A federal judge struck a blow Saturday to the Justice Department’s attempt to reindict former FBI Director James B. Comey, ruling that prosecutors cannot access or use evidence taken from his attorney friend’s computer and email accounts until a court determines whether the data has been retained legally.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted Comey’s friend Daniel Richman a temporary restraining order sequestering the email and computer data after Richman’s lawyers alleged that it was kept unlawfully. The restraining order will remain valid until a court rules on the validity of that claim.
In court documents, Kollar-Kotelly — a Clinton appointee — wrote that the restraining order was warranted because of a lack of information about who possesses the data and where it is held.
“Given that the custody and control of this material is the central issue in this matter, uncertainty about its whereabouts weighs in favor of acting promptly to preserve the status quo,” she wrote.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Richman, who also briefly worked for the FBI, was investigated during President Donald Trump’s first administration as part of an inquiry into whether he or Comey had illegally shared classified information. The Justice Department closed that case without charges in 2021.
The department then charged Comey in September with lying to Congress about his contacts with the media, an accusation he has repeatedly denied.
Prosecutors alleged that Comey lied during a September 2020 Senate Judiciary hearing in which he was asked whether he ever authorized anyone at the FBI to serve as an anonymous source to the media. Comey maintained he had not, but prosecutors contended he gave an old friend and attorney the go-ahead to serve as a conduit between him and reporters.
A U.S. district judge dismissed the case in November, ruling that Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor overseeing it, had been unlawfully appointed as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and that the indictment she single-handedly secured against Comey must be thrown out.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the department would pursue “all available legal action including an immediate appeal.” But Comey’s lawyers have argued that he cannot be recharged now because the five-year deadline to bring a case against him expired days after he was indicted in September, and the district judge appeared to endorse that view in her written opinion last month.
In moving to dismiss the case, Comey’s attorneys argued that the former FBI director is being targeted because of his adversarial relationship with Trump, who has repeatedly derided Comey on social media.
Comey’s attorneys have also argued that some of the evidence scraped from the email accounts and Richman’s computer may be protected by attorney-client privilege. Richman briefly represented Comey after Trump fired him as FBI director in 2017, and the evidence in question includes exchanges between Richman and a New York Times reporter in which they discussed sharing information at Comey’s behest.
In a hearing last month about whether the prosecution could use the emails and other information, a federal judge scolded the prosecutors pursuing charges against Comey for what he described as a “highly unusual” and “indict first and investigate second” approach.
Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this report.
The post Judge blocks access to emails seized from James Comey’s lawyer appeared first on Washington Post.
