{"id":8117,"date":"2025-12-07T17:24:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T17:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/12\/07\/judge-blocks-trump-prosecutors-from-accessing-key-evidence-in-comey-case-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T17:24:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T17:24:16","slug":"judge-blocks-trump-prosecutors-from-accessing-key-evidence-in-comey-case-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/12\/07\/judge-blocks-trump-prosecutors-from-accessing-key-evidence-in-comey-case-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge blocks Trump prosecutors from accessing key evidence in Comey case – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A federal judge has temporarily blocked <\/a>prosecutors from accessing materials from a key ally of James Comey<\/a> on Saturday, making the already uphill criminal case against the former FBI director even more difficult.<\/p>\n

Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law school professor who has also represented Comey as an attorney, sued<\/a> the government in November, saying that the government had unlawfully accessed materials from his computer as they charged Comey<\/a> with lying to Congress. Richman is a close friend of Comey who worked at the FBI.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors allege Comey lied to Congress about whether or not he authorized leaks and relied on private communications between Comey and Richman to support their case.<\/p>\n

Comey has vehemently denied doing anything wrong \u2013 and a federal judge has dismissed the charges against him, ruling that the prosecutor handling the case was improperly appointed. The second Trump administration<\/a>\u2019s justice department is expected to try to re-indict Comey.<\/p>\n

<\/gu-island><\/figure>\n

Between 2017 and 2020, as the government investigated Comey, it obtained multiple warrants allowing them to search an image of Richman\u2019s computer. Neither Richman nor Comey were charged with a crime as part of that investigation, which closed in 2021. Even though the investigation was over, the government appears to have retained all of the information it obtained from Richman, not just what was responsive to the warrant, William Fitzpatrick, a magistrate judge overseeing the Comey case, wrote<\/a> in a searing opinion in November.<\/p>\n

As they conducted a new investigation into Comey this year, the government did not appear to obtain a new warrant to go through the materials it obtained from Richman, Fitzpatrick wrote. Instead, it conducted a warrantless search of the information earlier this year, allowing the government to potentially see materials protected by attorney-client privilege.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s actions likely violated Richman\u2019s protections from unreasonable searches under the US constitution\u2019s fourth amendment, federal district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a four-page order<\/a> on Saturday. Her order will remain in effect until 12 December.<\/p>\n

The decision blocking access to Richman\u2019s files comes as the US attorney\u2019s office for the eastern district of Virginia \u2013 which is handling the prosecution of Comey \u2013 has faced a series of setbacks. On Thursday, prosecutors sought to obtain a new indictment against New York attorney general Letitia James<\/a>, another political rival of Donald Trump that the president has targeted with specious allegations<\/a> of mortgage fraud. In an extremely rare move, a federal grand jury in Virginia declined<\/a> to approve the indictment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal judge has temporarily blocked prosecutors from accessing materials from a key ally of James Comey on Saturday, making the already uphill criminal case against the former FBI director even more difficult. Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law school professor who has also represented Comey as an attorney, sued the government in November, saying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}