Dec. 7 (UPI) — A federal judge has potentially blocked the Department of Justice from bringing a second indictment against former FBI Director James Comey.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Ketelly on Saturday granted a temporary restraining order sought by Comey’s friend and attorney Daniel Richman to prevent prosecutors from using evidence that Richman’s lawyers said was gathered illegally from his devices.
In a four-page order, Kollar-Ketelly said she issued the temporary restraining order because the suit is likely to succeed based on the Justice Department having retained a complete copy of all of the files on Richman’s personal computer and searched it without a warrant, Politico reported.
The DOJ initially charged Comey with lying to and obstructing Congress as to whether he had leaked information about investigations to the media through Richman.
That case was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie in November without prejudice because the appointment of U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, who’d brought the case, was “invalid.”
The bulk of the evidence against Comey in the case had been based on emails and information on Richman’s laptop and, after the initial case was dismissed, the Justice Department has indicated it plans to seek another indictment.
The New York Times reported that the DOJ had planned to bring another indictment of Comey in the next couple of weeks, which led Richman’s attorneys to file an emergency request Friday night to prevent prosecutors from once again using evidence they are improperly investigating.
In 2017, after President Donald Trump fired Comey, DOJ obtained warrants to image and search Richman’s personal computer as part of a separate leak investigation — an investigation that closed in 2021, the Guardian reported.
According to a magistrate judge who has been overseeing Comey’s current case, the government appears to have kept all of the information it obtained from Richman — not just the information they were allowed to obtain based on the warrants.
For the new charges brought against Comey this year, it appears that the Department of Justice violated Richman’s Fourth Amendment rights to unreasonable search and seizure by retaining the full copy of his computer image, Kollar-Kotelly said.
The restraining order was issued ahead of a formal response from prosecutors to Richman’s request for the return of his data, prompting the judge to request clarity on who has the data and where it is being stored.
Prosecutors were ordered to respond to Richman’s suit by Tuesday, while the department will be barred from accessing Richman’s data through at least Friday unless Kollar-Kotelly cancels the restraining order.
