Judge Berates Justice Dept. in Its Prosecution of Comey – The New York Times
Judge Berates Justice Dept. in Its Prosecution of Comey
Former F.B.I. director James B. Comey as he appeared during the hearing on Capitol Hill in 2017. Credit… Doug Mills / The New York Times
The flashpoint was the Justice Department’s failure to turn over seized communications from a confidant of Mr. Comey’s, Daniel C. Richman, a law professor at Columbia University.
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By Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer – Glenn Thrush reported from Alexandria, Va., and Alan Feuer from New York.
Nov. 5, 2025
A federal judge in the Trump administration’s prosecution of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, on Wednesday blasted President Trump’s handpicked prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, for taking an “indict first, investigate second” approach to the case.
The magistrate judge, William Fitzpatrick, repeatedly expressed his frustration — and at times his barely restrained annoyance — with Ms. Halligan during an otherwise procedural hearing in which he ordered the Justice Department to produce records from its investigation. Ms Halligan was hastily installed as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in September after her predecessor refused to indict Mr. Comey on charges that he lied to Congress.
The flashpoint was the Justice Department’s failure to turn over communications it had seized from a confidant of Mr. Comey’s, Daniel C. Richman, a law professor at Columbia University, as part of an internal investigation of leaks in the Russia case during the first Trump administration. The government claims he served as a conduit between the director and the news media for passing along information about the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia in 2016.
As part of their defense, Mr. Comey’s lawyers have accused the Justice Department of vindictive prosecution and challenged the legality of Ms. Halligan’s appointment. They have argued that they have been unable to adequately defend their client without access to emails and other communications obtained by the government from Mr. Richman’s electronic devices in 2019 and 2020.
The judge grilled one of Ms. Halligan’s deputies, Nathaniel Lemons, over prosecutors’ release of material in recent days, including private text exchanges intended to cast Mr. Richman and Mr. Comey in unflattering light in an otherwise quotidian court filing. He asked whether prosecutors had given Mr. Comey an opportunity to review such material first to challenge their release.
When Mr. Lemons said he had not offered Mr. Comey’s lawyers access to the material, obtained in several search warrants as part of the internal leak investigation, the judge chided him for placing an “unfair” burden on the defense.
“We’re going to fix that and we’re going to fix that today,” said Judge Fitzpatrick, who served as the chief of the financial crimes and public corruption unit in the office Ms. Halligan now leads before his appointment to the bench in 2022.
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