United States v. Comey
NEW: DOJ urges Judge Nachmanoff to quickly rule on their motion to use a filter team for evidence acquired from a separate investigation.
The evidence comes from an attorney and is potentially privileged...
And could lead to the disqualification of Comey's lead defense counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald.
The attorney the evidence comes from has informed investigators that Patrick Fitzgerald is among the parties communicated with in the evidence.
That attorney is almost certainly Daniel Richman or David Kelley, and the evidence is communications acquired during DOJ-OIG investigation of Comey's Memos.
DOJ quotes from IG's report in their filing and notes that Comey used Fitzgerald to improperly disclose classified info.
Comey hired Richman and Fitzgerald as personal attorneys and gave them memos he created during the first several months of 2017. He would write them after meeting with Trump.
Comey gave copies of Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7 to Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald forwarded them to Kelly and Richman.
Memo 2 contained 6 words that were classified CONFIDENTIAL/NOFORN which Comey did not redact.
Memo 4 and 6 were unclassified but FOUO.
Memo 7 had a portion classified as CONFIDENTIAL/NOFORN which Comey redacted before sending.
DOJ wants the material reviewed by a filter team ASAP so that they can confirm the conflict of interests and move to disqualify Fitzgerald on that basis.
Comey will likely assert privilege over the evidence.
Filing
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
IG Report
web.archive.org/web/2025021120…
Comey responds to the prosecution's motion to hurry a decision on the filter team.
"there is no good faith basis to claim a “conflict” between Mr. Comey and his counsel, much less a basis to move to disqualify lead defense counsel."
Defense hasn't responded to the motion for a filter team but doesn't have to until Oct 27.
They wanted to look at the underlying warrants first, and DOJ turned those over just seven days ago.
Hmm...
They filed a sealed exhibit alongside and have redacted some portions "out of an abundance of caution," because DOJ designated some of it as Protected Materials in the Protective Order.
I'm thinking it has to do with the media leak investigations.
"the implicit assertion lead defense counsel and Mr. Comey engaged in criminal activity by doing so, is provably false"
"there was no “leaking” of classified information to the press by either Mr. Comey or his counsel. Full stop."
"Mr. Comey did not share the classified memoranda with counsel."
OIG report (linked several posts above) determined that Comey "never shared" classified memos "with anyone outside the FBI."
What did happen is that one of the memos he shared was later "upclassified" weeks after Comey was out at the FBI.
Filing is here
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
Still waiting on the motion to dismiss for selective and vindictive prosecution and the motion to disqualify Halligan.
I've just recorded an episode going over news in other cases. Will be publishing it shortly.
The following episode will be all Comey criminal case updates.
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