Judge Suggests DOJ ‘Missteps’ Could Sink Comey Case

A federal magistrate judge suggested Monday that “profound investigative missteps” by the government could provide former FBI Director James Comey grounds for having his case dismissed.

Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick granted Comey’s request to review typically secret grand jury material, finding “government misconduct may have tainted” the proceedings.

“The Court recognizes that the relief sought by the defense is rarely granted,” the judge wrote. “However, the record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps, missteps that led an FBI agent and a prosecutor to potentially undermine the integrity of the grand jury proceeding.”

Comey faces charges for allegedly lying to Congress during his September 2020 testimony and obstructing a congressional investigation. The government alleges he authorized Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman to leak information, despite testifying that he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding an investigation into Hillary Clinton.

Prior to bringing the indictment, the government reviewed evidence obtained through search warrants issued in 2019 and 2020 as part of a different investigation. Comey’s defense team expressed concern that case agents may have been exposed to attorney-client privileged materials, as Richman served as Comey’s personal attorney after he was fired as FBI director.

Judge Michael Nachmanoff, a Biden appointee overseeing the Comey case, directed Fitzpatrick to consider the issues raised by Comey’s defense.

“The government appears to have conflated its obligation to protect privileged information–an obligation it approached casually at best in this case–with its duty to seize only those materials authorized by the Court,” Fitzpatrick wrote Monday. “This cavalier attitude towards a basic tenet of the Fourth Amendment and multiple court orders left the government unchecked to rummage through all of the information seized from Mr. Richman, and apparently, in the government’s eyes, to do so again anytime they chose.”

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

‘Highly Irregular’

Fitzpatrick noted that the government allowed “an agent who was exposed to potentially privileged information to testify before a grand jury,” stating this was a “highly irregular and a radical departure from past DOJ practice.”

He also identified two statements made by interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan to grand jurors that “appear to be fundamental misstatements of the law that could compromise the integrity” of the process. One of these statements, which is redacted, was “a fundamental and highly prejudicial misstatement of the law that suggests to the grand jury that Mr. Comey does not have a Fifth Amendment right to testify at trial,” according to the judge.

Halligan, a former Trump defense attorney who presented the indictment alone to the grand jury, took over the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia after its prior head resigned, reportedly under pressure from Trump to bring indictments. Comey’s indictment was Halligan’s first time prosecuting a case.

Her appointment is currently being challenged by both Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

The judge highlighted issues with a potentially missing portion of the grand jury transcript and the way a second version of the indictment was presented.

“Here, the procedural and substantive irregularities that occurred before the grand jury, and the manner in which evidence presented to the grand jury was collected and used, may rise to the level of government misconduct resulting in prejudice to Mr. Comey,” the judge wrote.