Writer James Comey, former FBI Director, converse on the Barnes & Noble Higher West Aspect on Might 19, 2025 in New York Metropolis. Comey sat with Esposito to debate his profession and new ebook “FDR DRIVE,” the third of a collection of fictional crime novels that includes lawyer Nora Carleton.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Photographs Information | Getty Photographs
Prosecutors should return proof seized from a key determine within the dismissed felony case in opposition to former FBI Director James Comey, however the U.S. Division of Justice can search a brand new warrant for the data, a federal decide has dominated.
The ruling is not less than a short lived setback for prosecutors mulling one other try and cost Comey, certainly one of President Donald Trump’s critics whom the DOJ has sought to prosecute.
A lawyer for Richman declined to touch upon Saturday.
U.S. District Choose Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington dominated that whereas prosecutors should return information seized from Daniel Richman, a legislation professor and former lawyer for Comey, a duplicate may be deposited with the court docket for safekeeping within the occasion that prosecutors search a brand new warrant.
Richman sued final month looking for to bar prosecutors from utilizing materials he alleged had been improperly seized from him throughout a probe in 2019 and 2020. The probe led to 2021 with no costs.
Kollar-Kotelly, whose ruling was launched Friday evening, wrote that it was an unreasonable seizure of Richman’s property to make a copy of Richman’s information with out safeguarding them in opposition to being searched with out a warrant in a brand new investigation.
Nonetheless, the decide declined to dam the Justice Division from utilizing or counting on the supplies sooner or later, saying prosecutors needs to be free to pursue leads based mostly on what they discovered from the information and pursue a warrant to acquire them once more.
Prosecutors used the information this 12 months to construct their case in opposition to Comey. The previous FBI director was indicted in October on costs of creating false statements and obstructing Congress in connection together with his 2020 testimony about FBI officers anonymously offering info to information retailers.
A federal decide final month dismissed felony instances in opposition to Comey and New York Lawyer Basic Letitia James — one other of Trump’s perceived political enemies — after the decide decided that each indictments have been secured by an unlawfully appointed U.S. lawyer in Virginia’s Japanese District.