A magistrate judge in the United States has issued a stern rebuke to the administration of President Donald Trump, criticising its handling of the indictment against a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), James Comey.
On Monday, Judge William Fitzpatrick of Alexandria, Virginia, made the unusual decision to order the release of all grand jury materials related to the indictment.
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Normally, grand jury materials are kept secret to protect witnesses, defendants and jurors in cases of grave federal crimes.
But in Comey’s case, Fitzpatrick ruled there was “a reasonable basis to question whether the government’s conduct was willful or in reckless disregard of the law”, and that greater transparency was therefore required.
He cited several irregularities in the case, ranging from how evidence was obtained to alleged misstatements from prosecutors that could have swayed the grand jury.
“The procedural and substantive irregularities that occurred before the grand jury, and the manner in which evidence presented to the grand jury was collected and used, may rise to the level of government misconduct,” Fitzpatrick wrote in his 24-page decision.
Fitzpatrick clarified that his decision does not render the grand jury materials public. But they will be provided to Comey’s defence team, as the former FBI director seeks to have the indictment tossed.
“The Court recognizes that the relief sought by the defense is rarely granted,” Fitzpatrick wrote, underscoring the unusual nature of the proceedings.
“However, the record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps.”
Scrutiny of US Attorney Halligan
The decision is the latest stumble for interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a former personal lawyer to Trump whom he then appointed as a top federal prosecutor.
A specialist in insurance law with no prosecutorial background, Halligan was tapped earlier this year to replace acting US Attorney Erik Siebert in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Trump has indicated he fired Siebert over disagreements about Justice Department investigations.
According to media reports, Siebert had refrained from seeking indictments against prominent Trump critics, such as Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, citing insufficient evidence.
But that appears to have frustrated the president. Trump went so far as to call for Comey’s and James’s prosecutions on social media, as well as that of Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.
“They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” Trump wrote in a post addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.”
Halligan took up her post as acting US attorney on September 22. By September 25, she had filed her first major indictment, against Comey.
It charged Comey with making a “false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement” to the US Senate, thereby obstructing a congressional inquiry.
A second indictment, against James, was issued on October 9. And a third came on October 16, targeting former national security adviser John Bolton, another prominent Trump critic.
All three individuals have denied wrongdoing and have sought to have their cases dismissed. Each has also accused President Trump of using the legal system for political retribution against perceived adversaries.
Monday’s court ruling is not the first time Halligan’s indictments have come under scrutiny, though.
Just last week, US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie heard petitions from James and Comey questioning whether Halligan’s appointment as US attorney was legal.
As she weighed the petitions last Thursday, she questioned why there was a gap in the grand jury record for Comey’s indictment, where no court reporter appeared to be present.
Inside Fitzpatrick’s ruling
Fitzpatrick raised the same issue in his ruling on Monday. He questioned whether the transcript and audio recording of the grand jury deliberations were, in fact, complete.
He pointed out that the grand jury in Comey’s case was originally presented with a three-count indictment, which it rejected. Those deliberations started at about 4:28pm local time.
But by 6:40pm, the grand jury had allegedly weighed a second indictment and found that there was probable cause for two of the three counts.
Fitzpatrick said that the span of time between those two points was not “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”.
Either the court record was incomplete, Fitzpatrick said, or the grand jury weighed an indictment that had not been fully presented in court.
The judge also acknowledged questions about how evidence had been obtained in the Comey case.
The Trump administration was facing a five-year statute of limitations in the Comey case, expiring on September 30. The indictment pertains to statements Comey made before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020.
To quickly find evidence for the indictment, Fitzpatrick said that federal prosecutors appear to have used warrants that were issued for a different case.
Those warrants, however, were limited to an investigation into Daniel Richman, an associate of Comey who was probed for the alleged theft of government property and the unlawful gathering of national security information.
No charges were filed in the Richman case, and the investigation was closed in 2021.
“The Richman materials sat dormant with the FBI until the summer of 2025, when the Bureau chose to rummage through them again,” Fitzpatrick said.
He said the federal government’s use of the warrants could violate the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, which prohibits the unreasonable search and seizure of evidence. He described the Justice Department’s actions as “cavalier” and asserted that no precautions were taken to protect privileged information.
“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,” Fitzpatrick wrote.
He speculated that prosecutors may not have sought a new warrant because the delay would have allowed the statute of limitations to expire on the Comey case.
“The Court recognizes that a failure to seek a new warrant under these circumstances is highly unusual,” he said.
Fitzpatrick also raised concerns that statements federal prosecutors made to the grand jury may have been misleading.
Many of those statements were redacted in Fitzpatrick’s ruling. But he described them as “fundamental misstatements of the law that could compromise the grand jury process”.
One statement, he said, “may have reasonably set an expectation in the minds of the grand jury that rather than the government bear the burden to prove Mr. Comey’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt at trial, the burden shifts to Mr. Comey to explain away the government’s evidence”.
Another appeared to suggest that the grand jury “did not have to rely only on the record before them to determine probable cause” — and that more evidence would be presented later on.
Calling for the release of the grand jury records on Monday was an “extraordinary remedy” for these issues, Fitzpatrick conceded.
But it was necessary, given “the prospect that government misconduct may have tainted the grand jury proceedings”, he ultimately decided.
