Last week, Mag. Judge Fitzpatrick denied DOJ's motion for a filter protocol and ORDERED them to turn over to Comey "all materials seized pursuant to the four 2019 and 2020 [Arctic Haze] search warrants," all grand jury material, and more.
DOJ appealed the order to disclose grand jury material.
Judge Nachmanoff DENIED the appeal, finding that "Judge Fitzpatrick’s Order regarding the disclosure of the grand jury materials falls within the matter referred to him..." and remands the matter back to Fitzpatrick for further proceedings.
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Fitzpatrick set a hearing on the issue of disclosure of the grand jury material for today at 4pm.
The @USAO_SDFL "is recruiting prosecutors and restructuring its chain of command in preparation for a grand jury investigation expected to target former Justice Department officials and others involved in cases against President Donald Trump." 1/n
"The exact scope of the grand jury effort—which one of the individuals described as “special counsel oversight”—remains unclear."
I think it's worth providing some background on what's going on here, so I'll start there, but if you want to skip the background, go to post number [21] in this thread for a breakdown of what happened yesterday.
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Background
Nachmanoff is the district judge assigned to this case.
Nachmanoff ordered that all Rule 16 discovery material be provided to the defense by Oct 13.
85k pages of discovery was eventually turned over, but not all of it because...
‘A federal judge on Wednesday ordered prosecutors to turn over key evidence in the criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey, expressing concern that the [DOJ] may have “indicted first and investigated later.”
I have a thread on the motion seeking grand jury materials here
Today, DOJ defended the appointment of Lindsey Halligan as interim U.S. Attorney for EDVA.
In an order signed on Halloween, @AGPamBondi retroactively made Halligan a "Special Attorney, as of September 22, 2025" and gave her the "authority" to conduct legal proceedings in EDVA.
The order also says...
"[S]hould a court conclude that Ms. Halligan's authority as Special Attorney is limited to particular matters, I hereby delegate to Ms. Halligan authority as Special Attorney to conduct and supervise the prosecutions in United States v. Corney (Case No. 1:25-CR-00272) and United States v. James (Case No. 2:25-CR-00122)."
Halligan's appointment is the basis of motions to dismiss in both the James Comey and Letitia James criminal cases.
Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, a senior judge out of South Carolina who isn't assigned either the Comey or James case, is handling the matter.
The above exhibit is attached to the gov't's filing in opposition to the motions to dismiss in both cases.
Prosecutors in the criminal case against Fmr FBI Dir James Comey have filed a response to defense's opposition to implementing a filter team.
Prosecutors want that team to review privileged materials seized from Daniel Richman during the Arctic Haze media leak investigation.
The filing says that Comey has asserted privilege (atty-client) over five text threads of communications between him and Person 3 from the indictment, Daniel Richman, who was counsel to Comey at the time of the communications.
A filter team is the appropriate method of handling this issue.
The remaining evidence HAS ALREADY BEEN FILTERED and was provided by Richman.
The defense has argued in their opposition that, while they are not opposed to a filter team being used, they want to challenge the underlying search warrants first and also want prosecutors to be more specific about what exactly they are seeking to extract from the seized material.
Prosecutors repond here:
"The government is not asking to look at the raw returns from prior search warrants. The government is simply asking for a judicially approved filter protocol as to a small and specific subset of evidence that was lawfully obtained consistent with the terms of a federal search warrant."
Defense files motion seeking disclosure of grand jury transcripts and audio recordings.
"The record in this case raises a significant risk that irregularities in the grand jury process may have influenced the grand jury to return an indictment...
Those irregularities may create a basis for dismissing the indictment."
"Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e)(3)(E)(ii), a court may order the disclosure of grand jury materials “at the request of a defendant who shows that a ground may exist to dismiss the indictment because of a matter that occurred before the grand jury.”"