Posts

The False Claims Todd Blanche, Robert McBride, and Some Lady Impersonating a US Attorney Tell to Justify a Crime

/22 Comments/in , , , /by

Update: I realize that DOJ never complied with this part of Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s order.

The Attorney General of the United States or her designee is further ORDERED to certify that the United States is in compliance with this Order no later than 12:00 p.m. ET on Monday, December 8, 2025.

This court filing is a smokescreen.

DOJ — in the persons of Todd Blanche, some lady impersonating a US Attorney, and First AUSA Robert McBride — have responded to Dan Richman’s demand that they stop illegally rifling through his data.

It’s a remarkable filing for two reasons.

First, they cite a bunch of precedents claiming that one cannot use Rule 41 to thwart a prosecution. Best as I can tell, every single one of those precedents pertain to someone trying to withhold his own property to thwart his own prosecution. Michael Deaver trying to stop a Special Prosecutor investigation of himself. Paul Manafort trying to thwart a prosecution of himself. Justin Paul Gladding in a case where he was trying to get his own non-CSAM data back after a conviction. A grand jury case where the subject of the investigation tried to get his files back.

None of these apply here.

Effectively, Todd Blanche is saying Dan Richman has to lay back and enjoy digital compromise to allow the FBI to prosecute his friend and who cares if they’re breaking the law to do so.

But I’m also struck by the lies Blanche and the lady impersonating a US Attorney tell along the way. Consider this passage.

Richman served as a special government employee at the FBI between June 2015 and February 2017.1 Shortly after his departure from the FBI, the Government began investigating whether Richman had disclosed classified information to The New York Times concerning Comey’s decisionmaking process concerning the FBI’s investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. See CM/ECF No. 1-1 at 3. The investigation demonstrated, among other things, that Comey had used Richman to provide information to the media concerning his—that is, Comey’s—decisionmaking process concerning the Clinton email investigation and that Richman had served as an anonymous source in doing so.

During the course of the investigation, the Government sought and obtained four search warrants in this district authorizing the Government to search for and seize evidence of violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 641 and 793 from certain email accounts utilized by Richman, a hard drive containing a forensic image of his personal computer, and his iCloud account.2 See CM/ECF No. 1-1 at 3.

Comey provided relevant testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee shortly before his employment as FBI Director was terminated, and again in September 2020. In May 2017, he testified in response to questioning from Senator Grassley that he had never authorized someone at the FBI to serve as an anonymous source regarding the Clinton email investigation. And in September 2020, he reaffirmed that testimony in response to questioning from Senator Cruz.

1 The government has provided the concise factual summary herein out of an abundance of caution as a result of the Court’s December 6, 2025 temporary restraining order (the “TRO”). See CM/ECF No. 9 at 4. Should the Court have meant the TRO to permit the government to use materials obtained via the relevant search warrants as part of this litigation, the government is prepared to provide a more detailed factual summary if necessary.

2 The investigators sought to obtain evidence of violations of 18 U.S.C. § 641 because it appeared that Richman and Comey were using private email accounts to correspond regarding official government business, i.e., that their correspondence were “record[s]” of the United States. See id.

First, the passage makes a confession, one that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer Impersonating a US Attorney’s Loaner AUSAs never made: the use of May 2017 files involving attorney-client privilege had no basis in the prosecution, because they long post-dated the time Dan Richman left the FBI.

The filing misstates the genesis of Arctic Haze and the focus on Dan Richman. The investigation didn’t start by focusing on Richman. The focus on Richman appears to have started when John Durham discovered his communications while rifling through the image he shared with the Inspector General (a detail that seems quite sensitive, given the redactions).

The claim that the investigation demonstrated that Comey used Richman,

to provide information to the media concerning his—that is, Comey’s—decisionmaking process concerning the Clinton email investigation and that Richman had served as an anonymous source in doing so.

Is not backed by anything in the public record. Richman was not anonymous when doing this in fall 2016, and there’s no evidence that Comey asked Richman to do this in February 2017, where he was also an on-the-record source.

This filing obscures the fact that when Comey told Chuck Grassley he had not leaked anything anonymously, it preceded the time when Richman did share his memos anonymously, and he disclosed that publicly a month later, meaning it could not conceivably have been a lie on May 3, 2017 (before he shared the memo) or after June 8, 2017, in September 2020, because he had already disclosed it.

McBride claims he’s not using the unlawfully accessed materials in this filing, but he did disclose something new: that Richman and Comey were investigated under 18 USC 641 not because Comey shared a memo that the Inspector General would later rule was official FBI material, but because they were conducting official business on personal accounts (which is rich given that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer masquerading as US Attorney used Signal for official business).

The lies are important for a reason beyond the cynicism: They obscure that if the FBI tried to get a warrant for these very same files, they would never be able to access the files they want.

And so they’re telling Dan Richman to just lay back and enjoy the Fourth Amendment violations.

Update: Richman’s response says exactly what I did (but in fancy lawyer-speak): The citations DOJ relied on all pertain to someone trying to get their own content back to prevent their own prosecution.

[I]n every single case cited by the government on this point, the movant was the target of an active investigation or the defendant in a charged criminal case. See In re Sealed Case, 716 F.3d at 604, 607 (observing that “the [DiBella] Court . . . found that each motion was tied to a criminal prosecution in esse because both movants had been arrested and indicted at the time of appeal” and that the movant in the case before it was “the subject of an ongoing grand jury investigation”) 6 ; Martino v. United States, 2024 WL 3963681, at *1 (3d Cir. Aug. 28, 2024) (movant was the “subject of an ongoing grand jury investigation” and brought a Rule 41(g) Motion tied to “his criminal prosecution”) (emphasis added); United States v. Nocito, 64 F.4th 76, 79 (3d Cir. 2023) (movant entities were owned by person charged with crime); In re Grand Jury, 635 F.3d 101, 105 (3d Cir. 2011) (finding DiBella’s second requirement met because “the property was seized in connection with an ongoing grand jury investigation of which the appellant is a target”) (emphasis added); In re Warrant Dated Dec. 14, 1990 & Recs. Seized From 3273 Hubbard Detroit, Mich. on Dec. 17, 1990, 961 F.2d 1241, 1242 (6th Cir. 1992) (involving “records . . . sought in connection with a criminal investigation of the appellants for tax evasion, filing of fraudulent tax returns, and conspiracy”).

Professor Richman is not a subject, target, or defendant. Though the government elides this fact, it bears repeating: because Professor Richman is not a prospective criminal defendant, he has no suppression remedy to address an ongoing violation of his constitutional rights. His property was seized five years ago, pursuant to warrants tied to a separate and since concluded investigation, and there is no indictment and no pending criminal case.

I actually think they might envision including him in a Grand Conspiracy indictment. But they’re pretending they’re not currently working on this and so got too cute for their own good — he notes that they twice dismissed his claims of irreparable harm because he was only at risk of being a witness at trial.

Share this entry

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly Asks DOJ for Signs of Life

/26 Comments/in , , , , /by

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted Dan Richman his request for a Temporary Restraining Order, preventing the government from snooping in his stuff, one that goes through Friday. And while I agree with Gerstein and Cheney (and Bower and Parloff) that it could have the effect of thwarting another indictment of Jim Comey — indeed, it may undercut an attempt to stonewall Richman — I find KK’s order interesting for other reasons.

Partly, it’s the way she’s demanding signs of life from DOJ.

Judge KK attempts to forestall a stonewall

As a reminder, Judge Cameron Currie threw out the indictment against Jim Comey on November 24, the Monday of Thanksgiving week. Two days later, the day before Thanksgiving, Richman cited that dismissal and the expired Statute of Limitations in his bid to get his data back. As far as I know, no one noticed it until Anna Bower pointed to it on Tuesday.

Notably, Richman attached the warrants used to obtain his records as sealed exhibits.

The same day Bower noted it (the day it was assigned), December 2, Judge KK issued an order, half of which dealt with Richman’s sealing request, which she provisionally granted. But she also told him that if he wants to keep the government out of his data, he needs to get a Temporary Restraining Order. Her order emphasized that that request must submit some sign of life from DOJ.

Finally, Petitioner Richman’s 1 Motion requests that this Court “issue a temporary restraining order enjoining the [G]overnment from using or relying on in any way” the materials at issue in his 1 Motion while this matter is pending. Consistent with Local Rule of Civil Procedure 65.1, it is ORDERED that Petitioner Richman shall file his application for a temporary restraining order by separate motion, accompanied by a certificate of counsel that either (1) states the Government has received actual notice of the application and “copies of all pleadings and papers filed in the action to date or to be presented to the Court” in connection with the application; or (2) identifies “the efforts made by the applicant to give such notice and furnish such copies.”

A Certificate of Service Richman filed later that day explains part of the reason KK made that order: For some reason, the motion was not docketed. So, Richman attorney Mark Hansen explained that he formally served Jocelyn Ballantine and DC USAO on December 1.

This Corrected Certificate of Service corrects the service date listed for the public redacted Motion for Return of Property and accompanying attachments, see ECF No. 1 at 3, and the sealed version of that Motion with accompanying attachments, see ECF No. 2, from November 26, 2025, to December 1, 2025. Although Petitioner filed those papers on November 26, 2025 and intended to serve them on that date, the filings were not docketed at that time. I promptly caused the filings to be served on counsel for respondent upon receiving notification from the Clerk’s Office, on December 1, 2025, that the filings had been accepted for submission and docketed.

But to comply with the other part of her order, Richman’s attorneys also included the emails they exchanged with Ballantine. And among the things those emails showed is that after agreeing to attorney Nick Lewin’s midafternoon December 3 request to respond by close of day on December 4,

Based on the government’s use of such property in connection with the Comey case (as described in Judge Fitzpatrick’s November 17, 2025 opinion), we are concerned that, absent a TRO, the government may continue to use the property in a manner that violates Professor Richman’s rights – particularly in light of recent news reports that the DOJ may seek a new indictment of Mr. Comey. However, if the government has no such intention and will agree to refrain from searching, using, or relying in any way upon Professor Richman’s property pending resolution of the Rule 41(g) motion, that would address our concerns and obviate the need for a TRO.

Please let us know the government’s position by COB tomorrow.

[snip]

Nick,

Thanks for your email. I will reach out to the appropriate people at DOJ with your request and will respond to you tomorrow by COB.

Jocelyn

Ballantine had not responded by 9PM on December 4.

Hi Jocelyn,

Did you get an answer? Please let us know.

Ballantine had a good excuse: she was busy prosecuting accused pipe bomber Brian Cole. Nevertheless, when she did respond at 9:12PM Thursday night, she said that her leadership — Jeanine Pirro — had already engaged with DOJ leadership (Bondi spent part of Thursday with Pirro bragging about the pipe bomber arrest), but she would not have an answer until “early next week.”

Thank you so much for the prompt. I met with my leadership today, and they have engaged Department of Justice leadership. I have also shared your pleadings and request with the prosecutors who handled the Comey prosecution out of EDVA.

I do not have an answer for you this evening, but I expect to have one early next week.

That’s what led Richman to file his motion for a TRO, maybe around 10PM Friday night. Judge KK responded just under a day later.

Her order specifically ruled that DOJ knows about Richman’s request.

Third, the Court finds that the Government has received actual notice of Petitioner Richman’s [9] Motion, ensuring that the Government is positioned to act promptly to seek any appropriate relief from this Order. Specifically, counsel for the Government may move to dissolve or modify this Order immediately upon entering an appearance, and the Court will resolve any such motion “as promptly as justice requires.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(b). Under the circumstances, the Court will allow and consider such a motion at any time upon contemporaneous notice to counsel for Petitioner Richman. See id. (providing that such a motion may be filed “[o]n 2 days’ notice to the party who obtained the order” or “on shorter notice set by the court”).

And barring the government requesting a different schedule, Judge KK’s order set up the following schedule:

  • Richman should “promptly” serve Judge KK’s order and everything filed in the docket to Pam Bondi (KK identifies Bondi by title specifically).
  • By noon on Monday, “the Attorney General of the United States or her designee” must confirm “the United States,” so everyone!, is in compliance with KK’s order not to “access … share, disseminate, or disclose” Richman’s data “to any person.”
  • By Tuesday at 9AM, DOJ must respond to both of Richman’s requests.
  • He must reply by 5PM that day.
  • The order will expire at 11:59PM on Friday night if Judge KK has not issued an order first.

If DOJ follows Judge KK’s order, then it will have the effect of:

  1. Slightly accelerating the response deadline for DOJ, which may have been due sometime on Tuesday anyway, while dramatically accelerating Richman’s reply, which is now due that same day.
  2. Flip the default status of Richman’s data, restricting DOJ from accessing it before Judge KK issues an order rather that allowing them to access it until any such order is in place.

In other words, the government can’t stall Richman’s effort in a bid to use the data in the interim. If DOJ follows the order, then it would prevent DOJ from using the data to get a new indictment before such time as Ballantine responds, “early next week.” Unless DOJ got an indictment on Friday with hopes of a big show arrest tomorrow morning, then KK would have thwarted any effort to stonewall Richman’s assertion of his rights.

If DOJ blows off the order, it’ll make it even easier for Comey to argue any indictment is malicious (unless, of course, he has to argue that to Aileen Cannon).

Did Judge KK smell a rat?

That’s the logistics of the order. The other parts of it are more interesting.

First, KK’s analysis on the TRO is cursory: just one paragraph stating that the government probably has violated Richman’s Fourth Amendment rights by searching his data without a warrant.

The Court concludes that Petitioner Richman is likely to succeed on the merits of his claim that the Government has violated his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures by retaining a complete copy of all files on his personal computer (an “image” of the computer) and searching that image without a warrant. See United States v. Comey, No. 1:25-CR272-MSN-WEF, 2025 WL 3202693, at *4–7 (E.D. Va. Nov. 17, 2025). The Court further concludes that Petitioner Richman is also likely to succeed in showing that, because of those violations, he is entitled to the return of the image under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g).

That’s on the third page of the four-page memo.

Before she gets there (and in addition to formally finding that DOJ has notice of Richman’s request), she focuses on the way DOJ is playing dumb. She notes she has spoken to unnamed people from DC USAO, who were helpful on administrative matters, thank you very much.

First, although the Court has been in communication with attorneys from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, 1 the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has not yet entered an appearance to make representations on behalf of the Government, and counsel for the Government has not yet been identified. See Pet’r’s Ex. A, Dkt. No. 9-2.

1 These attorneys have helpfully facilitated communication on administrative matters. The Court appreciates counsel’s prompt assistance on these matters.

But no one, including Jocelyn Ballantine, wants to put their name on this docket.

And that’s a problem, Judge KK notes, because until someone files notice of appearance, there’s no formal way to start figuring out who has the data.

Second, the Government has not yet indicated who has custody of the material at issue, and neither the Petitioner nor the Court can determine the identity of the custodian until the Government appears in this case. 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.

Maybe it’s something those helpful DC USAO personnel told her. Maybe it’s the way Ballantine deftly shared Richman’s motion with the Loaner AUSAs at EDVA, but not the DOJ leadership with whom Pirro had consulted by late day Thursday.

It’s like Colleen Kollar-Kotelly suspects DOJ is hiding the ball, and that’s why she ordered Richman to go right to the top with his request, to ensure Pam Bondi can’t pretend she’s ignorant of his request.

The perma-sealed Bill Barr dockets

There’s something else sketchy going on here.

As I noted, Richman attached the warrants used to seize his stuff. They’re still sealed and Judge KK has provisionally permitted them to remain that way.

But why are they still sealed?

Back on November 5, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick ordered the Loaner AUSAs to get them unsealed or, if not, then to file a motion justifying the seal in DC.

ORDERED that the Government shall, on or before November 10, 2025, move in the issuing district to unseal the four 2019 and 2020 search warrants referenced in the Government’s Reply to Defendant’s Response to the Government’s Motion for Implementation of Filter Protocol (ECF 132), together with all attendant documents, or, in the alternative, file a motion in the issuing district setting forth good cause as to why the subject search warrants and all attendant documents should remain under seal, in whole or in part;

In that same order, he ordered that there’d be a discussion about unsealing all the references to the warrants in the Comey docket on November 21, which was before Judge Currie dismissed the indictment on November 24. The government was also going to have to defend keeping the filing explaining the notice given to Comey — and submitted as an exhibit to his first response to the effort to get a taint team — sealed that same day.

ORDERED that, if necessary, the Court shall hold a hearing on the pending motions to seal (ECFs 56, 72, 109, and 133) on November 21, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. in Courtroom 500, and the materials subject to those motions shall remain UNDER SEAL until further order of the Court; and it is further ORDERED that, to the extent the Government seeks to seal Exhibit A to Defendant’s Response to the Government’s Motion for Expedited Ruling (ECF No. 55-1), the Government shall file a supporting brief in accordance with Local Criminal Rule 49 on or before November 12, 2025; Defendant may file a response on or before November 19, 2025; and, if necessary, the Court shall hold a hearing on the Government’s sealing request on November 21, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. in Courtroom 500;

Best as I can tell, that never happened. For example, there are no gaps in the Comey docket hiding a sealed discussion about these sealed warrants.

And that’s interesting because when Fitzpatrick asked about all this back on November 5 — this is the hearing that led to the order to unseal the warrants — Rebekah Donaleski revealed that they asked Loaner AUSA Tyler Lemons about the warrants twice at that point, but had gotten no response.

Before we begin, what I’d like to do is — before we address the underlying issues, the government’s motion for a filter protocol, the defendant’s position, we have four outstanding sealing motions, and I do think those sealing motions will touch, at least in some way, on this motion; if not, motions that you-all are going to argue in the future. So what I’d like to do is see if we can nail down what the parties’ positions are and see if we can kind of resolve some of those sealing issues now, if possible.

As I understand it, there are four sealing motions that are outstanding. The defense has filed three; the government has filed one. All these sealing motions deal with either warrants that were issued in a sister district or one document that the government has provided to the defense in discovery.

MS. DONALESKI: Thank you, Your Honor. With respect to the one document provided in discovery, that’s our position, we have no objection. With respect to the underlying warrants which we attached to our motions, my understanding from Mr. Lemons is that he has moved to unseal those. We don’t know where — he hasn’t moved to unseal them — when. We’ve asked him twice for that information, and he hasn’t provided it. The defense’s view is that we should be entitled to proposed reasonable redactions for PII of those warrant affidavits and warrant materials. We have asked for an opportunity to do that and have not heard from the government. So our position is, the information in our motions, in the motion papers themselves, we have no objection to that being under seal — to that being publicly filed; but with respect to the warrants, which my understanding is those remain under seal by the District of D.C. court, we would ask that we be permitted an opportunity to propose redactions with the government.

[snip]

But with respect to the information that we’ve described in our motion papers, specifically referring to the offenses at issue in the Artic Haze warrants, the dates that the warrants authorize to search, the defense believes that those should be discussed publicly and those can be discussed publicly.

THE COURT: What about the affidavits in support of the warrants?

MS. DONALESKI: Those remain under seal. I don’t expect that we’ll need to get into what is in those affidavits in this hearing today, but if the government or the Court feels differently, we’d welcome that discussion.

And when Fitzpatrick asked Lemons about the warrants, the Loaner AUSA got a bit squirmy. Lemons had asked the AUSA to unseal the warrants. He had not filed a motion to unseal them, as if someone — maybe the AUSA in question, who may be Jocelyn Ballantine — advised him that was not a good idea.

THE COURT: Mr. Lemons, what’s the status of that?

MR. LEMONS: Thank you, Your Honor. Your Honor, we have made a request to the issuing district as to those search warrants, for them to be unsealed. My understanding, last speaking with an AUSA in that district, is that motion has not been filed at this time. They are preparing to provide notice to other potentially interested parties, per their practice and the rules they have to abide by in that district. So we requested it, and our understanding is at this time that the warrants all remain completely under seal. That is the only reason why the government designated these search warrants as protected material and filed them under seal and understands why the defense filed them under seal. If it was in my power and ability here today, those search warrants would be totally unsealed. [my emphasis]

“Preparing to provide notice to other potentially interested parties”? Who else would need notice? Richman and Comey were the ones suspected of leaking!

It has been a month but these dockets remain sealed.

One possible explanation for that is that the Loaner AUSAs (or perhaps Ballantine) filed a motion in DC on November 10 that is under seal, one that should not be sealed for Judge KK. So perhaps everyone is trying to hide the fact that after being ordered by Fitzpatrick not to access this data, Kash Patel just dealt it to someone else (possibly Jason Reding Quiñones). That might explain why Judge KK ordered the government they can only contest her order after giving “contemporaneous notice to counsel for Petitioner Richman:” because (hypothetically), having been ordered by MJ Fitzpatrick to stay out of Richman’s data, they instead dove deeper into it without telling him.

Or maybe the squirminess is about hiding how the underlying warrants were managed … by Jocelyn Ballantine.

Revealing those warrants, after all, should not thwart the effort to keep snuffling about Richman’s data, except insofar as it would raise questions not directly addressed in Judge KK’s order. Just as one example, even though Richman in his initial motion and TRO request relied heavily on Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick’s opinion effectively describing rampant Fourth Amendment violations, he does not mention that when the FBI seized his iCloud account in 2020, they took content through August 13, 2019, more than two years after the date of the warrant (basically, through the date of the Comey Memo IG Report release).

According to an April 29, 2020 letter from Mr. Richman’s then-attorney to the government–produced to the Court ex parte by the defense–the Department of Justice informed Mr. Richman that the data it obtained from his iCloud account extended to August 13, 2019, well outside the scope of the warrant and well past the date on which Mr. Richman was retained as Mr. Comey’s attorney. ECF 181-6 at 20. The same letter further states that the Department of Justice informed Mr. Richman that it had seized data from Mr. Richman’s hard drive that extended to June 10, 2017–again well into the period during which Mr. Richman represented Mr. Comey–despite the warrant (19-sw-182) imposing a temporal limit of April 30, 2017. Id.

Did Ballantine — in whom Pirro has invested the trust to limit the blowback of the pipe bomb prosecution — allow the FBI to obtain data outside the scope of a warrant? Are there secret John Durham warrants someone is hiding?

It’s not clear who all this squirminess is designed to protect. But I feel like, whether or not Judge KK’s order halts DOJ efforts to dive into this unlawfully collected data, it may lead to some interesting disclosures about why everyone is so squirmy.

Update: Right wing propagandist (and daughter of a former whack job FBI agent) Mary Margaret Olohan gives the game away. One of her DOJ sources says this won’t be a setback … which sort of confirms that DOJ intends to continue to violate Richman’s Fourth Amendment.

Share this entry

Did the Comey Dismissal Render Kash Patel’s Grand Conspiracy “Just Someone Else’s Fantasy”?

/29 Comments/in , , /by

There’s something missing from all the analysis (and this, from Politico, is quite good) of what might happen in the wake of Judge Cameron Currie’s dismissal of at least the Jim Comey indictment, and possibly even the Letitia James one: the way the dismissal might help or hurt Trump’s plans to charge a Grand Conspiracy in Florida.

[I regret to inform all of you, especially Savage Librarian, that in thinking about this during a bout of insomnia on Sunday I set all my thinking about the Grand Conspiracy to the tune of Styx’ The Grand Illusion.]

After all, if the ultimate goal was always to charge Jim Comey as part of some 20-person conspiracy indictment claiming a bunch of people arranged to have Donald Trump investigated as a ploy to undercut his first term and damage his 2024 election chances (yeah, seriously, that is the theory!), then the statute of limitations expiration was always a mere speed bump.

And in the same way that the dismissal without prejudice leaves unresolved the larger issue of illegal weaponization of DOJ, it also leaves a number of things the Loaner AUSAs might have wanted resolved unresolved.

Understand, two things that had no business being in the Comey indictment are absolutely critical to the Grand Conspiracy theory.

The Grand Conspiracy would start at least by August 9, 2016, when Peter Strzok responded to Lisa Page’s question, “He’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” by saying, “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”

From there, Kash Patel’s conspiracy theory about the “Clinton Plan” CIOL would take over.

The Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory is that the “Clinton Plan” was real, and that it should have given the FBI notice that Hillary had a plan to frame Donald Trump. [I should emphasize, not only don’t I endorse this theory, much of it is false and even more of it is batshit insane, but it nevertheless is being pursued by a Senate confirmed US Attorney in SDFL, Jason Reding Quiñones.] But, the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory goes, when Peter Strzok got notice of the Clinton Plan on September 7, he made sure it never got shared with the people beginning to investigate why George Papadopoulos knew of Russia’s plan to help Trump in advance because, the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy goes, it would have led him to open an investigation into Hillary rather than Trump.

Again, not true, insane, but nevertheless what has everyone from the Deputy Attorney General and FBI Director on down to the people unlawfully accessing raw data collected years ago aroused.

Fast forward to 2020. According to the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory, when Jim Comey told Lindsey Graham the “Clinton Plan” — as misleadingly described in a John Ratcliffe letter no doubt drafted with Kash’s help — didn’t ring a bell for him, he was lying to cover up how the FBI ignored warning signs about leads from Hillary.

Fast forward even further to 2025. When Kash found a burn bag of materials that had not been destroyed, including the “Clinton Plan” CIOL that might have been brought to the FBI Director’s Office with a bunch of other Durham investigation materials, he and Jack Eckenrode instead assumed that Comey partisans were trying to protect Comey and Strzok’s devious plot to ignore the CIOL back in 2016.

You need the “Clinton Plan” CIOL for the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory because that’s what makes their wildly misleading claims about the treatment of the Steele dossier in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment damning. The Steele dossier should never have been used at all, the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory says, because the FBI had notice that Clinton wanted to frame Trump, but instead Comey, with Brennan’s involvement (the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory claims), demanded its inclusion and based (the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory claims) the judgement that Russia wanted Trump to win on it, and when Brennan lied about all that in 2023 (the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory claims), he was trying to cover up this devious plot.

You also need Comey’s decision to release the memo he wrote up memorializing Trump’s corrupt attempt to shut down the Mike Flynn investigation and with it the communications with Dan Richman. You need that, plus Comey’s overt wish that by releasing the memo a Special Counsel might be (and was) appointed, because it ties (the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory claims) Strzok’s stated intent to “stop” Trump from becoming President to the investigation that dominated his first term. The Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theory turns the very legal release of a memo demonstrating Trump’s corruption into the crime of depriving Donald Trump of his right to fully exploit the presidency the Russian government gave him.

Now consider how charging Jim Comey with lying and obstructing fucked the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy plans.

First, the “Clinton Plan” CIOL.

EDVA successfully prevented Comey from explaining the problem with the “Clinton Plan” CIOL before attempting to charge him for lying about it. In his first discovery letter, Pat Fitzgerald noted that he had offered to meet with prosecutors on September 17.

In that regard, on September 17, 2025, I wrote the DOJ to ask for a meeting to discuss why the case should not be brought but never received a substantive response, much less a meeting.

And his motion to dismiss because Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer failed to actually get an indictment revealed that EDVA even refused to engage with the offer to toll the statute of limitations.

In fact, Mr. Comey’s counsel requested a meeting with the U.S. Attorney’s Office the week before the indictment was obtained and offered to toll the statute of limitations to allow for that meeting. A prosecutor in the Office told Mr. Comey’s counsel that the Office had been directed not to engage with defense counsel.

Prosecutors at EDVA — supposedly the good guys who got fired — didn’t want any truths Fitzgerald might share to fuck up their larger Grand Conspiracy conspiracy.

In one of his two replies for release of grand jury materials, Comey laid out how stupid all this is.

On September 30, 2020, Mr. Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation into alleged links between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government. See Oversight of the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation: Day 3, Hearing Before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 116th Cong. (Sept. 30, 2020), http://bit.ly/4o2ekHb. The night before, he was sent a copy of the Ratcliffe Letter, described above, which purported to summarize the September 7, 2016 CIOL in one sentence. Mr. Comey was not provided an opportunity to review the September 7, 2016 CIOL at issue prior to his testimony.

[snip]

There is no evidence whatsoever that Mr. Comey received the CIOL at issue, much less that he reviewed it. The materials in discovery make clear that every day, numerous CIOLs come to the FBI addressed to the Director—from a variety of federal agencies in a variety of formats—and are routed to employees other than the Director. Because the Midyear Exam investigation had been closed for more than two months, there is no reason to believe that any CIOL related to Ms. Clinton would have been sent to Mr. Comey (and the government has produced no proof that it was). There is no electronic trail showing that Mr. Comey received the CIOL at issue. There is no paper trail showing that he received it. And there is no witness who says that Mr. Comey either received it or discussed it with him. Full stop.

This total lack of evidence is extremely troubling in light of credible press reporting that not only does a declination memorandum exist in this case,11 but it made clear that with respect to the CIOL in particular, a prior investigation found that Mr. Comey’s statement could not support a false-statement charge because there was insufficient evidence Mr. Comey had ever seen the CIOL.12 Ms. Halligan was also reported to have been advised by career prosecutors in that declination memorandum that “seeking the charges would violate DOJ policy, raise serious ethics issues, and risk being rejected by the grand jury.” Id.

In a footnote, he noted that this is all based on Russian disinformation.

10 Indeed, it appears this information was created by Russian intelligence, and did not accurately reflect particular emails. See Charlie Savage & Adam Goldman, ‘Clinton Plan’ Emails Were Likely Made by Russian Spies, Declassified Report Shows, N.Y. Times (July 31, 2025), https://perma.cc/F8AF-TLAF.

Worse still, a grand jury determined there was not probable cause that Comey lied about the “Clinton Plan” CIOL (though the Loaner AUSAs were trying to backdoor that as a crime in the obstruction charge).

Todd Blanche whisked the criminal investigation into whether Brennan lied in 2023 about his enthusiasm for the Steele dossier away to SDFL before a prosecutor wrote up a declination memo. Having arrived in Florida, US Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones sent out a bunch of subpoenas that everyone recognizes to be entirely performative (because they ask for highly classified things none of the subpoena recipients would have in their private possession).

But Blanche didn’t whisk this “Clinton Plan” CIOL off to Florida (which might have happened had Trump not demanded Pam Bondi intervene) before Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did real damage to it.

And by bringing in Loaner AUSAs who actually care about their bar licenses, Blanche also did grave damage to their plan to use the Comey memos in the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy. The Loaner AUSAs attempted (or rather, fronted for James Hayes’ attempt) to use this investigation to get a filter team approved to turn the clearly privileged materials Miles Starr and Jack Eckenrode could have read because Kash Patel’s FBI turned off the filters applied under Bill Barr into crime-fraud excepted communications, at least ostensibly because they reflected a conspiracy to leak classified materials but in reality to serve their larger Grand Conspiracy conspiracy.

But instead of getting their filter protocol, the EDVA effort resulted in an order from William Fitzpatrick prohibiting the government from reviewing those privileged materials.

ORDERED that the Government, including any of its agents or employees, shall not review any of the materials seized pursuant to the four 2019 and 2020 search warrants at issue until further order of the Court;

And then Fitzpatrick issued an opinion effectively holding that DOJ violated Comey’s attorney-client privilege in 2020 by not permitting him to assert privilege.

However, the government never engaged Mr. Comey in this process even though it knew that Mr. Richman represented Mr. Comey as his attorney as of May 9, 2017, and three of the four Richman Warrants authorized the government to search Mr. Richman’s devices through May 30, 2017, 21 days after an attorney-client relationship had been formed. ECF Nos. 38 at 2 and 138-11 at 33 (Aug. 2019 Office of the Inspector General Report) (noting that Mr. Comey informed the Office of Inspector General that “the day after his removal, or ‘very shortly thereafter,’ he retained attorneys Patrick Fitzgerald, David Kelley, and Daniel Richman.”).

[snip]

At the time the Richman Warrants were executed, the government was aware not only that Mr. Richman represented Mr. Comey, but also that he maintained ongoing attorney-client relationships with other individuals, as the FBI materials regarding his resignation from Special Government Employee status noted his intention to represent a defendant in a federal criminal prosecution. Id. As a result, when the government obtained the first Richman Warrant in 2019, it was clearly foreseeable that Mr. Richman’s devices contained potentially privileged communications with numerous third parties, including Mr. Comey. Nevertheless, in 2019 and 2020, the government made a conscious decision to exclude Mr. Comey from the filter process, even though Mr. Comey, as the client, is the privilege holder, not Mr. Richman. The government’s claim at the November 5, 2025 hearing that Mr. Richman, at the time himself the subject of a criminal investigation and represented by separate counsel, was in a position to effectively assert Mr. Comey’s privilege is entirely unreasonable.

Fitzpatrick noted that had prosecutors obtained a new warrant to investigate Comey’s alleged leaks, it would be narrowly scoped. (He doesn’t say this, but it is the case that a new warrant would have prohibited any searches after February 7, 2017, the day Richman left the FBI, and therefore prohibited the review of the Comey memo exchanges even on the Richman side.)

If a new warrant had been sought by the government and issued by the Court, the Fourth Amendment would have required it to be narrowly tailored, authorizing access only to materials within a limited time frame and relevant to the new offenses under investigation. See Williams, 592 F.3d at 519. In addition, any new warrant would have imposed strict procedural safeguards to ensure privileged information was not reviewed by the prosecution team. As a result, the parameters of the 2025 search would inevitably have had a different and much narrower scope than the Richman Warrants. Faced with this prospect, the government chose to unilaterally search materials that were (1) seized five years earlier; (2) seized in a separate and since closed investigation; (3) that were never reviewed to determine whether the seized information was responsive to the original warrants; (4) that were likely improperly held by the government for a prolonged period of time; (5) that included potentially privileged communications; (6) did so without ever engaging the privilege holders; and (7) did so without seeking any new judicial authority.

And he described that DOJ had permitted Miles Starr to remain on the investigative team even after having been tainted by privileged communications.

Agent-3, rather than remove himself from the investigative team until the taint issue was resolved, proceeded into the grand jury undeterred and testified in support of the pending indictment. ECF 179. In fact, Agent-3 was the only witness to testify before the grand jury in support of the pending indictment. Id. The government’s decision to allow an agent who was exposed to potentially privileged information to testify before a grand jury is highly irregular and a radical departure from past DOJ practice.

The Fitzpatrick opinion was absolutely devastating for the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy, because it rendered Comey’s side of the Comey memo exchanges unlawfully seized.

And then Donald Trump DOJ responded the way Trump always does, by claiming bias. The Loaner AUSAs made a specious claim that Fitzpatrick’s comments about Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s misstatements to the jury reflected bias.

Federal courts have an affirmative obligation to ensure that judicial findings accurately reflect the evidence. Canon 2(A) of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges requires every judge to “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary” and to avoid orders that “misstate or distort the record.” Canon 3(A)(4) requires courts to ensure that factual determinations are based on the actual record, not assumptions or misrepresentations. Measured against these obligations and the rule of law, the magistrate’s reading of the transcript cannot stand.

And, that very same day, Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer lied to the NYPost in a bid to claim that Michael Nachmanoff himself is biased.

Interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan suggested Wednesday that the Biden-appointed judge overseeing the criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey violated judicial conduct rules by asking if she was a “puppet” of President Trump.

District Judge Michael Nachmanoff asked Comey’s defense lawyer if he thought Halligan, the prosecutor who brought the indictment against the former FBI boss, was acting as a “puppet” or “stalking horse” of the commander in chief, during a hearing in an Alexandria, Va., courtroom.

“Personal attacks — like Judge Nachmanoff referring to me as a ‘puppet’ — don’t change the facts or the law,” Halligan exclusively told The Post.

By November 19, the day of these twin bullshit claims of judicial misconduct, the Comey prosecution in EDVA had done grave damage to the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy. But the plan was to discredit everything the judges did.

Except for Cameron Currie. They forgot to include Judge Currie, and her order dismissing the indictment without prejudice — making the indictment and everything that happened after that a legal nullity — left all of this wildly unresolved.

DOJ is on notice that they broke the law and that their Grand Conspiracy conspiracy theories are bullshit. But that notice has become a legal nullity, with no way for them to rebut it in EDVA.

I can tell you what the plan was. It was (as Charlie Savage recently laid out) to whisk this all away to Aileen Cannnon’s courthouse to make the crimes FBI committed go away.

I have no fucking clue what the plan is now, because I have no idea what the legal import is of these legal statements that have been rendered a legal nullity by the Currie order.

I do know, however, that when imagining what might come next, you have to consider that SDFL investigation, which may be why Comey’s statement predicted that, “I know that Donald Trump will probably come after me again.”

Update: In somewhat related news, the 11th Circuit has upheld the judgment and sanctions against Trump and Alina Habba for their frivolous lawsuit very much paralleling the Grand Conspiracy theory.

Meaning, Jim Comey has beaten Trump in court twice in a holiday-shortened week.

Share this entry

The Graymail Cometh

/47 Comments/in , , , /by

I’ve written extensively about how Kash Patel and John Durham chased a particular intelligence report — one we now know to have been based on Russian fabrications — for four years.

Kash, John Ratcliffe, Durham, his lead investigator Jack Eckenrode (who leads this investigation), Bill Barr — all of them! — believed that because the FBI received a single intelligence report repeating a Russian claim that Hillary planned to hold Trump accountable for his ties to Russia, it was proof that Hillary had intentionally fabricated the Steele dossier (disinformation into which was probably injected by Paul Manafort buddy Oleg Deripaska) and the Alfa Bank anomalies.

The case against Jim Comey renews that goose chase, perhaps (because Durham concluded it was likely fabricated) criminally so.

In his bid to obtain the grand jury transcripts submitted yesterday, Comey laid out how important it was for him to see how Lindsey Halligan instructed the jury on this matter, especially given that the grand jury rejected the charge specifically pertaining to that intelligence, but Loaner AUSAs plan to use it to prove Count Two of the existing indictment. As part of that discussion, he lays out how obscene it was to even charge him for not remembering something simply because Kash and Ratcliffe had developed an obsession over it.

Note, I have generally referred to that intelligence report as the “Clinton Plan,” which is how Durham referred to it, though without the scare quotes making clear that Durham himself fabricated parts of this theory. Comey, in his filings, uses the FBI term for all such referrals, CIOL (Counterintelligence Operational Lead).

Comey’s description starts with a detail I should have known, but did not: When Comey was asked, three times during the September 30, 2020 hearing, about the “Clinton Plan” CIOL, he had not been shown it.

On September 30, 2020, Mr. Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation into alleged links between President Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government. See Oversight of the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation: Day 3, Hearing Before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 116th Cong. (Sept. 30, 2020), http://bit.ly/4o2ekHb. The night before, he was sent a copy of the Ratcliffe Letter, described above, which purported to summarize the September 7, 2016 CIOL in one sentence. Mr. Comey was not provided an opportunity to review the September 7, 2016 CIOL at issue prior to his testimony.

Ratcliffe had sent Lindsey Graham a misleading letter about it the night before the hearing, but he didn’t release the memo itself (which was itself redacted in a misleading way, and then shared with the Federalist) for another week. I first posted about it on October 11 of that year.

Nevertheless, Lindsey Graham highlighted it in the hearing and then Josh Hawley followed up. The focus on the referral was an ambush, probably intended to support the Durham investigation. And that’s what Kash is trying to criminalize, because doing so sustains his batshit insane theory that Hillary was treated better than Trump in the 2016 election when two criminal investigations into her dominated and the investigation into Trump’s aides remained secret.

To make things worse, Trump is trying to criminalize something which there’s no evidence Comey ever saw (Comey lays this out without even mentioning that Durham couldn’t find any proof that anyone else had seen it, either).

There is no evidence whatsoever that Mr. Comey received the CIOL at issue, much less that he reviewed it. The materials in discovery make clear that every day, numerous CIOLs come to the FBI addressed to the Director—from a variety of federal agencies in a variety of formats—and are routed to employees other than the Director. Because the Midyear Exam investigation had been closed for more than two months, there is no reason to believe that any CIOL related to Ms. Clinton would have been sent to Mr. Comey (and the government has produced no proof that it was). There is no electronic trail showing that Mr. Comey received the CIOL at issue. There is no paper trail showing that he received it. And there is no witness who says that Mr. Comey either received it or discussed it with him. Full stop.

This total lack of evidence is extremely troubling in light of credible press reporting that not only does a declination memorandum exist in this case,11 but it made clear that with respect to the CIOL in particular, a prior investigation found that Mr. Comey’s statement could not support a false-statement charge because there was insufficient evidence Mr. Comey had ever seen the CIOL.12 Ms. Halligan was also reported to have been advised by career prosecutors in that declination memorandum that “seeking the charges would violate DOJ policy, raise serious ethics issues, and risk being rejected by the grand jury.” Id. 13

11 The government’s refusal to answer basic questions about the existence of this declination memorandum and decision to hide behind a flimsy claim of privilege to stonewall the Court’s inquiries, see ECF No. 207, should be taken as confirmation that such a memorandum exists. See ECF No. 174 at 21.

12Katherine Faulders, et al., Ex-special counsel John Durham undercut case against James Comey in interview with prosecutors: Sources, ABC News (Oct. 6, 2025), https://perma.cc/M2JC-CQGQ.

13 Katherine Faulders, et al., Prosecutors’ memo to new US attorney found no probable cause to charge James Comey: Sources (Sept. 25, 2025), https://perma.cc/8KT5-LHAG.

As noted, this was a key part of Comey’s bid to get the grand jury transcripts, something that goes to the heart of the problem with simply cut-and-pasting the two true billed charges into a new indictment.

But as part of his (far less interesting) reply motion for a Bill of Particulars, he also includes all the discovery requests he has submitted (October 2, October 29, November 12, November 19). They hint at another way this prosecution might go away (and Comey’s post-exoneration retaliation might flourish), on top of the 14 ways we’ve already talked about: with discovery requests with which prosecutors will really not want to comply, or cannot, either because of bulk, classification, or destruction.

In the latter category, for example, Comey reveals an October 12 FBI 302 describing that DC USAO destroyed records relating to journalists when the Arctic Haze investigation was closed.

An FBI 302 Report, dated October 12, 2025, reports that “the District of Columbia United States Attorneys Office [was] ‘freaking out’ when the [Arctic Haze] case was declined for prosecution and in the process of being closed, with an Assistant United States Attorney telling [the lead agent in the Arctic Haze investigation] to ensure that any grand jury materials relating to members of the media were destroyed.” See FD-302 Report Serial 110 at -26505.

Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs say that’s not true.

In an email on November 20, 2025 at 10:29 AM ET, the government represented that the 302 was inaccurate and the records had not, in fact, been destroyed. Mr. Comey reserves his rights with respect to the government’s potential spoliation of exculpatory evidence and will further investigate the government’s claim.

Comey also, just Wednesday, asked for the complete case file for the Arctic Haze, Durham, and this investigation (why he doesn’t have the latter two months after indictment I don’t know).

The Arctic Haze case file will lay out not just how Bill Barr focused exclusively on Comey (which I noted here) as opposed to others who might have been trying to damage him, but would name the Republican(s) who would have been the focus if he had not done so.

The Durham case file would explain why Andrew DeFilippis left DOJ quickly and quietly in the middle of the investigation. It would show that Durham lied in his report about how many FBI sources he had asked about the “Clinton Plan” CIOL, partly in an attempt to hide how clear it was that no one had seen this. It might show which Ukrainian Russian agents Durham and Barr and Jack Eckenrode consulted during the investigation and whether they also consulted Oleg Deripaska. It would either reveal the nature of the tip about Trump corruption that Italy gave to Durham or make clear that Durham hadn’t actually chased it down.

Importantly, it would also include all the evidence that shows Durham and Durham’s lead investigator turned Kash’s senior advisor, Jack Eckenrode, saw confirming that he had been chasing Russian disinformation for years, even while failing to establish any proof that FBI had actually received it. That evidence would be important to lay out how the continued pursuit of this by Kash and Eckenrode is a crime, at least according to Durham’s logic.

Holy hell I’d love to see the full Durham case file.

But the request that might really sink this prosecution, if 14 other things don’t first, is Jim Comey’s request for (1) all the CIOLs he received between January 1, 2016 (when the first SVR reports pertinent to the Clinton email investigation came in) and September 30, 2016, (2) all the intelligence he received pertaining to the Clinton email investigation or Crossfire Hurricane in that same period, and (3) all communications he received for a narrower period, July 1, 2016 to September 30, 2016.

If the government intends to present evidence as part of its case in chief at trial regarding the CIOL dated September 7, 2016 that Mr. Comey was questioned about in the September 30, 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Mr. Comey is entitled to any and all documents that would rebut the inference that this CIOL was memorable to him as of September 30, 2020. Therefore, to the extent Count Two (or any other aspect of the government’s case in chief) is premised on the September 7, 2016 CIOL, in addition to the standard Rule 16 discovery that we are entitled to receive promptly, we are entitled to receive the following categories of documents pursuant to Rule 16 and Brady and its progeny, all of which are material to Mr. Comey’s ability to defend this case in pretrial motion practice and/or at trial:

(1) Any and all documents reflecting Mr. Comey’s receipt or review of CIOLs concerning the Midyear Exam investigation, Hillary Clinton, or the Crossfire Hurricane investigation between January 1, 2016 and September 30, 2016, including but not limited to:

(a) The CIOLs themselves; and

(b) Documentation reflecting Mr. Comey’s receipt or review thereof;

(2) Any and all documents reflecting Mr. Comey’s receipt or review of classified information concerning the Midyear Exam investigation, Hillary Clinton, or the Crossfire Hurricane investigation between January 1, 2016 and September 30, 2016;

(3) Any and all documents reflecting discussion involving Mr. Comey of CIOLs concerning the Midyear Exam investigation, Hillary Clinton, or the Crossfire Hurricane investigation between January 1, 2016 and September 30, 2016;

(4) Any and all documents reflecting discussion involving Mr. Comey of classified information concerning the Midyear Exam investigation, Hillary Clinton, or the Crossfire Hurricane investigation between January 1, 2016 and September 30, 2016; and

(5) Any and all communications or documents received by Mr. Comey in his capacity as Director of the FBI between July 1, 2016 and September 30, 2016. “Communications” as used in this subrequest five includes, but is not limited to:

(a) Emails;

(b) Phone calls;

(c) Text messages;

(d) Records of oral communications;

(e) Meeting invitations and calendar entries; and

(f) Hard copies of written communications delivered to Mr. Comey or his staff.

This is, on one hand, totally justifiable, because it would show just how unremarkable the CIOL that the current FBI Director has obsessed about for six years is as compared to everything else that Comey saw in that period. It would show why it made sense that, in 2020, when sandbagged by a misleading letter, it was unsurprising that the “Clinton Plan” CIOL would not ring a bell, as Comey responded in the hearing.

On the other hand, it is classic graymail, the very defense strategy used by Scooter Libby a hundred (well, just twenty) years ago: a request for documents so sensitive and so voluminous that prosecutors would have an exceedingly difficult time complying.

Libby’s request was more frivolous than this one. He asked for PDBs, among the most sensitive intelligence documents out there, covering the period when he was targeting Valerie Plame through the period when he lied to Patrick Fitzgerald about doing so. Fitzgerald managed not just to get the discovery to Libby, but to get substitutions approved so Libby’s team could walk through how insignificant exposing a CIA officer was to him, given the issues he was dealing with at the time.

By comparison, Comey’s is totally reasonable, given what prosecutors are preparing to argue, that he should have remembered, in September 2020, either the CIOL he didn’t receive or a briefing, possibly from John Brennan, that mentioned it in passing weeks later.

But Comey’s request will be just as difficult to comply with (and will also flip the logic of the dumb burn bag investigation back onto investigators). Plus, Kash Patel won’t want to comply with this, because it would involve giving Jim Comey a ton of information about how real and pressing the Russian attack was in 2016, the one Kash’s entire career is built on diminishing.

It seems that Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs are already trying to dodge this request. The most recent discovery letter, sent Tuesday, reveals that prosecutors are struggling to come with even the number of CIOLs Comey saw.

With respect to defense Category Twelve, which we understand from our November 12, 2025 meet and confer that you are working to provide relevant numbers with respect to, we seek to review the underlying CIOLs for 2016 in their entirety, and reserve our right to seek declassification of those CIOLs.

Tough shit, this letter says. We not only want the number, we want to see them, all of them, and we may demand you declassify them.

In October, ABC reported that one of the things in the declination memo — one of the reasons why career prosecutors said they could not charge this — was the difficulty in even identifying the number of things they’d have to show Comey.

Prosecutors further expressed concerns about the department’s ability to take the case to trial quickly due to problems identifying all the relevant materials that would need to be handed over to Comey’s lawyers, sources said.

This is what that concern looks like in real life.

And if Lindsey’s unlawful appointment or Trump’s clear malice or Lindsey’s suspected misconduct in the grand jury or her failure to actually get an indictment or Miles Starr’s breach of Comey’s privilege or their unwarranted searches or Ted Cruz’ prevarications and stupid questions or the destruction of exculpatory evidence or something else doesn’t make this prosecution go away beforehand, Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs may one day give up.

Update: In a new filing, Comey asks for a delay of his deadline for identifying what classified information he’ll need to defend himself. Among the problems is DOJ has still not declassified the CIOL John Ratcliffe partly declassified 5 years ago.

First, the government must produce the classified discovery at issue. On October 29, 2025, and November 19, 2025, the defense made discovery and Brady requests to the government that called for the production of additional classified information and the declassification of certain materials. See ECF No. 204-2 (Requests Eleven and Twelve) and 204-4 (Request Fourteen). With respect to the defense’s requests, the government reported today, November 21, 2025, that they had requested authorization for the defense to have access to certain counterintelligence operational leads (“CIOLs”), but that they were held at high classification levels. Needless to say, to the extent Count Two relates to a CIOL, and Mr. Comey’s purported memory of a CIOL, it is necessary for the defense to review the CIOL and any other relevant CIOLs. That has not happened.

Discovery requests

Category One: Lindsey Halligan’s unlawful appointment (expanded to include WDVA)

Category Two: Lack of probable cause (expanded to include more prosecutors)

Category Three: Presentation to grand jury

Category Four: Vindictive prosecution (expanded to include comparators)

Category Five: Trump’s hostility to Jim Comey

Category Six: Prejudicial statements from Trump

Category Seven: Prior inconsistent statements from Andy McCabe

Category Eight: Other Rule 16 and Brady

[There’s no identifiable Category Nine]

Category Ten: Potential sources identified in leak investigations

Category Eleven: Privilege taint

Category Twelve: All CIOLs and communications

Category Thirteen: All evidence destroyed in Arctic Haze investigation

Category Fourteen: Full case files for Arctic Haze, Durham investigation, Jim Comey

 

Share this entry

What We Know about the Day of Jim Comey’s Indictment

/115 Comments/in , , /by

Let’s assume for the moment that, to the extent the players involved in indicting Jim Comey understand the least little bit about what went down, they’re telling the truth.

Here’s what Lindsey Halligan’s big day would look like.

In the morning, “the team” worked together to prepare the indictment against Comey. According to CNN, that team included the FBI agents from the FBI Director’s Advisory Team pursuing this case and FBI attorneys.

Halligan spent hours preparing with a group that included FBI attorneys and the agents who had led the investigation, the sources said.

Halligan participated in a number of “practice runs” and spent hours going through the exhibits in preparation, the sources said.

As part of that process, Special Agent Spenser Warren mentioned some texts that EDVA’s prosecutors had chosen not to use in an interview weeks earlier of Dan Richman. Warren explained that they seemed to include privileged communication.

On the morning of September 25, 2025, the team was preparing for an indictment of James Comey, to occur later that afternoon. SA Warren provided case agent SA Miles Starr and an FBI Office of General Counsel (OGC) attorney a limited overview of the text message communications to and from “Michael Garcia” (now understood to be Daniel Richman). SA Warren advised SA Starr and the FBI OGC attorney that some of the messages appeared to reference potential future legal representation. The FBI OGC attorney immediately advised that any of the text message communications referencing potential future legal representation should not be part of the indictment preparation. SA Warren provided the indictment preparation team a two-page document containing limited text message content only from May 11, 2017, predating the reference to potential future legal representation.

Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick describes there was “A second agent, possibly Agent-2, was also on the call but that that person’s identity has been shielded from the Court.” But given other filings in the case, it’s more likely the second agent is Jack Eckenrode, not least because Comey believes he was also exposed to these materials.

This OGC lawyer referenced in this affidavit is presented as someone outside the case team. Except CNN describes that FBI lawyers were part of Lindsey’s preparation, and a person named Gabriel Cohen shows up in document metadata for three case filings — two of them regarding whether Jim Comey should get grand jury materials, including Lindsey’s declaration about what happened that day — as OGC.

Whoever the OGC lawyer in question is, he tells “the team” not to include those particular texts, “referencing potential future legal representation,” in the grand jury presentment. So Warren provided a two-page exhibit of texts that preceded the privileged communication. But, as Fitzpatrick described, that OGC lawyer did not advise someone besides Miles Starr (who, again, works on the Director’s Advisory Team) to present the case.

Agent-3, rather than remove himself from the investigative team until the taint issue was resolved, proceeded into the grand jury undeterred and testified in support of the pending indictment. ECF 179. In fact, Agent-3 was the only witness to testify before the grand jury in support of the pending indictment. Id. The government’s decision to allow an agent who was exposed to potentially privileged information to testify before a grand jury is highly irregular and a radical departure from past DOJ practice.

Within hours, Starr went from hearing about these privileged communications to serving as the sole witness to the indictment against Jim Comey.

The presentment started at 2:18PM. Somewhere along the way, Lindsey had problems working the ELMO AV system, and grand jurors and someone else — possibly the Grand Jury Coordinator? — tried to help her.

There was one instance where the prosector had technical issues with ELMO and some of the jurors assisted and came in to assist as well.

Not only did Starr present as an exhibit the opening memo for a related — and ridiculous — case in WDVA he himself authored, which contained a patently false representation of Jim Comey’s September 30, 2020 testimony regarding the “Clinton Plan” (reliance on which could be a crime in any case).

Former Director Comey previously testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was unfamiliar with this CIOL as well as its related intelligence.

But rather than using the 2-page exhibit of Dan Richman texts that stopped before those privileged texts he had learned about hours before, Starr used a different 8-page exhibit, which went right through the period when Richman (using his pseudonym Michael Garcia) shared details of Donald Trump pushing Jim Comey to drop an investigation into Mike Flynn.

To be clear: Unless you are misrepresenting the questions at issue (and remember, there is no transcript of the exchange Comey had with Ted Cruz included among the 14 exhibits that appear to have been presented to the grand jury), there is no sound reason to present any of these texts. None could be proof that Comey had authorized Richman to share this information while at FBI, because Richman had left months earlier. None could be proof that Comey lied to Chuck Grassley on May 3, 2017 about serving as a source for stories on the Russian investigation (which Grassley called the Trump investigation), because they all postdated Grassley’s question. None could be proof that Comey intended to obscure all this in September 2020, because he had already told Susan Collins about all of this on June 8, 2017.

According to Fitzpatrick, the grand jurors asked a lot of challenging questions.

[T]he statement by the prosecutor was made in response to challenging questions from grand jurors, the context of which suggests the grand jurors may have reasonably understood the prosecutor to mean that if she could not satisfactorily answer their questions, then Mr. Comey would “[redacted]” answer these questions at trial.

According to Loaner AUSA Gabriel Diaz, Lindsey and Miles Starr had already addressed the last grand juror question when she made one of two problematic comments.

The transcript itself refutes the notion that the U.S. Attorney was responding to unresolved juror confusion about Fifth Amendment rights. The last question from a grand juror appears several pages earlier in the transcript, during an exchange between the U.S Attorney and the witness about [redacted] and in that exchange the juror’s question was resolved.

What Diaz does not dispute (at least in unredacted form) is that Lindsey did promise that, “the government anticipated presenting additional evidence were the case to proceed to trial,” which Fitzpatrick took to invite grand jurors to assume there was better evidence.

That statement clearly suggested to the grand jury that they did not have to rely only on the record before them to determine probable cause but could be assured the government had more evidence–perhaps better evidence–that would be presented at trial.

Diaz simply ignores this comment altogether in his unredacted response.

If this reference was remotely in context of those texts — the ones that extend well past the date when Richman came to represent Comey — such a promise would taint the entire proceeding.

Lindsey finished up her presentation at around 4:28. She left, along with the court reporter.

After about two hours of deliberation, so around 6:28, the grand jury voted. They rejected what was then Count One, pertaining to the alleged “Clinton Plan” lie that Starr had misrepresented in his opening memo. They approved what were then Count Two, alleging that Comey had authorized someone at the FBI to serve as an anonymous source in news stories, as well as then Count Three, accusing Comey of obstructing the investigation the Senate Judiciary Committee was carrying out in September 2020 with false and misleading answers (which was limited to the Russian investigation, though I would bet 50 Bitcoin that grand jurors never learned that).

Then, the grand jurors left the grand juror room, and the court reporter collected the recording from the grand juror room and left.

At some point, the grand jury foreperson filled out the form indicating a no-billed indictment — the whole thing — in blue ink. That no-bill report also bears the signature of Lindsey Halligan, in blue ink.

After that vote, the grand jury foreperson told the EDVA Grand Jury Coordinator (GJC) the result of the vote, and that person, in turn, informed EDVA’s Deputy Criminal Chief, who told the GJC to “amend” the indictment by removing the no-billed Count One. GJC did so, and according to them, then “presented the corrected indictment to the grand jury foreperson and the deputy foreperson.”

As far as we know, the court reporter was gone by that point.

About ten minutes after the grand jury finished deliberation, at 6:40, Maggie Cleary told Lindsey,

that the grand jury had returned a true bill as to the presented Count Two and Count Three of the indictment and that the grand jury had not returned a true bill as to the presented Count One. I then proceeded to the courtroom for the return of the indictment in front of the magistrate judge.

The grand jury return transcript starts, at 6:47PM, with the announcement of a successful indictment, “charging “Jim Comey” with false statements within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the United States government and obstruction of a congressional proceeding.” But then Magistrate Judge Lindsey Vaala started through the colloquy about accepting an indictment, and the foreperson revealed that on one count, Count One, fewer than 12 people supported the charge. 

THE COURT: And for each count and for each defendant for all of the indictments, did a sufficient number, meaning at least 12, of grand jurors return a true bill?

THE FOREPERSON: One exception.

THE COURT: What is the exception?

THE FOREPERSON: James Comey, Jr., on Count One.

That’s when Vaala tried to sort through the two fundamentally incompatible documents in front of her, which at that point included one document showing that grand jurors had rejected the entire indictment, and another showing that grand jurors accepted two charges.

THE COURT: Okay. When you say one count — so I’mlooking at two different — I’m looking at case 25-cr-272,United States of America v. James B. Comey, Jr. I have an indictment with two counts that my courtroom deputy read that looks to be signed by you, ma’am.

THE FOREPERSON: Yes.

THE COURT: And it says 14 grand jurors concurred inthe indictment.And then I have a report of a grand jury’s failure to concur in an indictment, and it just reports that — has three counts, and it says that the grand jurors did not concur in finding an indictment in this case.

The foreperson described that “they” — we now know this was the GJC, who may have come into the grand jury presentation to help Lindsey run ELMO, and who by their own description “presented” the “corrected” indictment to just two members of the grand jury — separated the charge they didn’t agree on.

THE FOREPERSON: So the three counts should be justone count. It was the very first count that we did not agree on, and the Count Two and Three were then put in a different package, which we agreed on.

THE COURT: So you —

THE FOREPERSON: So they separated it.

The foreperson, probably out of confusion, falsely informed Vaala that the grand jury had voted on the indictment with just two counts.

THE COURT: Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. So you voted on the one that has the two counts?

THE FOREPERSON: Yes

That’s when Lindsey the Magistrate Judge asked Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer to explain all this. Rather than offering an explanation — which might have saved Jim Comey two months of his life — Halligan disavowed involvement with the no-billed indictment. She knew the indictment had been “redrafted,” but she denied signing the indictment.

THE COURT: So this has never happened before. I’ve been handed two documents that are in the Mr. Comey case that are inconsistent with one another. There seems to be a discrepancy. They’re both signed by the foreperson. The one that says it’s a failure to concur in an indictment, it doesn’t say with respect to one count. It looks like they failed to concur across all three counts, so I’m a little confused as to why I was handed two things with the same case number that are inconsistent.

MS. HALLIGAN: So I only reviewed the one with the two counts that our office redrafted when we found out about the two — two counts that were true billed, and I signed that one.I did not see the other one. I don’t know where that came from.

THE COURT: You didn’t see it?

MS. HALLIGAN: I did not see that one.

THE COURT: So your office didn’t prepare the indictment that they —

MS. HALLIGAN: No, no, no — I — no, I prepared three counts. I only signed the one — the two-count. I don’t know which one with three counts you have in your hands.

THE COURT: Okay. It has your signature on it.

That’s when Vaala had the foreperson annotate the no-billed indictment (marked in pink below) to reflect that the grand jury had rejected just one charge, and then recorded that the grand jury foreperson had done so in the transcript.

What I need you to do is write on this piece of paper both the case number, which is 25-cr-272, but also no true bill as to Count One only, and then sign and date it so that it’s clear, okay? So I’m going to hand it back up to the courtroom security officer and have you do that. You can have a seat.

Okay. All right. So for the record, Madam Foreperson, I now have a report that looks like you’ve handwritten — a report that 12 or more grand jurors did not concur in finding an indictment in — and then you’ve added in handwriting — Count 1 only in this case. Is that correct?

THE FOREPERSON: Yes, ma’am.

This is one reason why the initial fucked version of the no-billed indictment matters. Lindsey Halligan says she didn’t sign it.

As initially loaded into the docket, she had not: the signature page was actually the signature page from the two count “indictment,” if we can call it that. But the next day (see William Ockham’s correction), someone loaded a different copy of that document into the docket, and that version showed a signature from Lindsey Halligan, written in the same blue ink that the grand juror foreperson had used to sign the original indictment.

This narrative answers many of the logistical questions about that day — which is a far cry from answering the legal ones. And most of what Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer (as distinct from the very confused Magistrate Judge) said in the declaration authored by Gabriel Cohen, OGC, is true, as to herself, including that, “I was never present in front of the grand jury alone.”

But what is not true is Lindsey’s claim — authored by Gabriel Cohen, OGC — that,

There was no additional presentation, interaction, or discussion with the grand jury outside of what is reflected in the transcript.

The GJC was alone with the foreperson and the deputy; no court reporter documented what happened between them.

Furthermore, there’s still no explanation of how Lindsey Halligan’s signature came to appear on that no-billed indictment, because Lindsey is on the record stating that she didn’t sign it.

Here are some obvious questions that remain to be answered:

  • Is Gabriel Cohen part of the prosecutorial team and is he also the one who gave shoddy advice about taint?
  • Did the person who put together an 8-page exhibit of Dan Richman texts know about the privileged communications they were going to chase on the other side of those texts?
  • Was Lindsey’s promise of more evidence addressed specifically to the texts from Dan Richman?
  • Who signed the no-billed indictment?
  • Is the “Deputy Criminal Chief” Maggie Cleary?
  • Who all was involved in the decision to salvage the indictment by “amending,” “correcting,” or “redrafting” (all representations to the court) it to exclude the no-billed charge?
  • Did they know that the obstruction charge relies on — and prosecutors intend to rely on — the alleged false statement the grand jury no-billed?
  • Does Pam Bondi want to reconsider her ratification of all of this?

Cast of characters

Lindsey Halligan: Donald Trump’s defense attorney and sometime Smithsonian bigot

Maggie Cleary: Before Trump demanded Pam Bondi install Lindsey, the partisan attorney Pam Bondi installed as First Assistant US Attorney in EDVA; Cleary is the person who told Halligan that the grand jury had no-billed one charge; she was removed on October 13

EDVA Deputy Criminal Chief: This person instructed the EDVA grand jury coordinator to “amend” the indictment

EDVA Grand Jury Coordinator: After “amend[ing]” the indictment, they “presented the corrected indictment to the grand jury foreperson and the deputy foreperson” without a court reporter present; if Lindsey did not sign the no-bill indictment, the Grand Jury Coordinator is the most likely person to have done so

Jack Eckenrode: Senior Advisor to Kash Patel, lead investigator for John Durham, and former FBI Agent on Scooter Libby case

Miles Starr: Lead case agent on this and other Comey cases

Tyler Lemons: On loan from EDNC

Gabriel Diaz: On loan from EDNC

James Hayes: Litigation Attorney at Main Justice, he is listed as author of the following:

Gabriel Cohen: Metadata lists him as OGC, possibly in Detroit, he is the author of:

Henry Whitaker: The former Solicitor General of Florida and currently Pam Bondi’s counselor, he is the signed author of:

Kathleen Stoughton: An AUSA in South Carolina with solid appellate experience, she is listed as author of:

Michael Shedd: A newish AUSA in South Carolin, he is listed as author of:

lheim: Metadata lists as author of:

Share this entry

Lindsey Halligan Was Never Alone with the Grand Jury; EDVA’s Grand Jury Coordinator Was

/43 Comments/in , /by

In Lindsey Halligan’s first attempt to explain why there were two grand jury indictments, she was at pains to deny that any of her actions were missing from the transcript.

5. During the intermediary time, between concluding my presentation and being notified of the grand jury’s return, I had no interaction whatsoever with any members of the grand jury. This time represents the grand jury’s private deliberation which was done in secret with no one but the members of the grand jury present, consistent with Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(d)(2).

6. I was never present in front of the grand jury alone. At every moment I was in front of the grand jury, the court reporter was also present.

An email from the transcription service, submitted as an exhibit to the government’s bid [link fixed] to stave off Jim Comey getting the grand jury transcript, notes that — aside from Lindsey’s difficulties running ELMO, the AV system — there’s nothing untoward in the recording.

With the high profile nature of these cases, we went back through the audio and transcript for the J.C. case again and can confirm that no audio was missed and no testimony was left out. There was one instance where the prosector had technical issues with ELMO and some of the jurors assisted and came in to assist as well. That is detailed out in the transcript. When the prosecutor was finished presenting her case, she and the court reporter left the room, as is standard procedure, to let the jury deliberate. It was about 2 hours of deliberations. Both the court reporter and the CSO remained in the Grand Jury area (outside the jury room but in the secure area where the breakroom and restrooms are) during the deliberation period. When the deliberations were finished and the jurors were released, the court reporter went back into the jury room, transferred the audio files and annotations to the envelope and brought the envelope to our offices. The length of the audio files match to the timestamps in the annotations and nothing was missed or otherwise left out of the transcript.

But Lindsey also claimed all interaction with the grand jury was captured by the transcript.

There was no additional presentation, interaction, or discussion with the grand jury outside of what is reflected in the transcript.

That’s false. The transcription service’s description lays out that the court reporter left after “the jurors were released” and they “transferred the audio files and annotations to the envelope.”

Which means the other key disclosure in this filing happened without a court reporter as witness.

After the grand jury coordinator learned the grand jury had rejected one charge, “the coordinator was informed,” passive voice, by a prosecutor at EDVA to revamp the indictment. The grand jury coordinator “presented” the “corrected” indictment to the grand jury foreperson and deputy foreperson.

As a result of the grand jury’s determination that probable cause existed to believe that defendant had committed two of the charges set forth in the proposed indictment, the draft indictment was amended to remove the first count and keep the remaining two counts on which the grand jury had concurred. 23

23 After the Nov. 19, 2025, hearing on the defendant’s vindictive prosecution memorandum, the EDVA Grand Jury coordinator informed the undersigned that the grand jury foreperson informed her they had returned a true bill as to counts two and three, and not as to count one. The coordinator was informed by the Deputy Criminal Chief to amend the indictment by removing the text of former count one, and moving the remaining counts, two and three, to reflect as counts one and two. The grand jury coordinator then returned to the grand jury room and presented the corrected indictment to the grand jury foreperson and the deputy foreperson.

Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer was never alone with the grand jury. But the EDVA grand jury coordinator was.

Sure, maybe nothing substantive happened. But you have no proof that’s true.

Share this entry

Kash Patel’s Taint

/45 Comments/in , /by

In advance of today’s hearing (at 10AM ET) on Jim Comey’s vindictive prosecution claim, I want to lay out two aspects of the Comey prosecution that likely doom it, and may doom the larger fever dream of a grand conspiracy case.

Both arise out of the way that Lindsey Halligan was prepped not by prosecutors, but by FBI agents working on the “Director’s Task Force” we know to be led by Jack Eckenrode, the guy who chased Russian disinformation for years based off Kash Patel’s misleading packaging of classified documents back in 2020.

This post will argue that likely all of them, possibly up to and including Kash himself, have tainted themselves by snooping in Jim Comey’s privileged communications. A follow-up will lay out the increasing evidence that Jim Comey’s grand jury presentment is a crime scene.

On September 12, FBI agents working on the Director’s Task Force were prepping for EDVA’s September 16 interview with Dan Richman, then led by Erik Siebert. They were searching the full Cellebrite extraction from Richman’s phone, and stumbled on communications Richman conducted using a pseudonym. They didn’t use those communications for the Richman interview, almost certainly because that interview would have been focused on actual suspected crimes rather than the fever dreams of conspiracists. But after that interview led prosecutors to conclude there was no crime that could be charged, Trump removed Siebert, leading Pam Bondi to appoint overt partisan Maggie Cleary, on September 20 (Cleary becomes important for the follow-up). But that wasn’t good enough. Then Trump publicly demanded Bondi install Lindsey Halligan, which Bondi did on September 22. That week, Cleary reportedly heeded prosecutors’ view the case could not — should not — be charged.

But Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer instead prepped with FBI agents working on the Director’s Task Force. Importantly, because DOJ wouldn’t provide Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer with outside help, those FBI agents prepped Lindsey, who knew nothing about how to prosecute a case, themselves.

DOJ headquarters declined to provide lawyers to assist Halligan, and FBI agents and lawyers working to prepare her were denied their request for a para-legal professional to assist in the presentation, according to two people familiar with the matter.

[snip]

Last Tuesday [September 23], Halligan began a crash course to prepare. Justice officials told her that the deputy attorney general’s office didn’t have lawyers to help her, and that it was against federal rules of criminal procedure for one of the attorneys from Justice headquarters to be in the grand jury room, one source familiar with the discussions said.

There’s a natural tension between FBI agents and prosecutors. The former get really invested in their targets, leading them to believe their case is stronger than it is. The latter, traditionally, have focused on how to sustain DOJ’s prior near-perfect record of convictions, all while keeping their bar licenses, and so they focus on what will be admissible and credible at trial, not their emotional belief they’ve caught a baddy.

Just as one example of how this pressure works, Jack Eckenrode — the head of this effort! — may well be the guy who tried to force Patrick Fitzgerald to indict Karl Rove two decades ago by telling journalists Rove was going to be indicted. Someone wanted Rove indicted (so did I!), but Fitz presumably believed that Robert Luskin had nudged Rove through serial admissions successfully enough to avoid perjuring himself too badly, and also that Rove would be useful at Scooter Libby’s trial, which he was.

But with the FBI agents prepping Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer, that moderating influence of a prosecutor didn’t exist. It was Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer, being led by the nose by hyper-partisan FBI guys performing for their hyper-partisan boss hunting the baddy that Kash had targeted even before getting the job.

And that’s important, because when Special Agent Spenser Warren describes “team” in this affidavit about the breach of Jim Comey’s privileged texts, it likely includes Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer.

On the morning of September 25, 2025, the team was preparing for an indictment of James Comey, to occur later that afternoon. SA Warren provided case agent SA Miles Starr and an FBI Office of General Counsel (OGC) attorney a limited overview of the text message communications to and from “Michael Garcia” (now understood to be Daniel Richman). SA Warren advised SA Starr and the FBI OGC attorney that some of the messages appeared to reference potential future legal representation. The FBI OGC attorney immediately advised that any of the text message communications referencing potential future legal representation should not be part of the indictment preparation. SA Warren provided the indictment preparation team a two-page document containing limited text message content only from May 11, 2017, predating the reference to potential future legal representation.

Take a step back though. This conversation should never have happened! That’s because the imagined crime these FBI agents were presenting was that Comey had lied when he told Ted Cruz he had never told anyone at FBI to act as an anonymous source. These texts post-dated Richman’s departure from the FBI by over three months. Even if they hadn’t accessed these texts illegally, they don’t help you prove your case (unless you neglect to tell grand jurors and judges when Richman left FBI, as this prosecution team persists in doing).

But because there was no grown-up in the room, they accessed the texts.

There are three pieces of evidence that the entire group — Miles Starr, Eckenrode, but also Lindsey Halligan, and with her, her Loaner AUSAs — all were tainted by the privileged communications, and along with it the grand jury.

First, Warren described that he shielded Starr from the taint of the privileged comms by isolating two pages of texts, “only from May 11, 2017, predating the reference to potential future legal representation.” But Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer likely presented eight pages of those texts, marked as Government Exhibit 10, on the fourth page of which Richman says, “just got goahead,” like he had just spoken to Comey, and the fifth through eighth pages of which post-date May 11 entirely. Someone went back into evidence they had been told included privileged texts and got an extra six pages of evidence.

And if Lindsey was already presenting texts well beyond the time that Comey retained Richman, that makes it more likely that when Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer told the grand jury there was better evidence they would get for trial, she was thinking of the other side of Richman’s communications, the communications between Comey and Richman.

But if that’s what she was thinking, the only way she would say that would be if she knew of the privileged comms — the comms an FBI lawyer specifically advised not to include in grand jury prep. That doesn’t mean she looked at them. It means she knew they were there and intended to go get them. When Miles Starr or whoever went back to get 8 pages of texts, he likely searched only the ones that included Mike Schmidt, thereby avoiding seeing any communications between Comey and Richman, but he did so because he knew those privileged communications were there.

Classic taint.

Also note, in the transcript, this comment appeared just one page after the other misinstruction on the law that (per Judge William Fitzpatrick) Lindsey gave, suggesting that Comey would have to take the stand. I’m sure the FBI agents who prepped her have the fever dream that they’ll see Comey on the stand, but no prosecutor would even silently imagine she could get a well-lawyered defendant to take the stand, much less blurt it out in front of a grand jury.

The other piece of evidence that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer was tainted by that privileged communication is the way that, even before sharing any of this discovery with Comey, she and the Loaner AUSAs set out to breach Comey’s privilege. They filed a motion to do so as one of their first filings (perhaps not coincidentally on the day Maggie Cleary was fired). And then, a week later, when they tried to rush Michael Nachmanoff into granting that motion, they invented a new theory of crime to get access to these communications: that Jim Comey lawyered up with Dan Richman and Pat Fitzgerald (and David Kelley) on May 11, 2017 in order to leak classified memos showing Donald Trump’s corruption.

Additionally, based on publicly disclosed information, the defendant used current lead defense counsel to improperly disclose classified information.

[snip]

This fact raises a question of conflict and disqualification for current lead defense counsel. Some of the communications in the potentially protected material are from the same time as the focus of the DOJ OIG report. Before litigating any issue of conflict or disqualification, the parties should have access to all relevant and non-privileged information. The sooner that the potentially protected information is reviewed and filtered, the sooner the parties can make any appropriate filings with the Court.

The imagined crime here is a leak of classified information, not a lie in response to a question from Ted Cruz, and so irrelevant to this prosecution.

In real time, Comey dismissed this claim as the bullshit fever dream it was: Comey was an Original Classification Authority and didn’t believe anything in his memos was classified, and the specific memo shared with Mike Schmidt had no classified information in it by any measure.

But consider how abusive the claim looks now. To get these texts, FBI agents working on the Director’s Task Force had gone back into material seized from Richman obtained more than five years earlier, they did so without a fresh warrant specific to either this prosecution or the fever dreams the FBI agents are really pursuing, rather than accessing the stuff that excluded the stuff Richman had said was privileged, they accessed the raw data and ostensibly did so for communications that could not have been responsive to their intended purpose (that is, to find out what, if anything, Richman shared anonymously while still at the FBI). And their interim claim they invoked to breach privilege, that this was a conspiracy to leak classified information, had nothing to do with this case, or even the larger fever dream conspiracy — the one they’re pursuing in Florida — that this was a conspiracy to be mean to Donald Trump.

A classic fishing expedition.

Betcha some money the Loaner AUSAs are delaying here so someone can try to get a warrant in Florida invoking a crime-fraud exception based on the well-known crime of being mean to Donald Trump.

Indeed, in Loaner AUSA Gabriel Diaz’ emergency motion for a delay (authored, as so many of these abusive filings are, by James Hayes), he doesn’t even argue this is about taint. He’s arguing (in a sentence fragment) only about whether Miles Starr read the actual texts in question, not whether he went back and searched for their counterpart texts to put together an 8-page exhibit for Lindsey to use.

Indeed, the government believes the Magistrate Judge may have misinterpreted some facts he found when issuing the latest order to release the grand jury materials to the defendant. For instance, whether the defendant has any standing to challenge the Richman materials, the full context of the statements made by the prosecutor to the grand jury, that Agent-3 was exposed to potentially privileged material, and that two indictments were presented to the grand jury.

Much of what the prosecutors have done since that day is a frantic bid to get those privileged texts, texts that could in no way serve to help prove this case as charged.

It’s sunny (and very cold by Irish standards), so I’m going to go take a walk before I map out the team — like James Hayes and OGC lawyer Gabriel Cohen — that’s lurking behind the foolish Loaner AUSAs fronting for all of this. But there’s a very good chance all of them are driven by taint, the taint of a fishing expedition into Jim Comey’s privileged communications.

This prosecution appears to have become more focused on finding some way out of that taint than on actually winning this particular prosecution against Kash Patel’s nemesis.

Cast of characters

Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer

Tyler Lemons: On loan from EDNC

Gabriel Diaz: On loan from EDNC

James Hayes: Litigation Attorney at Main Justice, he is listed as author of the following:

Gabriel Cohen: Metadata lists him as OGC, possibly in Detroit, he is the author of:

Henry Whitaker: The former Solicitor General of Florida and currently Pam Bondi’s counselor, he is the signed author of:

Kathleen Stoughton: An AUSA in South Carolina with solid appellate experience, she is listed as author of:

Michael Shedd: A newish AUSA in South Carolin, he is listed as author of:

lheim: Metadata lists as author of:

Share this entry

Loaner AUSA Gabriel Diaz: Why Do You Think There Are Two Indictments Signed by Lindsey Halligan?

/43 Comments/in , /by

Did Lindsey Halligan sign and docket two indictments — nay, one indictment plus two copies (fucked and fixed) of a no-billed indictment?

Why yes Lindsey Halligan did.

“So this has never happened before. I’ve been handed two documents that are in the Mr. Comey case that are inconsistent with one another,” Vaala said to Halligan. “There seems to be a discrepancy. They’re both signed by the (grand jury) foreperson.”

And she noted that one document did not clearly indicate what the grand jury had decided.

“The one that says it’s a failure to concur in an indictment, it doesn’t say with respect to one count,” Vaala said. “It looks like they failed to concur across all three counts, so I’m a little confused as to why I was handed two things with the same case number that are inconsistent.”

Halligan initially responded that she hadn’t seen that version of the indictment.

“So I only reviewed the one with the two counts that our office redrafted when we found out about the two — two counts that were true billed, and I signed that one. I did not see the other one. I don’t know where that came from,” Halligan told the judge.

Vaala responded, “You didn’t see it?” And Halligan again told her, “I did not see that one.”

Vaala seemed surprised: “So your office didn’t prepare the indictment that they —”

Halligan then replied, “No, no, no — I — no, I prepared three counts. I only signed the one — the two-count (indictment). I don’t know which one with three counts you have in your hands.”

“Okay. It has your signature on it,” Vaala told Halligan, who responded, “Okay. Well.”

Except now that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer can’t explain how she spent her day on September 25, Gabriel Diaz fronting for James Hayes under the name of Lindsey Halligan says maybe there wasn’t a second indictment.

The government’s position is that disclosure of grand jury materials is not warranted under the facts presented to the Magistrate Judge. Indeed, the government believes the Magistrate Judge may have misinterpreted some facts he found when issuing the latest order to release the grand jury materials to the defendant. For instance, (1) whether the defendant has any standing to challenge the Richman materials, (2) the full context of the statements made by the prosecutor to the grand jury, (3) that Agent-3 was exposed to potentially privileged material, and (4) that two indictments were presented to the grand jury. Additionally, the Magistrate Judge acknowledges he “did not immediately recognize any overtly privileged communications.” Dkt. No. 192 at 14. The possible exposure of privileged materials to the grand jury was the primary focus of the Magistrate Judge’s inquiry. Having seemingly settled that issue, the Magistrate Judge turns to premature issues such as suppression that have not even been briefed by the parties.

Literally items (2), (3), and (4) came from the government!

But now, in a desperate bid to buy a week of time to try to find a way to delay Jim Comey’s discovery that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer and the Attorney General of the United States think he’s not entitled to Fifth Amendment rights.

If two indictments weren’t presented, then Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer has submitted a fabrication to the court and we should start criminal contempt proceedings.

Judge Fitzpatrick rattled off eleven problems with this indictment. And you want to stall for time?

All the evidence suggests there is no indictment, because the foreperson no-billed the only one presented to the grand jury.

And they want to stall for time?

Update: From Comey’s response. Holy hell these people are way more moderated than I would be.

Moreover, with respect to the presentment, the affidavit Ms. Halligan voluntarily presented raised significant concerns about whether the operative indictment was actually presented to the grand jury, and if so, by whom. The logical conclusion from Ms. Halligan’s declaration is that no one from the government presented a new indictment to the grand jury after it issued a no bill. Ms. Halligan’s declaration attests that she did not reappear before the grand jury upon learning of the grand jury’s vote to no bill the indictment she presented between 2:18PM and 4:28PM. See ECF No. 188-1 at 2 (“During the intermediary time, between concluding my presentation and being notified of the grand jury’s return, I had no interaction whatsoever with any members of the grand jury.”). And, importantly, she asserts that “the transcript accurately reflects the entirety of the government’s presentation and presence in front of the grand jury. There was no additional presentation, interaction, or discussion with the grand jury outside of what is reflected in the transcript.” ECF No. 188-1 at 1 (emphasis added). If no one from the government presented the operative indictment, as logically follows from Ms. Halligan’s own assertions and her ultimate handing up of a purported indictment that differs from the one partially no true billed, then the grand jury did not vote on it. See ECF No. 193 at 17-18.

Update: Here’s the colloquy between Magistrate Judge Lindsey Vaala and the Foreperson.

THE FOREPERSON: So the three counts should be just one count. It was the very first count that we did not agree on, and the Count Two and Three were then put in a different package, which we agreed on.

THE COURT: So you —

THE FOREPERSON: So they separated it.

THE COURT: Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. So you voted on the one that has the two counts?

THE FOREPERSON: Yes.

THE COURT: Okay. And you’re just giving me the other one for what reason?

THE FOREPERSON: That we could not agree on.

THE COURT: Okay. But just for one count?

Update: Judge Nachmanoff has given the government two days to bitch. Comey has a reply due on his broader grand jury request on Thursday, so Comey might file early.

ORDERED that the Motion (ECF 195) is GRANTED IN PART; and it is further ORDERED that the government will file any objections to Judge Fitzpatrick’s Order by 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 19, 2025. Thereafter, the defense will file any response to any objection by the government by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 21, 2025; and it is further ORDERED that Judge Fitzpatrick’s Order (ECF 193) is STAYED pending the resolution of any objections filed by the government, which this Court will consider on the papers as to James B. Comey Jr. Signed by District Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff on 11/17/2025.

There’s also a hearing on Comey’s vindictive and selective prosecution on Wednesday.

Share this entry

Bill Barr Helped Lindsey Halligan Fuck Up the Comey Prosecution

/17 Comments/in , , /by

As I noted, William Fitzpatrick ordered the government to turn over the grand jury materials to Jim Comey by 3PM today.

In spite of all the ways that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer fucked up, she’s actually only responsible for three of the problems.

Others stem from conduct under Bill Barr, when these materials were first seized with warrants targeting Dan Richman.

Thus far, prosecutors have only named one investigation for which DOJ obtained these warrants: The Arctic Haze investigation into whether Richman — and through him, Jim Comey — leaked information about materials stolen from SVR in 2016; that investigation was closed without charge in 2021.

In 2017, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia (“USAO-DDC”) initiated an investigation, referred to by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) as Arctic Haze. ECF 71 at 2. This investigation concerned an allegation of unauthorized disclosure of classified information to a New York Times reporter, which appeared in an April 22, 2017 article titled “Comey Tried to Shield the FBI from Politics. Then He Shaped an Election.” Id. The investigation focused on the article’s inclusion of classified information related to one of the factors that influenced Mr. Comey’s decision, as then-FBI director, to unilaterally announce the closure of the FBI’s investigation into then-Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified material while she was serving as Secretary of State. Id. Daniel Richman, a Columbia Law School professor, personal friend of Mr. Comey, and former Special Government Employee at the FBI during Mr. Comey’s tenure as FBI Director, was quoted by name in the article and was the subject of USAO-DDC’s investigation. Id.

But there must be a second investigation, because the warrants extend beyond the time of the Arctic Haze story and they include a crime, 18 USC 641, unrelated to it.

The Richman Warrants authorized agents to search for and seize information created or stored between March 1, 2016 and May 30, 2017 that constituted evidence of violations of 18 U.S.C. § 641 (Theft and Conversion of Stolen Government Property) and 18 U.S.C. § 793 (Unlawful Gathering or Transmission of National Defense Information).

As I said in my video today, the 18 USC 641 would correspond with an attempt to criminalize sharing memos recording Trump’s misconduct.

But even that can’t be all.

As a letter drafted by Richman’s attorney in April 2020 noted, DOJ twice extended the range of the seizure beyond the period authorized by the warrant.

According to an April 29, 2020 letter from Mr. Richman’s then-attorney to the government–produced to the Court ex parte by the defense–the Department of Justice informed Mr. Richman that the data it obtained from his iCloud account extended to August 13, 2019, well outside the scope of the warrant and well past the date on which Mr. Richman was retained as Mr. Comey’s attorney. ECF 181-6 at 20. The same letter further states that the Department of Justice informed Mr. Richman that it had seized data from Mr. Richman’s hard drive that extended to June 10, 2017–again well into the period during which Mr. Richman represented Mr. Comey–despite the warrant (19-sw-182) imposing a temporal limit of April 30, 2017. Id.

In August 2019, the government obtained all of May and part of June 2017 beyond the warrant — which happened to include the scope of the Comey memos and go right through his testimony to Mueller and public testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. The approved scope of the warrants thereafter all extended to May 30, past the time Comey released his memos and Rod Rosenstein appointed a Special Counsel. Then, in January 2020, DOJ obtained iCloud content from two and a half years beyond the scope of the known warrant, through August 2019.

There’s likely good reason DOJ did that: to feed the Durham investigation, which had shifted to chasing the Clinton Plan conspiracy theory by early 2020.

The government never asked Comey to review those materials for privilege even though, as Fitzpatrick noted, three of the warrants extended beyond the time he retained Richman.

[T]he government never engaged Mr. Comey in this process even though it knew that Mr. Richman represented Mr. Comey as his attorney as of May 9, 2017, and three of the four Richman Warrants authorized the government to search Mr. Richman’s devices through May 30, 2017, 21 days after an attorney-client relationship had been formed.

[snip]

[I]n 2019 and 2020, the government made a conscious decision to exclude Mr. Comey from the filter process, even though Mr. Comey, as the client, is the privilege holder, not Mr. Richman.

Fitzpatrick excused Tyler Lemons and Gabriel Wolf, as well as EDVA, for the slovenly way the earlier searches were done: they all happened long before any of those AUSAs were involved in the case.

4 To be clear, the two assistant United States attorneys currently assigned to this case entered their appearances post-indictment and were not a part of the Arctic Haze investigative team.

7 It is important to note that the USAO-EDVA prosecutors were not involved in the 2019 and 2020 searches of the Richman materials and may have reasonably assumed the agents in 2019 and 2020 seized and preserved only those materials responsive to the warrants.

But there is someone who likely does span the slovenly earlier treatment and that of the last two months: Jack Eckenrode. Indeed, Eckenrode may even have worked for Durham (hunting Jim Baker for a different leak investigation) before Barr assigned Durham to chase Russian disinformation for four years. But those secondary investigations would have fed right into Durham.

That makes this description of the decision to have what is presumed to be Miles Starr testify before the grand jury more suspect.

The government presented this case to the grand jury on September 25, 2025. ECF 1. The same day, prior to the grand jury presentment, Agent-2 alerted the lead case agent (hereinafter referred to as Agent-3 [Miles Starr]) and an attorney with the FBI’s Office of General Counsel that “evidence obtained in the Government’s investigation of James Comey may constitute attorney-client privileged or attorney-client confidential information. It is also possible that [the agents] may have obtained evidence that constitutes attorney work-product information.”8 ECF 89-5. Agent-2 gave Agent-3 and the FBI attorney “a limited overview of the [privileged] communications.” ECF 172- 2.9 Agent-3, rather than remove himself from the investigative team until the taint issue was resolved, proceeded into the grand jury undeterred and testified in support of the pending indictment. ECF 179. In fact, Agent-3 was the only witness to testify before the grand jury in support of the pending indictment. Id. The government’s decision to allow an agent who was exposed to potentially privileged information to testify before a grand jury is highly irregular and a radical departure from past DOJ practice.

8 This is the language used by an FBI attorney to characterize their September 25, 2025 phone conversation with Agent-3. A second agent, possibly Agent-2, was also on the call but that that person’s identity has been shielded from the Court. ECF 89-5. [citing the filing that mentioned the two lead case agents]

9 The government provided no further detail about what, in its view, constitutes a “limited overview.” [my emphasis]

The two lead case agents mentioned in Comey’s most extensive discussion of what happened are reported to be Starr and Eckenrode, the latter rehired after failing to substantiate this conspiracy theory the first time.

And remember: one of the people who appears as author of a document but who did not notice an appearance is a second Gabriel, Gabriel Cohen, who registers an OGC email address. He authored Lindsey Halligan’s ill-fated declaration. Perhaps he’s the FBI lawyer who thought it’d be cool to have a tainted witness present to the grand jury.

Fitzpatrick plays coy about why no one thought to ask for a filter protocol until October 13 (perhaps not coincidentally, the day Maggie Cleary was fired).

For reasons that remain unclear, the government waited 31 days from September 12, 2025, the date the FBI began reviewing the materials, and 18 days from September 25, 2025, the date the FBI informed its Office of General Counsel about having been exposed to potentially privileged materials, before seeking court approval of a filter protocol on October 13, 2025.

One possible reason: They weren’t going to ask for a filter review at all until the Loaner AUSAs came in and put their bar licenses at risk.

They stumbled on something they thought would feed their grand conspiracy and tried to run with it.

Perhaps they anticipated that the least scrutiny of this conduct would reveal layers upon layers of misconduct.

Share this entry

The 11 Fuck-Ups Pam Bondi’s DOJ Made in Indicting Jim Comey

/42 Comments/in , /by

Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick has ordered the government to give Jim Comey grand jury materials by 3PM.

He provided four bases for doing so. First, it’s likely the material presented to the grand jury violated Comey’s Fourth Amendment, as I explained in a video this morning.

As Fitzpatrick describes, there were several errors. DOJ didn’t scope most of the communications seized in 2019 and 2020 (that is, a Bill Barr fuck-up). And then, they chose not to obtain a new warrant to access the materials for a totally different investigation.

By the summer of 2025, the FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia (USAO-EDVA) had initiated a criminal investigation into Mr. Comey. ECF Nos. 172-1 and 172-2. As part of the investigation, on September 12, 2025, an FBI agent assigned to the Director’s Advisory Team was instructed, apparently with the concurrence of the USAOEDVA, 7 to review “a Blu-ray disc that contained a full Cellebrite extraction and Reader reports of [Mr. Richman’s] iPhone and iPad backups.” ECF 172-1.

Inexplicably, the government elected not to seek a new warrant for the 2025 search, even though the 2025 investigation was focused on a different person, was exploring a fundamentally different legal theory, and was predicated on an entirely different set of criminal offenses. The Court recognizes that a failure to seek a new warrant under these circumstances is highly unusual. The Court also recognizes that seeking a new warrant under these circumstances would have required a fresh legal analysis and likely resulted in some delay, a delay the investigative team could not afford given that the statute of limitations would expire in a mere 18 days. See 18 U.S.C. § 3282(a).

If a new warrant had been sought by the government and issued by the Court, the Fourth Amendment would have required it to be narrowly tailored, authorizing access only to materials within a limited time frame and relevant to the new offenses under investigation. See Williams, 592 F.3d at 519. In addition, any new warrant would have imposed strict procedural safeguards to ensure privileged information was not reviewed by the prosecution team. As a result, the parameters of the 2025 search would inevitably have had a different and much narrower scope than the Richman Warrants. Faced with this prospect, the government chose to unilaterally search materials that were (1) seized five years earlier; (2) seized in a separate and since closed investigation; (3) that were never reviewed to determine whether the seized information was responsive to the original warrants; (4) that were likely improperly held by the government for a prolonged period of time; (5) that included potentially privileged communications; (6) did so without ever engaging the privilege holders; and (7) did so without seeking any new judicial authority.

Second, after being exposed to privileged communications, Miles Starr nevertheless still presented the case to the grand jury.

Third, Lindsey Halligan fundamentally mis-informed the jury, first by suggesting that Comey would have to testify at trial, and second by implying there was a bunch more evidence that would be used at trial (which might reflect taint from the privileged comms Starr knew of).

Fourth, she apparently did not re-present the charges the grand jury approved — what I surmised last week.

The short time span between the moment the prosecutor learned that the grand jury rejected one count in the original indictment and the time the prosecutor appeared in court to return the second indictment could not have been sufficient to draft the second indictment, sign the second indictment, present it to the grand jury, provide legal instructions to the grand jury, and give them an opportunity to deliberate and render a decision on the new indictment. If the prosecutor is mistaken about the time she received notification of the grand jury’s vote on the original indictment, and this procedure did take place, then the transcript and audio recording provided to the Court are incomplete.12 If this procedure did not take place, then the Court is in uncharted legal territory in that the indictment returned in open court was not the same charging document presented to and deliberated upon by the grand jury. Either way, this unusual series of events, still not fully explained by the prosecutor’s declaration, calls into question the presumption of regularity generally associated with grand jury proceedings, and provides another genuine issue the defense may raise to challenge the manner in which the government obtained the indictment.

12 It is the responsibility of the United States Attorney’s Office to record and, if required, transcribe all grand jury proceedings.

All in all, Fitzpatrick lists 11 things that might merit throwing out the indictment — if there is one — altogether.

Share this entry