Federal prosecutors have launched a new move against indicted former FBI chief James Comey in an attempt to have his defense attorney booted off his case.
Patrick Fitzgerald, whose record as a lawyer includes investigating the Valerie Plame affair and indicting Osama Bin Laden, is representing Comey against charges of lying to a Senate Committee about media leaks on the FBI’s investigations into Russian interference to help Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
The Justice Department’s lawyers argued in a filing Sunday that Fitzgerald may have a conflict of interest in the case because of his alleged role in facilitating media briefings by Comey, Politico reports. “Based on publicly disclosed information, the defendant used current lead defense counsel to improperly disclose classified information,” prosecutors wrote in their submission.
“This fact raises a question of conflict and disqualification for current lead defense counsel,” they went on, proposing that a “filter team” of lawyers be permitted to urgently sift through documents in the case for further evidence of their claims.
In 2019, a DOJ Office of Inspector General report found Comey had used Fitzgerald to help brief the media on what he considered to be Trump’s efforts to secure a pledge of loyalty from him before he was fired in 2017. Trump said at the time he’d dismissed the FBI chief over the bureau’s probe of a “made-up story” about the Kremlin interfering on behalf of his campaign the year before.
While that report also found Comey had shared some classified materials with his lawyers regarding his dismissal, it added there was no indication “Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media,” and that Fitzgerald “voluntarily and promptly” cooperated with FBI demands to remove those materials from his email accounts.
Comey’s indictment, brought last month, has met with massive backlash after the president accidentally made public a Truth Social message to DOJ chief Pam Biondi demanding that she prosecute both Comey and another Trump target, New York Attorney General Letitia James.
James, who had previously sued Trump for civil fraud, is now facing charges of mortgage fraud, which her lawyers have described as “baseless” and driven by the president’s “desire for revenge” against his political enemies rather than by a valid legal case.
As of last week, the Trump administration has also indicted the president’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, on 18 counts of illegally handling classified materials. One of Trump’s fiercest critics since he was dismissed in 2019, Bolton has similarly slammed the allegations against him, describing himself as the “latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those [Trump] deems to be his enemies.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Justice Department and Comey’s representatives for comment on this story.
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