WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department violated the constitutional rights of a close friend of James Comey and must return to him computer files that prosecutors had hoped to use in a potential criminal case against the former FBI director, a federal judge said Friday.
The ruling by US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly represents not only a severe rebuke to the behavior of Justice Department prosecutors but also imposes a dramatic setback to the government’s efforts to seek a new indictment against Comey after an initial one was dismissed last month.
The order concerns computer files and communications that investigators obtained years earlier from Daniel Richman, a friend of Comey and a Columbia University law professor, as part of a media leak investigation that concluded without charges. The Justice Department continued to keep those files and conducted searches on them this fall, without a new warrant, as they built a case accusing Comey of lying to Congress five years ago.
Richman alleged that the Justice Department violated his Fourth Amendment rights by withholding his records and by conducting new warrantless searches of the files, prompting Kollar-Kotelly to issue an order last week temporarily barring prosecutors from accessing the files as part of his investigation.
The Justice Department said the request for the return of the records was simply an attempt to prevent a new prosecution of Comey, but the judge sided with Richman again in a 46-page order on Friday that ordered the Justice Department to give him back his files.
“When the Government violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures by sweeping a wide range of a person’s electronic files, retaining those files long after the relevant investigation has concluded, and then sifting through those files without a warrant to obtain evidence against someone else, what remedy is available to the victim of the Government’s intrusion?” wrote the judge.
One answer, she said, is to ask the government to return the property to the rightful owner.
The judge, however, allowed the Justice Department to file an electronic copy of Richman’s records under seal with the Eastern District of Virginia, where the Comey investigation was based, and suggested that prosecutors could try to access it later with a legal search warrant.
The Justice Department alleges that Comey used Richman to share information with the news media about his decision-making during the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Prosecutors accused the former FBI director in September of lying to Congress by denying that he had authorized an associate to serve as an anonymous source for the media.
That charge was dismissed last month after a federal judge in Virginia ruled that the prosecutor who brought the case, Lindsey Halligan, was illegally appointed by the Trump administration. But the sentence left open the possibility that the government could try again to seek charges against Comey, who has long been an enemy of President Donald Trump. Comey pleaded not guilty, denied making a false statement and accused the Justice Department of vindictive prosecution.
The Comey saga has a long history.
In June 2017, a month after Comey was fired as FBI director, he testified that he had given Richman a copy of a memo he had written documenting a conversation he had with Trump and had authorized him to share the contents of the memo with a reporter.
After that testimony, Richman allowed the FBI to create an image, or a complete electronic copy, of all the files on his computer and a hard drive attached to that computer. He authorized the FBI to conduct a search for limited purposes, the judge noted.
Then, in 2019 and 2020, the FBI and the Department of Justice obtained search warrants to obtain Richman’s email accounts and computer files as part of a media leak investigation that concluded in 2021 without charges. Those warrants were limited in scope, but Richman alleged that the government collected more information than the warrants allowed, including personal media information and sensitive correspondence.
Additionally, Richman said the Justice Department violated his rights by searching his files in September, without a new warrant, as part of an entirely separate investigation.
“The Court also concludes that the retention of Petitioner Richman’s files by the Government amounts to an ongoing unreasonable seizure,” wrote Kollar-Kotelly. “Therefore, the Court agrees with Petitioner Richman that the Government violated his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures.”