A federal judge on Monday ordered prosecutors to disclose grand jury materials to former FBI director James Comey’s defense team, citing “profound investigative missteps” that may have tainted his indictment.
US Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick ruled that Comey’s attorneys presented sufficient evidence of potential government misconduct to warrant the extraordinary disclosure.
Comey was indicted in September on charges of making false statements and obstruction of justice related to his 2017 and 2020 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The case has fueled partisan accusations of politically motivated prosecutions, with Trump critics arguing the administration is targeting the president’s perceived enemies while supporters point to earlier investigations of Trump allies as evidence of Democratic lawfare.
In a Brennan Center analysis detailing a number of rule of law concerns in the case, former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance notes that the indictment came only after the original US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia declined to prosecute due to insufficient evidence, reportedly prompting President Trump to replace him with Lindsey Halligan, who lacked prosecutorial experience.
Fitzpatrick’s 24-page opinion details concerns about FBI agents’ handling of evidence, including materials seized years earlier in an unrelated investigation. Fitzpatrick found agents may have violated Comey’s Fourth Amendment rights and attorney-client privilege protections.
The judge noted the lead FBI agent who testified before the grand jury had been exposed to potentially privileged communications between Comey and his attorney shortly before testifying.
In closing, Fitzpatrick wrote:
The Court recognizes that the relief sought by the defense is rarely granted. However, the record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps, missteps that led an FBI agent and a prosecutor to potentially undermine the integrity of the grand jury proceeding. Therefore, in this case, ‘the Court has before it a rare example of a criminal defendant who can actually make a ‘particularized and factually based’ showing that grounds exist to support the proposition that irregularities may have occurred in the grand jury proceedings and may justify the dismissal of one or more counts of the indictment.’ See Naegele, 474 F. Supp. 2d at 10. Accordingly, the defense request for all grand jury materials is granted.
The case stems from the contentious relationship between Trump and Comey dating to 2017, when Trump fired Comey as FBI director while the bureau was investigating suspected Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Shortly after his dismissal, Comey arranged for his personal memos documenting private conversations with Trump to reach the press through an intermediary, Columbia Law Professor Daniel Richman. The revelations in those memos prompted the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate Russian election interference and possible ties to the Trump campaign. The current charges against Comey relate to his Senate testimony about whether he authorized Richman or others to serve as anonymous sources to reporters.
