they needed the information to seek a new indictment against Comey after an initial indictment was dismissed last month due to the ruling on Halligan’s appointment.
The judge ruled that using the old material without getting a new warrant to pursue a grand jury indictment against Comey was a “remarkable breach of protocol.”
Kollar-Kotelly began her 46-page memorandum with a harsh critique of the situation:
“When the Government violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures by sweeping up a broad swath of a person’s electronic files, retaining those files long after the relevant investigation has ended, and later sifting through those files without a warrant to obtain evidence against someone else, what remedy is available to the victim of the Government’s unlawful intrusion? Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g) provides one such remedy: a court may order the Government to return the files to their rightful owner. This case calls for that remedy.”
The judge did make one concession to the Justice Department, ordering that a copy of all the data in question be kept under seal with the federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia in case prosecutors can convince judges there to let them use the material again.
Richman’s filing to get his material back was filed in the U.S. district court in D.C. Kollar-Kotelly had issued a temporary restraining order blocking prosecutors from access to Richman’s data and emails last week after his lawyers filed an emergency motion with the D.C. court.
The use of Richman’s records came to light after Comey was indicted in September on a charge of making a false statement to Congress during a 2020 Senate hearing. But that case was dismissed after a federal judge ruled that Halligan, an attorney with no prior criminal experience, was unlawfully appointed.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Justice Department would file an appeal in the Comey case, but that hasn’t happened yet. Judges in the Eastern District of Virginia have expressed frustration that Halligan’s name continues to appear as the U.S. attorney on court documents.
In a motion filed earlier this week, prosecutors argued that Richman was trying to protect his friend Comey from being reindicted, and admitted the material was key to those efforts.
The Justice Department obtained Richman’s computer files and emails in 2017, when it was investigating Comey after he was fired as FBI director. Comey later told Congress that he had given Richman memos he had written about his meetings with Trump and told Richman to share them with a reporter.
After that testimony, Richman allowed the FBI to create an image of all the files on his personal computer and an additional hard drive. But the Justice Department kept the files and then used them to go after Comey this fall without getting a new warrant from a judge.
The Trump administration’s other efforts to prosecute political rivals have recently failed. Earlier this week, NBC News reported that a federal jury in Alexandria, Virginia, declined to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James, a recurring political target of Trump’s.
It was the Justice Department’s third attempt at securing an indictment against James. Last month, a federal judge dismissed mortgage-related charges against James, in addition to separate charges against Comey. The Justice Department also tried and failed to obtain a new indictment against James in a federal court in Norfolk, Virginia, earlier this month.
