WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has dealt a setback to Justice Department efforts to seek a new indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, temporarily barring prosecutors from using evidence they had relied on when they initially secured criminal charges.
The ruling Saturday night from U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly does not preclude the department from trying again soon to indict Comey, but it does suggest prosecutors may have to do so without citing communications between Comey and a close friend, Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman.
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Comey was charged in September with lying to Congress when he denied having authorized an associate to serve as an anonymous source for media coverage about the FBI. In pursuing the case, prosecutors cited messages between Comey and Richman that they said showed Comey approving of Richman interacting with journalists for certain FBI-related coverage.
The case was dismissed last month after a different federal judge ruled that the prosecutor who filed the charges, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed by the Trump administration. But that ruling left open the possibility that the government could try again to seek charges against Comey, a longtime foe of President Donald Trump. Comey has pleaded not guilty, denied having made a false statement and accused the Justice Department of a vindictive prosecution.
After the case was thrown out, lawyers for Richman sought a court order to bar prosecutors from continued access to his computer files, which the Justice Department obtained through search warrants in 2019 and 2020 as part of a media leak investigation that was later closed without charges.
Officials searched the files for communications between Comey and Richman they could use to build the case against Comey. But Richman and his lawyers say prosecutors exceeded the scope of the warrants, illegally held onto communications they should have destroyed or returned, and conducted new, warrantless searches of the data.
Kollar-Kotelly on Saturday night granted Richman’s request for a temporary restraining order, instructing the department “not to access the covered materials once they are identified, segregated, and secured, or to share, disseminate, or disclose the covered materials to any person, without first seeking and obtaining leave of this Court.”
She gave the Justice Department until Monday afternoon to certify that it is in compliance with the order. She said her order would remain in effect through this coming Friday, “or until dissolved by further order of this Court, whichever comes first.”
“Petitioner Richman has also shown that, absent an injunction, he will be irreparably harmed by the ongoing violation of his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures arising from the Government’s continuing retention of the image of his computer and related materials,” she wrote in granting Richman’s request.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment Sunday on the ruling and what it meant for revived charges against Comey.
It is not clear that the Justice Department could secure new charges against Comey even if it could rely on Richman’s communications. Comey’s lawyers have said the statute of limitations on such a case — the congressional testimony at issue was given on Sept. 30, 2020, or more than five years ago — has expired.
A separate attempt by the Justice Department to a file a new indictment against New York Letitia James, another perceived Trump adversary who was also charged by Halligan, failed last week when a grand jury refused to sign off on charges.
