November 20, 2025 / by 

 

What We Know about the Day of Jim Comey’s Indictment

Let’s assume for the moment that, to the extent the players involved in indicting Jim Comey understand the least little bit about what went down, they’re telling the truth.

Here’s what Lindsey Halligan’s big day would look like.

In the morning, “the team” worked together to prepare the indictment against Comey. According to CNN, that team included the FBI agents from the FBI Director’s Advisory Team pursuing this case and FBI attorneys.

Halligan spent hours preparing with a group that included FBI attorneys and the agents who had led the investigation, the sources said.

Halligan participated in a number of “practice runs” and spent hours going through the exhibits in preparation, the sources said.

As part of that process, Special Agent Spenser Warren mentioned some texts that EDVA’s prosecutors had chosen not to use in an interview weeks earlier of Dan Richman. Warren explained that they seemed to include privileged communication.

On the morning of September 25, 2025, the team was preparing for an indictment of James Comey, to occur later that afternoon. SA Warren provided case agent SA Miles Starr and an FBI Office of General Counsel (OGC) attorney a limited overview of the text message communications to and from “Michael Garcia” (now understood to be Daniel Richman). SA Warren advised SA Starr and the FBI OGC attorney that some of the messages appeared to reference potential future legal representation. The FBI OGC attorney immediately advised that any of the text message communications referencing potential future legal representation should not be part of the indictment preparation. SA Warren provided the indictment preparation team a two-page document containing limited text message content only from May 11, 2017, predating the reference to potential future legal representation.

Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick describes there was “A second agent, possibly Agent-2, was also on the call but that that person’s identity has been shielded from the Court.” But given other filings in the case, it’s more likely the second agent is Jack Eckenrode, not least because Comey believes he was also exposed to these materials.

This OGC lawyer referenced in this affidavit is presented as someone outside the case team. Except CNN describes that FBI lawyers were part of Lindsey’s preparation, and a person named Gabriel Cohen shows up in document metadata for three case filings — two of them regarding whether Jim Comey should get grand jury materials, including Lindsey’s declaration about what happened that day — as OGC.

Whoever the OGC lawyer in question is, he tells “the team” not to include those particular texts, “referencing potential future legal representation,” in the grand jury presentment. So Warren provided a two-page exhibit of texts that preceded the privileged communication. But, as Fitzpatrick described, that OGC lawyer did not advise someone besides Miles Starr (who, again, works on the Director’s Advisory Team) to present the case.

Agent-3, rather than remove himself from the investigative team until the taint issue was resolved, proceeded into the grand jury undeterred and testified in support of the pending indictment. ECF 179. In fact, Agent-3 was the only witness to testify before the grand jury in support of the pending indictment. Id. The government’s decision to allow an agent who was exposed to potentially privileged information to testify before a grand jury is highly irregular and a radical departure from past DOJ practice.

Within hours, Starr went from hearing about these privileged communications to serving as the sole witness to the indictment against Jim Comey.

The presentment started at 2:18PM. Somewhere along the way, Lindsey had problems working the ELMO AV system, and grand jurors and someone else — possibly the Grand Jury Coordinator? — tried to help her.

There was one instance where the prosector had technical issues with ELMO and some of the jurors assisted and came in to assist as well.

Not only did Starr present as an exhibit the opening memo for a related — and ridiculous — case in WDVA he himself authored, which contained a patently false representation of Jim Comey’s September 30, 2020 testimony regarding the “Clinton Plan” (reliance on which could be a crime in any case).

Former Director Comey previously testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was unfamiliar with this CIOL as well as its related intelligence.

But rather than using the 2-page exhibit of Dan Richman texts that stopped before those privileged texts he had learned about hours before, Starr used a different 8-page exhibit, which went right through the period when Richman (using his pseudonym Michael Garcia) shared details of Donald Trump pushing Jim Comey to drop an investigation into Mike Flynn.

To be clear: Unless you are misrepresenting the questions at issue (and remember, there is no transcript of the exchange Comey had with Ted Cruz included among the 14 exhibits that appear to have been presented to the grand jury), there is no sound reason to present any of these texts. None could be proof that Comey had authorized Richman to share this information while at FBI, because Richman had left months earlier. None could be proof that Comey lied to Chuck Grassley on May 3, 2017 about serving as a source for stories on the Russian investigation (which Grassley called the Trump investigation), because they all postdated Grassley’s question. None could be proof that Comey intended to obscure all this in September 2020, because he had already told Susan Collins about all of this on June 8, 2017.

According to Fitzpatrick, the grand jurors asked a lot of challenging questions.

[T]he statement by the prosecutor was made in response to challenging questions from grand jurors, the context of which suggests the grand jurors may have reasonably understood the prosecutor to mean that if she could not satisfactorily answer their questions, then Mr. Comey would “[redacted]” answer these questions at trial.

According to Loaner AUSA Gabriel Diaz, Lindsey and Miles Starr had already addressed the last grand juror question when she made one of two problematic comments.

The transcript itself refutes the notion that the U.S. Attorney was responding to unresolved juror confusion about Fifth Amendment rights. The last question from a grand juror appears several pages earlier in the transcript, during an exchange between the U.S Attorney and the witness about [redacted] and in that exchange the juror’s question was resolved.

What Diaz does not dispute (at least in unredacted form) is that Lindsey did promise that, “the government anticipated presenting additional evidence were the case to proceed to trial,” which Fitzpatrick took to invite grand jurors to assume there was better evidence.

That statement clearly suggested to the grand jury that they did not have to rely only on the record before them to determine probable cause but could be assured the government had more evidence–perhaps better evidence–that would be presented at trial.

Diaz simply ignores this comment altogether in his unredacted response.

If this reference was remotely in context of those texts — the ones that extend well past the date when Richman came to represent Comey — such a promise would taint the entire proceeding.

Lindsey finished up her presentation at around 4:28. She left, along with the court reporter.

After about two hours of deliberation, so around 6:28, the grand jury voted. They rejected what was then Count One, pertaining to the alleged “Clinton Plan” lie that Starr had misrepresented in his opening memo. They approved what were then Count Two, alleging that Comey had authorized someone at the FBI to serve as an anonymous source in news stories, as well as then Count Three, accusing Comey of obstructing the investigation the Senate Judiciary Committee was carrying out in September 2020 with false and misleading answers (which was limited to the Russian investigation, though I would bet 50 Bitcoin that grand jurors never learned that).

Then, the grand jurors left the grand juror room, and the court reporter collected the recording from the grand juror room and left.

At some point, the grand jury foreperson filled out the form indicating a no-billed indictment — the whole thing — in blue ink. That no-bill report also bears the signature of Lindsey Halligan, in blue ink.

After that vote, the grand jury foreperson told the EDVA Grand Jury Coordinator (GJC) the result of the vote, and that person, in turn, informed EDVA’s Deputy Criminal Chief, who told the GJC to “amend” the indictment by removing the no-billed Count One. GJC did so, and according to them, then “presented the corrected indictment to the grand jury foreperson and the deputy foreperson.”

As far as we know, the court reporter was gone by that point.

About ten minutes after the grand jury finished deliberation, at 6:40, Maggie Cleary told Lindsey,

that the grand jury had returned a true bill as to the presented Count Two and Count Three of the indictment and that the grand jury had not returned a true bill as to the presented Count One. I then proceeded to the courtroom for the return of the indictment in front of the magistrate judge.

The grand jury return transcript starts, at 6:47PM, with the announcement of a successful indictment, “charging “Jim Comey” with false statements within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the United States government and obstruction of a congressional proceeding.” But then Magistrate Judge Lindsey Vaala started through the colloquy about accepting an indictment, and the foreperson revealed that on one count, Count One, fewer than 12 people supported the charge. 

THE COURT: And for each count and for each defendant for all of the indictments, did a sufficient number, meaning at least 12, of grand jurors return a true bill?

THE FOREPERSON: One exception.

THE COURT: What is the exception?

THE FOREPERSON: James Comey, Jr., on Count One.

That’s when Vaala tried to sort through the two fundamentally incompatible documents in front of her, which at that point included one document showing that grand jurors had rejected the entire indictment, and another showing that grand jurors accepted two charges.

THE COURT: Okay. When you say one count — so I’mlooking at two different — I’m looking at case 25-cr-272,United States of America v. James B. Comey, Jr. I have an indictment with two counts that my courtroom deputy read that looks to be signed by you, ma’am.

THE FOREPERSON: Yes.

THE COURT: And it says 14 grand jurors concurred inthe indictment.And then I have a report of a grand jury’s failure to concur in an indictment, and it just reports that — has three counts, and it says that the grand jurors did not concur in finding an indictment in this case.

The foreperson described that “they” — we now know this was the GJC, who may have come into the grand jury presentation to help Lindsey run ELMO, and who by their own description “presented” the “corrected” indictment to just two members of the grand jury — separated the charge they didn’t agree on.

THE FOREPERSON: So the three counts should be justone count. It was the very first count that we did not agree on, and the Count Two and Three were then put in a different package, which we agreed on.

THE COURT: So you —

THE FOREPERSON: So they separated it.

The foreperson, probably out of confusion, falsely informed Vaala that the grand jury had voted on the indictment with just two counts.

THE COURT: Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. So you voted on the one that has the two counts?

THE FOREPERSON: Yes

That’s when Lindsey the Magistrate Judge asked Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer to explain all this. Rather than offering an explanation — which might have saved Jim Comey two months of his life — Halligan disavowed involvement with the no-billed indictment. She knew the indictment had been “redrafted,” but she denied signing the indictment.

THE COURT: So this has never happened before. I’ve been handed two documents that are in the Mr. Comey case that are inconsistent with one another. There seems to be a discrepancy. They’re both signed by the foreperson. The one that says it’s a failure to concur in an indictment, it doesn’t say with respect to one count. It looks like they failed to concur across all three counts, so I’m a little confused as to why I was handed two things with the same case number that are inconsistent.

MS. HALLIGAN: So I only reviewed the one with the two counts that our office redrafted when we found out about the two — two counts that were true billed, and I signed that one.I did not see the other one. I don’t know where that came from.

THE COURT: You didn’t see it?

MS. HALLIGAN: I did not see that one.

THE COURT: So your office didn’t prepare the indictment that they —

MS. HALLIGAN: No, no, no — I — no, I prepared three counts. I only signed the one — the two-count. I don’t know which one with three counts you have in your hands.

THE COURT: Okay. It has your signature on it.

That’s when Vaala had the foreperson annotate the no-billed indictment (marked in pink below) to reflect that the grand jury had rejected just one charge, and then recorded that the grand jury foreperson had done so in the transcript.

What I need you to do is write on this piece of paper both the case number, which is 25-cr-272, but also no true bill as to Count One only, and then sign and date it so that it’s clear, okay? So I’m going to hand it back up to the courtroom security officer and have you do that. You can have a seat.

Okay. All right. So for the record, Madam Foreperson, I now have a report that looks like you’ve handwritten — a report that 12 or more grand jurors did not concur in finding an indictment in — and then you’ve added in handwriting — Count 1 only in this case. Is that correct?

THE FOREPERSON: Yes, ma’am.

This is one reason why the initial fucked version of the no-billed indictment matters. Lindsey Halligan says she didn’t sign it.

As initially initially loaded into the docket, she had not: the signature page was actually the signature page from the two count “indictment,” if we can call it that. But the next day (see William Ockham’s correction), someone loaded a different copy of that document into the docket, and that version showed a signature from Lindsey Halligan, written in the same blue ink that the grand juror foreperson had used to sign the original indictment.

This narrative answers many of the logistical questions about that day — which is a far cry from answering the legal ones. And most of what Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer (as distinct from the very confused Magistrate Judge) said in the declaration authored by Gabriel Cohen, OGC, is true, as to herself, including that, “I was never present in front of the grand jury alone.”

But what is not true is Lindsey’s claim — authored by Gabriel Cohen, OGC — that,

There was no additional presentation, interaction, or discussion with the grand jury outside of what is reflected in the transcript.

The GJC was alone with the foreperson and the deputy; no court reporter documented what happened between them.

Furthermore, there’s still no explanation of how Lindsey Halligan’s signature came to appear on that no-billed indictment, because Lindsey is on the record stating that she didn’t sign it.

Here are some obvious questions that remain to be answered:

  • Is Gabriel Cohen part of the prosecutorial team and is he also the one who gave shoddy advice about taint?
  • Did the person who put together an 8-page exhibit of Dan Richman texts know about the privileged communications they were going to chase on the other side of those texts?
  • Was Lindsey’s promise of more evidence addressed specifically to the texts from Dan Richman?
  • Who signed the no-billed indictment?
  • Is the “Deputy Criminal Chief” Maggie Cleary?
  • Who all was involved in the decision to salvage the indictment by “amending,” “correcting,” or “redrafting” (all representations to the court) it to exclude the no-billed charge?
  • Did they know that the obstruction charge relies on — and prosecutors intend to rely on — the alleged false statement the grand jury no-billed?
  • Does Pam Bondi want to reconsider her ratification of all of this?

Cast of characters

Lindsey Halligan: Donald Trump’s defense attorney and sometime Smithsonian bigot

Maggie Cleary: Before Trump demanded Pam Bondi install Lindsey, the partisan attorney Pam Bondi installed as First Assistant US Attorney in EDVA; Cleary is the person who told Halligan that the grand jury had no-billed one charge; she was removed on October 13

EDVA Deputy Criminal Chief: This person instructed the EDVA grand jury coordinator to “amend” the indictment

EDVA Grand Jury Coordinator: After “amend[ing]” the indictment, they “presented the corrected indictment to the grand jury foreperson and the deputy foreperson” without a court reporter present; if Lindsey did not sign the no-bill indictment, the Grand Jury Coordinator is the most likely person to have done so

Jack Eckenrode: Senior Advisor to Kash Patel, lead investigator for John Durham, and former FBI Agent on Scooter Libby case

Miles Starr: Lead case agent on this and other Comey cases

Tyler Lemons: On loan from EDNC

Gabriel Diaz: On loan from EDNC

James Hayes: Litigation Attorney at Main Justice, he is listed as author of the following:

Gabriel Cohen: Metadata lists him as OGC, possibly in Detroit, he is the author of:

Henry Whitaker: The former Solicitor General of Florida and currently Pam Bondi’s counselor, he is the signed author of:

Kathleen Stoughton: An AUSA in South Carolina with solid appellate experience, she is listed as author of:

Michael Shedd: A newish AUSA in South Carolin, he is listed as author of:

lheim: Metadata lists as author of:

Lindsey Halligan Was Never Alone with the Grand Jury; EDVA’s Grand Jury Coordinator Was

In Lindsey Halligan’s first attempt to explain why there were two grand jury indictments, she was at pains to deny that any of her actions were missing from the transcript.

5. During the intermediary time, between concluding my presentation and being notified of the grand jury’s return, I had no interaction whatsoever with any members of the grand jury. This time represents the grand jury’s private deliberation which was done in secret with no one but the members of the grand jury present, consistent with Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(d)(2).

6. I was never present in front of the grand jury alone. At every moment I was in front of the grand jury, the court reporter was also present.

An email from the transcription service, submitted as an exhibit to the government’s bid [link fixed] to stave off Jim Comey getting the grand jury transcript, notes that — aside from Lindsey’s difficulties running ELMO, the AV system — there’s nothing untoward in the recording.

With the high profile nature of these cases, we went back through the audio and transcript for the J.C. case again and can confirm that no audio was missed and no testimony was left out. There was one instance where the prosector had technical issues with ELMO and some of the jurors assisted and came in to assist as well. That is detailed out in the transcript. When the prosecutor was finished presenting her case, she and the court reporter left the room, as is standard procedure, to let the jury deliberate. It was about 2 hours of deliberations. Both the court reporter and the CSO remained in the Grand Jury area (outside the jury room but in the secure area where the breakroom and restrooms are) during the deliberation period. When the deliberations were finished and the jurors were released, the court reporter went back into the jury room, transferred the audio files and annotations to the envelope and brought the envelope to our offices. The length of the audio files match to the timestamps in the annotations and nothing was missed or otherwise left out of the transcript.

But Lindsey also claimed all interaction with the grand jury was captured by the transcript.

There was no additional presentation, interaction, or discussion with the grand jury outside of what is reflected in the transcript.

That’s false. The transcription service’s description lays out that the court reporter left after “the jurors were released” and they “transferred the audio files and annotations to the envelope.”

Which means the other key disclosure in this filing happened without a court reporter as witness.

After the grand jury coordinator learned the grand jury had rejected one charge, “the coordinator was informed,” passive voice, by a prosecutor at EDVA to revamp the indictment. The grand jury coordinator “presented” the “corrected” indictment to the grand jury foreperson and deputy foreperson.

As a result of the grand jury’s determination that probable cause existed to believe that defendant had committed two of the charges set forth in the proposed indictment, the draft indictment was amended to remove the first count and keep the remaining two counts on which the grand jury had concurred. 23

23 After the Nov. 19, 2025, hearing on the defendant’s vindictive prosecution memorandum, the EDVA Grand Jury coordinator informed the undersigned that the grand jury foreperson informed her they had returned a true bill as to counts two and three, and not as to count one. The coordinator was informed by the Deputy Criminal Chief to amend the indictment by removing the text of former count one, and moving the remaining counts, two and three, to reflect as counts one and two. The grand jury coordinator then returned to the grand jury room and presented the corrected indictment to the grand jury foreperson and the deputy foreperson.

Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer was never alone with the grand jury. But the EDVA grand jury coordinator was.

Sure, maybe nothing substantive happened. But you have no proof that’s true.

Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer Confesses There Is No Indictment

As I have suspected since at least Friday, there is no Jim Comey indictment.

That’s because, rather than re-presenting the case after the jury no-billed on one count, Lindsey Halligan never re-presented the remaining two counts.

Here’s CNN. (See also Politico, ABC, and WaPo.)

In a shocking back and forth, prosecutors said that instead of presenting a new indictment to the grand jury after it declined to approve one of the counts, Halligan simply brought an altered version to the magistrate’s courtroom for the grand jury’s foreperson to sign.

“The new indictment wasn’t a new indictment,” Lemons said, attempting to justify that it was only reviewed by the foreperson.

Judge Michael Nachmanoff quickly called Halligan, who was the only prosecutor who presented the case to the grand jury, to the lectern, asking her to confirm that the entire grand jury was never presented the altered indictment.

The judge started, “Am I correct -”

“No, you’re not,” Halligan interrupted. She said that there was one additional grand juror in the magistrate’s courtroom and quoted her back-and-forth with that judge.

“I’m familiar with the transcript,” Nachmanoff said. He then told her to sit down.

Apparently Michael Dreeben declared, correctly, that therefore there is probably no indictment, period, because the full grand jury did not vote to support it.

The problem goes beyond just the basics of how a grand jury works. As I noted here, Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs already confessed that they want to rely on the no-billed count to support their obstruction case.

[A]s provided in discovery and via the indictment, the government intends to seek the admission of evidence at trial on this count regarding the defendant’s statements to senators during the September 30, 2020, committee hearing. For instance, the defendant’s statements to Senators Grassley and Cruz regarding his use of Richman as an anonymous source concerning the Clinton email investigation and his statements to Senators Graham and Hawley regarding his alleged lack of memory concerning the so-called Clinton plan to “tie Trump” to Russia.

And it’s worse than the poor Loaner AUSAs seem to realize.

The September 30, 2020 hearing had a specific scope, which could fairly be taken as the scope of the investigation the Senate was pursuing at the time. The Clinton email investigation was not included in that scope.

1 Before the hearing, the committee agreed that it would be limited to four specific topics: (i) “Crossfire Hurricane,” (ii) the December 2019 Department of Justice Inspector General report’s “Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation,” (iii) the Carter Page FISA applications, and (iv) Christopher Steele’s source network and primary sub-source.

Without the no-billed count, nothing charged against Comey would be included in the scope of the hearing.

Her fuck-ups continue to snowball!

Kash Patel’s Taint

In advance of today’s hearing (at 10AM ET) on Jim Comey’s vindictive prosecution claim, I want to lay out two aspects of the Comey prosecution that likely doom it, and may doom the larger fever dream of a grand conspiracy case.

Both arise out of the way that Lindsey Halligan was prepped not by prosecutors, but by FBI agents working on the “Director’s Task Force” we know to be led by Jack Eckenrode, the guy who chased Russian disinformation for years based off Kash Patel’s misleading packaging of classified documents back in 2020.

This post will argue that likely all of them, possibly up to and including Kash himself, have tainted themselves by snooping in Jim Comey’s privileged communications. A follow-up will lay out the increasing evidence that Jim Comey’s grand jury presentment is a crime scene.

On September 12, FBI agents working on the Director’s Task Force were prepping for EDVA’s September 16 interview with Dan Richman, then led by Erik Siebert. They were searching the full Cellebrite extraction from Richman’s phone, and stumbled on communications Richman conducted using a pseudonym. They didn’t use those communications for the Richman interview, almost certainly because that interview would have been focused on actual suspected crimes rather than the fever dreams of conspiracists. But after that interview led prosecutors to conclude there was no crime that could be charged, Trump removed Siebert, leading Pam Bondi to appoint overt partisan Maggie Cleary, on September 20 (Cleary becomes important for the follow-up). But that wasn’t good enough. Then Trump publicly demanded Bondi install Lindsey Halligan, which Bondi did on September 22. That week, Cleary reportedly heeded prosecutors’ view the case could not — should not — be charged.

But Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer instead prepped with FBI agents working on the Director’s Task Force. Importantly, because DOJ wouldn’t provide Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer with outside help, those FBI agents prepped Lindsey, who knew nothing about how to prosecute a case, themselves.

DOJ headquarters declined to provide lawyers to assist Halligan, and FBI agents and lawyers working to prepare her were denied their request for a para-legal professional to assist in the presentation, according to two people familiar with the matter.

[snip]

Last Tuesday [September 23], Halligan began a crash course to prepare. Justice officials told her that the deputy attorney general’s office didn’t have lawyers to help her, and that it was against federal rules of criminal procedure for one of the attorneys from Justice headquarters to be in the grand jury room, one source familiar with the discussions said.

There’s a natural tension between FBI agents and prosecutors. The former get really invested in their targets, leading them to believe their case is stronger than it is. The latter, traditionally, have focused on how to sustain DOJ’s prior near-perfect record of convictions, all while keeping their bar licenses, and so they focus on what will be admissible and credible at trial, not their emotional belief they’ve caught a baddy.

Just as one example of how this pressure works, Jack Eckenrode — the head of this effort! — may well be the guy who tried to force Patrick Fitzgerald to indict Karl Rove two decades ago by telling journalists Rove was going to be indicted. Someone wanted Rove indicted (so did I!), but Fitz presumably believed that Robert Luskin had nudged Rove through serial admissions successfully enough to avoid perjuring himself too badly, and also that Rove would be useful at Scooter Libby’s trial, which he was.

But with the FBI agents prepping Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer, that moderating influence of a prosecutor didn’t exist. It was Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer, being led by the nose by hyper-partisan FBI guys performing for their hyper-partisan boss hunting the baddy that Kash had targeted even before getting the job.

And that’s important, because when Special Agent Spenser Warren describes “team” in this affidavit about the breach of Jim Comey’s privileged texts, it likely includes Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer.

On the morning of September 25, 2025, the team was preparing for an indictment of James Comey, to occur later that afternoon. SA Warren provided case agent SA Miles Starr and an FBI Office of General Counsel (OGC) attorney a limited overview of the text message communications to and from “Michael Garcia” (now understood to be Daniel Richman). SA Warren advised SA Starr and the FBI OGC attorney that some of the messages appeared to reference potential future legal representation. The FBI OGC attorney immediately advised that any of the text message communications referencing potential future legal representation should not be part of the indictment preparation. SA Warren provided the indictment preparation team a two-page document containing limited text message content only from May 11, 2017, predating the reference to potential future legal representation.

Take a step back though. This conversation should never have happened! That’s because the imagined crime these FBI agents were presenting was that Comey had lied when he told Ted Cruz he had never told anyone at FBI to act as an anonymous source. These texts post-dated Richman’s departure from the FBI by over three months. Even if they hadn’t accessed these texts illegally, they don’t help you prove your case (unless you neglect to tell grand jurors and judges when Richman left FBI, as this prosecution team persists in doing).

But because there was no grown-up in the room, they accessed the texts.

There are three pieces of evidence that the entire group — Miles Starr, Eckenrode, but also Lindsey Halligan, and with her, her Loaner AUSAs — all were tainted by the privileged communications, and along with it the grand jury.

First, Warren described that he shielded Starr from the taint of the privileged comms by isolating two pages of texts, “only from May 11, 2017, predating the reference to potential future legal representation.” But Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer likely presented eight pages of those texts, marked as Government Exhibit 10, on the fourth page of which Richman says, “just got goahead,” like he had just spoken to Comey, and the fifth through eighth pages of which post-date May 11 entirely. Someone went back into evidence they had been told included privileged texts and got an extra six pages of evidence.

And if Lindsey was already presenting texts well beyond the time that Comey retained Richman, that makes it more likely that when Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer told the grand jury there was better evidence they would get for trial, she was thinking of the other side of Richman’s communications, the communications between Comey and Richman.

But if that’s what she was thinking, the only way she would say that would be if she knew of the privileged comms — the comms an FBI lawyer specifically advised not to include in grand jury prep. That doesn’t mean she looked at them. It means she knew they were there and intended to go get them. When Miles Starr or whoever went back to get 8 pages of texts, he likely searched only the ones that included Mike Schmidt, thereby avoiding seeing any communications between Comey and Richman, but he did so because he knew those privileged communications were there.

Classic taint.

Also note, in the transcript, this comment appeared just one page after the other misinstruction on the law that (per Judge William Fitzpatrick) Lindsey gave, suggesting that Comey would have to take the stand. I’m sure the FBI agents who prepped her have the fever dream that they’ll see Comey on the stand, but no prosecutor would even silently imagine she could get a well-lawyered defendant to take the stand, much less blurt it out in front of a grand jury.

The other piece of evidence that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer was tainted by that privileged communication is the way that, even before sharing any of this discovery with Comey, she and the Loaner AUSAs set out to breach Comey’s privilege. They filed a motion to do so as one of their first filings (perhaps not coincidentally on the day Maggie Cleary was fired). And then, a week later, when they tried to rush Michael Nachmanoff into granting that motion, they invented a new theory of crime to get access to these communications: that Jim Comey lawyered up with Dan Richman and Pat Fitzgerald (and David Kelley) on May 11, 2017 in order to leak classified memos showing Donald Trump’s corruption.

Additionally, based on publicly disclosed information, the defendant used current lead defense counsel to improperly disclose classified information.

[snip]

This fact raises a question of conflict and disqualification for current lead defense counsel. Some of the communications in the potentially protected material are from the same time as the focus of the DOJ OIG report. Before litigating any issue of conflict or disqualification, the parties should have access to all relevant and non-privileged information. The sooner that the potentially protected information is reviewed and filtered, the sooner the parties can make any appropriate filings with the Court.

The imagined crime here is a leak of classified information, not a lie in response to a question from Ted Cruz, and so irrelevant to this prosecution.

In real time, Comey dismissed this claim as the bullshit fever dream it was: Comey was an Original Classification Authority and didn’t believe anything in his memos was classified, and the specific memo shared with Mike Schmidt had no classified information in it by any measure.

But consider how abusive the claim looks now. To get these texts, FBI agents working on the Director’s Task Force had gone back into material seized from Richman obtained more than five years earlier, they did so without a fresh warrant specific to either this prosecution or the fever dreams the FBI agents are really pursuing, rather than accessing the stuff that excluded the stuff Richman had said was privileged, they accessed the raw data and ostensibly did so for communications that could not have been responsive to their intended purpose (that is, to find out what, if anything, Richman shared anonymously while still at the FBI). And their interim claim they invoked to breach privilege, that this was a conspiracy to leak classified information, had nothing to do with this case, or even the larger fever dream conspiracy — the one they’re pursuing in Florida — that this was a conspiracy to be mean to Donald Trump.

A classic fishing expedition.

Betcha some money the Loaner AUSAs are delaying here so someone can try to get a warrant in Florida invoking a crime-fraud exception based on the well-known crime of being mean to Donald Trump.

Indeed, in Loaner AUSA Gabriel Diaz’ emergency motion for a delay (authored, as so many of these abusive filings are, by James Hayes), he doesn’t even argue this is about taint. He’s arguing (in a sentence fragment) only about whether Miles Starr read the actual texts in question, not whether he went back and searched for their counterpart texts to put together an 8-page exhibit for Lindsey to use.

Indeed, the government believes the Magistrate Judge may have misinterpreted some facts he found when issuing the latest order to release the grand jury materials to the defendant. For instance, whether the defendant has any standing to challenge the Richman materials, the full context of the statements made by the prosecutor to the grand jury, that Agent-3 was exposed to potentially privileged material, and that two indictments were presented to the grand jury.

Much of what the prosecutors have done since that day is a frantic bid to get those privileged texts, texts that could in no way serve to help prove this case as charged.

It’s sunny (and very cold by Irish standards), so I’m going to go take a walk before I map out the team — like James Hayes and OGC lawyer Gabriel Cohen — that’s lurking behind the foolish Loaner AUSAs fronting for all of this. But there’s a very good chance all of them are driven by taint, the taint of a fishing expedition into Jim Comey’s privileged communications.

This prosecution appears to have become more focused on finding some way out of that taint than on actually winning this particular prosecution against Kash Patel’s nemesis.

Cast of characters

Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer

Tyler Lemons: On loan from EDNC

Gabriel Diaz: On loan from EDNC

James Hayes: Litigation Attorney at Main Justice, he is listed as author of the following:

Gabriel Cohen: Metadata lists him as OGC, possibly in Detroit, he is the author of:

Henry Whitaker: The former Solicitor General of Florida and currently Pam Bondi’s counselor, he is the signed author of:

Kathleen Stoughton: An AUSA in South Carolina with solid appellate experience, she is listed as author of:

Michael Shedd: A newish AUSA in South Carolin, he is listed as author of:

lheim: Metadata lists as author of:

The United States Can’t Afford the Opportunity Cost of Stephen Miller’s Bigotry

HuffPo had a story describing how Trump has hired 50,000 new people while firing a bunch more in the parts of government that make your lives better,

The U.S. government has hired 50,000 employees since President Donald Trump took office, his top personnel official said, with the new staff largely in national security positions reflecting the administration’s policy focus.

The bulk of the new hires, reported first by Reuters, work at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Scott Kupor, the federal government’s human resources director, in an interview on Thursday night.

The staff changes are part of Trump’s campaign to recast the government while sharply cutting other federal jobs.

“It’s about reshaping the workforce to focus on the priorities that we think are most important,” Kupor said.

The administration brought on the new employees while freezing hiring and laying off workers in other parts of the government, such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The administration expects to shed about 300,000 workers this year, Kupor said in August.

Meanwhile, the Daily Beast has yet another story about the continued shitshow of the effort to expand Kristi Noem’s goon squad, this time with the price tag associated with getting people to do such morally repugnant work.

DHS insiders said the money on offer has lured back former executive-level leaders from HSI and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO)—with some of them taking home north of $250,000 for office-based shiftwork, per multiple sources who spoke to the Beast.

According to those familiar with the packages, the most senior HSI rehires return as GS-13s on the federal pay scale. With locality pay in high-cost areas—such as parts of Texas, California, and New York—adding 35 percent or more to a basic salary, agents can earn up to $137,000 in the majority of the country. This rises to $171,268 in more expensive parts of the country, such as San Jose and San Francisco.

Law Enforcement Availability Pay (LEAP) adds a further 25 percent for being available for substantial unscheduled duty beyond 40 hours. Add in ongoing federal pensions worth around $8,000–$9,000 a month, and some rehires can land well in excess of a quarter of a million annually, sources said.

50,000 ICE goons in, 300,000 people out, including people who cure cancer, help learning disabled kids get through school, protect our National Parks, ensure your Social Security comes on time, and care for veterans.

After I pointed this out, Christopher Ingraham did a handy graphic to show the trade-off.

Stephen Miller’s dragnet is unpopular in the abstract and wildly unpopular in the lived sense, even — if meekly — among local Republican leaders.

But it still retains support of a big chunk of the population, probably because Trump officials routinely blame their own failures to address American problems on migrants, when as often as not, Trump’s response to immigration is the source of the problem.

America can’t have nice things, like cures for cancer and welcoming public schools, because Republicans in Congress took the money used to pay for those things and gave it to Stephen Miller to use to invade America’s neighborhoods.

We need to start making that more obvious.

Trump Trips over Own Feet Hastening Parallel Retreats

It is official conventional wisdom.

Trump is retreating on Jeffrey Epstein.

Or rather, Democrats led by Ro Khanna, survivors, and a handful of Republicans who could not give a fuck, starting with Tom Massie, forced Trump to retreat.

Retreat. RETREAT!! Bill Kristol wrote.

And they’re laughing at the position it puts Mike Johnson in. (Well, not CNN. CNN pretends Johnson had a “strategy” on Epstein.)

President Trump’s stunning reversal on the “Epstein files” discharge petition has undercut months of work by Speaker Mike Johnson.

Why it matters: The Epstein issue has plagued the House since the summer. Now the speaker is about to suffer a clear defeat over Reps. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) discharge petition.

  • Johnson cut the week short before the August recess after Democrats forced multiple votes on releasing the files. He then kept the House out of session for nearly two months — a move that, intentionally or not, delayed the discharge petition from reaching the floor.
  • “What I am opposed to is the reckless disregard that was used in drafting this discharge petition,” Johnson told reporters on Wednesday.

But on Sunday, Trump reversed months of calls to block an Epstein vote, saying Republicans should vote for it. On Monday, he said he’d sign the bill.

  • Tuesday’s vote is expected to pick up significant GOP support, including from Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), the highest-ranking woman in the House GOP leadership.

Zoom in: Johnson’s posture about the legislation hasn’t changed, a source familiar with his thinking told Axios.

  • But after months of railing against it, he opened the door Monday to supporting it.

The focus here is on Mike Johnson. Not the way Democrats chased Johnson out of DC a week early this summer, literally stealing him of the power of his gavel, then forced his members to stay home (and Adelita Grijalva to wait to be serve her constituents) for two months while Americans suffered the costs of the shutdown.

It doesn’t consider that by undercutting Johnson, Trump risks destroying the way he set Johnson up as his functionary. Trump and Johnson are both treated as the agents here.

Both NYT and CNN view this as a rare retreat from Trump.

For the first 10 months of his presidency, Mr. Trump has steered the narrative and bullied Congress into doing whatever he wanted with almost no pushback. But as Republicans gear up for midterm elections and some begin to plot a future after Mr. Trump, the Epstein episode is a rare instance in which he has lost control.

For months, House Republicans had dreaded the prospect of a vote on releasing the Epstein files. Such a moment would leave them torn between pressure from a fervent base demanding that they support the release of the files and a vengeful president who was demanding the opposite.

Mr. Trump’s about-face was a bow to the inevitable that came after it had become clear that many, if not most, Republicans were planning to support the measure, wary of appearing to aid in a coverup for a sex offender.

Kyle Cheney is one of the only people noting that this is not coming in isolation, citing these six (he says seven) signs that Trump is losing his grip.

  1. Republicans refuse to back down on Epstein vote
  2. Indiana GOP lawmakers don’t bite on redistricting
  3. Warning signs appear for tariffs at the Supreme Court
  4. No luck on the filibuster or the blue slip, either
  5. Trump gets a one-two punch after pardoning 2020 allies
  6. MAGA rebukes Trump on 50-year mortgages, H1B visas

He included seventh on social media: 7) Voters overwhelmingly rejects Rs in off-year elections.

I’d add to this list: Trump’s coalition is also unraveling over whether they should be enthusiastic champions or opponents to Nazism, both a squalid fight played out in real life, and potentially useful given revelations that one of his House Nazis, Paul Ingrassia, also interceded to help accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate.

If we use it right, we can use the anti-Nazi backlash as a way to offer an exit ramp to Republicans fleeing the ship, one JD Vance, at least, intends to go down with.

But the Epstein retreat comes amid another important retreat, one only partly captured by Cheney’s list. Last week, the reality that American can’t grow (much) bananas or coffee caught up to Trump and after he single-handedly spiked the price of key breakfast goods, Trump started to retreat — like the Epstein vote — before his partners-in-crime, this time the Supreme Court, abandoned him.

Trump is trying to do with tariffs what he is also trying to do with Epstein, squeeze some victory out of his defeat, float rebates as a way to avoid explaining to voters that Trump single-handedly made Barbie unaffordable for Christmas and, depending on how SCOTUS rules, the possibility he created an enormous hole in his budget and the onerous process of paying back importers.

Both of these may be (attempted) tactical retreats. Pam Bondi may attempt to bottle up the Epstein files at DOJ. Some of Trump’s stupid tariffs were lawfully enacted, and also stupid.

But it’s important to note that these retreats are happening in parallel, not least because tariffs are one area where Republicans have always agreed with Democrats, even while hoping someone else would make the problem go away.

The Rolling Corruption behind the Letitia James Prosecution

When Letitia James submitted her vindictive and selective prosecution motion on November 7, DOJ’s efforts to cover up Bill Pulte’s FHFA shenanigans got relegated to a footnote in the section in the request for discovery.

Any remaining doubt about the existence of DOJ’s possession of material that might go towards establishing AG James’ vindictive or selective claims was obviated by the Government’s November 4, 2025, filing of its Notice of Reasons for Not Providing Pre-Vindictive/Selective Prosecution Motion Related Discovery. See DE-46. The Government’s filing states that it “bears no such obligation until a defendant ‘overcomes a significant barrier by advancing objective evidence tending to show the existence of prosecutorial misconduct.’” Id. at 1 (quoting Wilson, 262 F.3d at 315).68 AG James has exceeded that burden, and more.

68 If the Government did not believe it possessed “vindictive/selective prosecution-related discovery,” DE-46 at 4, the Government could have so stated, without filing notice of its intent not to produce such discovery. Yet the November 4 Notice seemingly contradicts what the government has previously suggested, which is that it has in its possession some discovery relevant to the defense’s prosecutorial vindictiveness argument that would be produced. Id. at 2. The Government started that process of producing such discovery, and on October 30, produced just seven news articles about the James investigation or case. That is all. Then, in a move suggesting the Government found additional items which it did not want to reveal or produce, the Notice followed on November 4, suggesting more such discovery exists. Public reporting from the day before also indicated that FHFA’s acting inspector general, Joe Allen, was fired from his role on November 3 “after he made efforts to provide key information to prosecutors in [Ms. Halligan’s] office, according to four sources. The information he turned over was constitutionally required, . . . [or] potentially relevant in discovery.” Sarah N. Lynch et al., Exclusive: Trump ousts watchdog of US housing regulator involved in mortgage probes of his foes, sources say, Reuters (Nov. 3, 2025), https://perma.cc/56J2-V7VZ (emphasis added). The defense is left guessing at what other prosecutorial vindictiveness discovery exists in the government’s hands.

Then yesterday, after receiving 2TB of discovery last Wednesday …

5. Since the initial appearance, the government has produced a significant amount of electronic discovery to the defense, spanning five production volumes containing, in total, more than 17,000 documents and 115,000 pages. The latest production (Vol. 05) alone, received on Wednesday, November 12, included nearly two terabytes of data.

…And another several stories on Bill Pulte’s corruption, Attorney General James submitted a motion to dismiss because of outrageous misconduct motion that described the holes in the Bates stamps where the documents describing Pulte’s misconduct must be.

Additionally, the government is likely already in possession of discovery relating to Director Pulte’s conduct that has not been produced to AG James. Specifically, there is reason to believe that documents reportedly turned over by former FHFA Acting Inspector General, including the internal complaint about Director Pulte’s access to AG James’s loan file, have not been produced. Based on metadata (including filename/file path) and the presence of an additional Bates stamp (FM_EDVA_122_), over 100 pages of discovery likely turned over by the former FHFA Acting Inspector General has not been produced.

Accordingly, in addition to the communications listed above, AG James specifically requests that the government be ordered to produce:

  • Any internal complaints filed against Director Pulte related to AG James.
  • All documents bearing a “FM_EDVA_122_” Bates stamp, including:
    • FM_EDVA_122_0000015–FM_EDVA_122_0000023
    • FM_EDVA_122_0000042–FM_EDVA_122_0000055
    • FM_EDVA_122_0000099–FM_EDVA_122_0000107
    • FM_EDVA_122_0000113–FM_EDVA_122_0000125
    • FM_EDVA_122_0000144–FM_EDVA_122_0000155
    • FM_EDVA_122_0000574–FM_EDVA_122_0000579

James’ outrageous action motion also focused on comms among others in Trump’s administration.

The current record of “outrageous conduct” is more than sufficient to dismiss this indictment. But even if this Court finds that AG James should be required to point to more to meet her burden to prove outrageous government conduct, the basis for discovery and an evidentiary hearing has been well established. The facts outlined above merit, at the very least, fulsome discovery into the government’s conduct in bringing this case, including all communications among and between President Trump, AG Bondi, Ms. Halligan, Mr. Martin, Director Pulte, and their staffs regarding AG James.

That comes, of course, mere weeks after Judge Jamar Walker ordered a litigation hold in response to Lindsey Halligan’s stalking of Anna Bower.

The defendant presents evidence that government counsel communicated with a member of the media about this case using an encrypted messaging app that enables automatic deletion of messages. See generally ECF No. 21-1. The Court is not asked to decide now whether any communications between the government and media are or will become discoverable. But in the event that such communications take place and are discoverable (or are subject to a judicial determination about discoverability), it is important that the government preserve the evidence of those communications. Cf. Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963) (“suppression by the prosecution of evidence favorable to an accused upon request violates due process where the evidence is material either to guilt or to punishment, irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution”). Accordingly, the Court ORDERS a litigation hold preventing the deletion or destruction of any records or communications having to do with the investigation or prosecution of this case. This hold shall be in effect until further order of the Court.

And yet James may have to follow up on that order, given a letter from Jamie Raskin to Eagle Ed Martin demanding that he stop using Signal chats to weaponizing government against Trump’s adversaries.

My staff have received credible allegations that you have been using personal devices, platforms, and applications that do not adhere to federal laws and DOJ policies regarding records retention to conduct official DOJ business. This deliberate evasion of relevant rules of record retention appears to be part of an effort to conceal the Weaponization Working Group’s activities and your own conduct. Such conduct violates not only the Federal Records Act (FRA) and DOJ policy but also potentially relevant criminal statutes.4

The FRA requires all federal agencies and their employees to “make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency.”5 This obligation applies to all recorded information, “regardless of form or characteristics.”6 DOJ policies reinforce these statutory requirements. DOJ Policy Statement 0801.04, for instance, states that personal email and other electronic accounts should not be used for DOJ business except under “exigent circumstances,” and when used, employees must comply with FRA requirements by forwarding communications to official accounts.7

Instead of preserving those records, however, you are reportedly concealing and potentially destroying them. As you are well aware, as one of America’s top-ranking federal lawyers charged with supervising enforcement of these laws, you are obligated to follow the law yourself and preserve messages related to your DOJ work in the official DOJ systems. Your purported failure to do so is not only illegal but it also suggests that you are knowingly covering up incriminating conversations that you need to keep off the books.

It’s unlikely that Lindsey’s single Loaner AUSA will ever be able to prove the case against James, 2TB of data and all.

But along the way, she and her co-conspirators are leaving a trail of corruption and crime a mile wide. They’re doing it in the same courthouse where Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s conduct is already the focus of scrutiny.

Trump’s DOJ won’t prosecute this, and Trump will pardon all of his minions at some point. But they decided to perform their corruption for judges, and that may not work out the way they want.

Loaner AUSA Gabriel Diaz: Why Do You Think There Are Two Indictments Signed by Lindsey Halligan?

Did Lindsey Halligan sign and docket two indictments — nay, one indictment plus two copies (fucked and fixed) of a no-billed indictment?

Why yes Lindsey Halligan did.

“So this has never happened before. I’ve been handed two documents that are in the Mr. Comey case that are inconsistent with one another,” Vaala said to Halligan. “There seems to be a discrepancy. They’re both signed by the (grand jury) foreperson.”

And she noted that one document did not clearly indicate what the grand jury had decided.

“The one that says it’s a failure to concur in an indictment, it doesn’t say with respect to one count,” Vaala said. “It looks like they failed to concur across all three counts, so I’m a little confused as to why I was handed two things with the same case number that are inconsistent.”

Halligan initially responded that she hadn’t seen that version of the indictment.

“So I only reviewed the one with the two counts that our office redrafted when we found out about the two — two counts that were true billed, and I signed that one. I did not see the other one. I don’t know where that came from,” Halligan told the judge.

Vaala responded, “You didn’t see it?” And Halligan again told her, “I did not see that one.”

Vaala seemed surprised: “So your office didn’t prepare the indictment that they —”

Halligan then replied, “No, no, no — I — no, I prepared three counts. I only signed the one — the two-count (indictment). I don’t know which one with three counts you have in your hands.”

“Okay. It has your signature on it,” Vaala told Halligan, who responded, “Okay. Well.”

Except now that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer can’t explain how she spent her day on September 25, Gabriel Diaz fronting for James Hayes under the name of Lindsey Halligan says maybe there wasn’t a second indictment.

The government’s position is that disclosure of grand jury materials is not warranted under the facts presented to the Magistrate Judge. Indeed, the government believes the Magistrate Judge may have misinterpreted some facts he found when issuing the latest order to release the grand jury materials to the defendant. For instance, (1) whether the defendant has any standing to challenge the Richman materials, (2) the full context of the statements made by the prosecutor to the grand jury, (3) that Agent-3 was exposed to potentially privileged material, and (4) that two indictments were presented to the grand jury. Additionally, the Magistrate Judge acknowledges he “did not immediately recognize any overtly privileged communications.” Dkt. No. 192 at 14. The possible exposure of privileged materials to the grand jury was the primary focus of the Magistrate Judge’s inquiry. Having seemingly settled that issue, the Magistrate Judge turns to premature issues such as suppression that have not even been briefed by the parties.

Literally items (2), (3), and (4) came from the government!

But now, in a desperate bid to buy a week of time to try to find a way to delay Jim Comey’s discovery that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer and the Attorney General of the United States think he’s not entitled to Fifth Amendment rights.

If two indictments weren’t presented, then Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer has submitted a fabrication to the court and we should start criminal contempt proceedings.

Judge Fitzpatrick rattled off eleven problems with this indictment. And you want to stall for time?

All the evidence suggests there is no indictment, because the foreperson no-billed the only one presented to the grand jury.

And they want to stall for time?

Update: From Comey’s response. Holy hell these people are way more moderated than I would be.

Moreover, with respect to the presentment, the affidavit Ms. Halligan voluntarily presented raised significant concerns about whether the operative indictment was actually presented to the grand jury, and if so, by whom. The logical conclusion from Ms. Halligan’s declaration is that no one from the government presented a new indictment to the grand jury after it issued a no bill. Ms. Halligan’s declaration attests that she did not reappear before the grand jury upon learning of the grand jury’s vote to no bill the indictment she presented between 2:18PM and 4:28PM. See ECF No. 188-1 at 2 (“During the intermediary time, between concluding my presentation and being notified of the grand jury’s return, I had no interaction whatsoever with any members of the grand jury.”). And, importantly, she asserts that “the transcript accurately reflects the entirety of the government’s presentation and presence in front of the grand jury. There was no additional presentation, interaction, or discussion with the grand jury outside of what is reflected in the transcript.” ECF No. 188-1 at 1 (emphasis added). If no one from the government presented the operative indictment, as logically follows from Ms. Halligan’s own assertions and her ultimate handing up of a purported indictment that differs from the one partially no true billed, then the grand jury did not vote on it. See ECF No. 193 at 17-18.

Update: Here’s the colloquy between Magistrate Judge Lindsey Vaala and the Foreperson.

THE FOREPERSON: So the three counts should be just one count. It was the very first count that we did not agree on, and the Count Two and Three were then put in a different package, which we agreed on.

THE COURT: So you —

THE FOREPERSON: So they separated it.

THE COURT: Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. So you voted on the one that has the two counts?

THE FOREPERSON: Yes.

THE COURT: Okay. And you’re just giving me the other one for what reason?

THE FOREPERSON: That we could not agree on.

THE COURT: Okay. But just for one count?

Update: Judge Nachmanoff has given the government two days to bitch. Comey has a reply due on his broader grand jury request on Thursday, so Comey might file early.

ORDERED that the Motion (ECF 195) is GRANTED IN PART; and it is further ORDERED that the government will file any objections to Judge Fitzpatrick’s Order by 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 19, 2025. Thereafter, the defense will file any response to any objection by the government by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 21, 2025; and it is further ORDERED that Judge Fitzpatrick’s Order (ECF 193) is STAYED pending the resolution of any objections filed by the government, which this Court will consider on the papers as to James B. Comey Jr. Signed by District Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff on 11/17/2025.

There’s also a hearing on Comey’s vindictive and selective prosecution on Wednesday.

Bill Barr Helped Lindsey Halligan Fuck Up the Comey Prosecution

As I noted, William Fitzpatrick ordered the government to turn over the grand jury materials to Jim Comey by 3PM today.

In spite of all the ways that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer fucked up, she’s actually only responsible for three of the problems.

Others stem from conduct under Bill Barr, when these materials were first seized with warrants targeting Dan Richman.

Thus far, prosecutors have only named one investigation for which DOJ obtained these warrants: The Arctic Haze investigation into whether Richman — and through him, Jim Comey — leaked information about materials stolen from SVR in 2016; that investigation was closed without charge in 2021.

In 2017, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia (“USAO-DDC”) initiated an investigation, referred to by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) as Arctic Haze. ECF 71 at 2. This investigation concerned an allegation of unauthorized disclosure of classified information to a New York Times reporter, which appeared in an April 22, 2017 article titled “Comey Tried to Shield the FBI from Politics. Then He Shaped an Election.” Id. The investigation focused on the article’s inclusion of classified information related to one of the factors that influenced Mr. Comey’s decision, as then-FBI director, to unilaterally announce the closure of the FBI’s investigation into then-Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified material while she was serving as Secretary of State. Id. Daniel Richman, a Columbia Law School professor, personal friend of Mr. Comey, and former Special Government Employee at the FBI during Mr. Comey’s tenure as FBI Director, was quoted by name in the article and was the subject of USAO-DDC’s investigation. Id.

But there must be a second investigation, because the warrants extend beyond the time of the Arctic Haze story and they include a crime, 18 USC 641, unrelated to it.

The Richman Warrants authorized agents to search for and seize information created or stored between March 1, 2016 and May 30, 2017 that constituted evidence of violations of 18 U.S.C. § 641 (Theft and Conversion of Stolen Government Property) and 18 U.S.C. § 793 (Unlawful Gathering or Transmission of National Defense Information).

As I said in my video today, the 18 USC 641 would correspond with an attempt to criminalize sharing memos recording Trump’s misconduct.

But even that can’t be all.

As a letter drafted by Richman’s attorney in April 2020 noted, DOJ twice extended the range of the seizure beyond the period authorized by the warrant.

According to an April 29, 2020 letter from Mr. Richman’s then-attorney to the government–produced to the Court ex parte by the defense–the Department of Justice informed Mr. Richman that the data it obtained from his iCloud account extended to August 13, 2019, well outside the scope of the warrant and well past the date on which Mr. Richman was retained as Mr. Comey’s attorney. ECF 181-6 at 20. The same letter further states that the Department of Justice informed Mr. Richman that it had seized data from Mr. Richman’s hard drive that extended to June 10, 2017–again well into the period during which Mr. Richman represented Mr. Comey–despite the warrant (19-sw-182) imposing a temporal limit of April 30, 2017. Id.

In August 2019, the government obtained all of May and part of June 2017 beyond the warrant — which happened to include the scope of the Comey memos and go right through his testimony to Mueller and public testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. The approved scope of the warrants thereafter all extended to May 30, past the time Comey released his memos and Rod Rosenstein appointed a Special Counsel. Then, in January 2020, DOJ obtained iCloud content from two and a half years beyond the scope of the known warrant, through August 2019.

There’s likely good reason DOJ did that: to feed the Durham investigation, which had shifted to chasing the Clinton Plan conspiracy theory by early 2020.

The government never asked Comey to review those materials for privilege even though, as Fitzpatrick noted, three of the warrants extended beyond the time he retained Richman.

[T]he government never engaged Mr. Comey in this process even though it knew that Mr. Richman represented Mr. Comey as his attorney as of May 9, 2017, and three of the four Richman Warrants authorized the government to search Mr. Richman’s devices through May 30, 2017, 21 days after an attorney-client relationship had been formed.

[snip]

[I]n 2019 and 2020, the government made a conscious decision to exclude Mr. Comey from the filter process, even though Mr. Comey, as the client, is the privilege holder, not Mr. Richman.

Fitzpatrick excused Tyler Lemons and Gabriel Wolf, as well as EDVA, for the slovenly way the earlier searches were done: they all happened long before any of those AUSAs were involved in the case.

4 To be clear, the two assistant United States attorneys currently assigned to this case entered their appearances post-indictment and were not a part of the Arctic Haze investigative team.

7 It is important to note that the USAO-EDVA prosecutors were not involved in the 2019 and 2020 searches of the Richman materials and may have reasonably assumed the agents in 2019 and 2020 seized and preserved only those materials responsive to the warrants.

But there is someone who likely does span the slovenly earlier treatment and that of the last two months: Jack Eckenrode. Indeed, Eckenrode may even have worked for Durham (hunting Jim Baker for a different leak investigation) before Barr assigned Durham to chase Russian disinformation for four years. But those secondary investigations would have fed right into Durham.

That makes this description of the decision to have what is presumed to be Miles Starr testify before the grand jury more suspect.

The government presented this case to the grand jury on September 25, 2025. ECF 1. The same day, prior to the grand jury presentment, Agent-2 alerted the lead case agent (hereinafter referred to as Agent-3 [Miles Starr]) and an attorney with the FBI’s Office of General Counsel that “evidence obtained in the Government’s investigation of James Comey may constitute attorney-client privileged or attorney-client confidential information. It is also possible that [the agents] may have obtained evidence that constitutes attorney work-product information.”8 ECF 89-5. Agent-2 gave Agent-3 and the FBI attorney “a limited overview of the [privileged] communications.” ECF 172- 2.9 Agent-3, rather than remove himself from the investigative team until the taint issue was resolved, proceeded into the grand jury undeterred and testified in support of the pending indictment. ECF 179. In fact, Agent-3 was the only witness to testify before the grand jury in support of the pending indictment. Id. The government’s decision to allow an agent who was exposed to potentially privileged information to testify before a grand jury is highly irregular and a radical departure from past DOJ practice.

8 This is the language used by an FBI attorney to characterize their September 25, 2025 phone conversation with Agent-3. A second agent, possibly Agent-2, was also on the call but that that person’s identity has been shielded from the Court. ECF 89-5. [citing the filing that mentioned the two lead case agents]

9 The government provided no further detail about what, in its view, constitutes a “limited overview.” [my emphasis]

The two lead case agents mentioned in Comey’s most extensive discussion of what happened are reported to be Starr and Eckenrode, the latter rehired after failing to substantiate this conspiracy theory the first time.

And remember: one of the people who appears as author of a document but who did not notice an appearance is a second Gabriel, Gabriel Cohen, who registers an OGC email address. He authored Lindsey Halligan’s ill-fated declaration. Perhaps he’s the FBI lawyer who thought it’d be cool to have a tainted witness present to the grand jury.

Fitzpatrick plays coy about why no one thought to ask for a filter protocol until October 13 (perhaps not coincidentally, the day Maggie Cleary was fired).

For reasons that remain unclear, the government waited 31 days from September 12, 2025, the date the FBI began reviewing the materials, and 18 days from September 25, 2025, the date the FBI informed its Office of General Counsel about having been exposed to potentially privileged materials, before seeking court approval of a filter protocol on October 13, 2025.

One possible reason: They weren’t going to ask for a filter review at all until the Loaner AUSAs came in and put their bar licenses at risk.

They stumbled on something they thought would feed their grand conspiracy and tried to run with it.

Perhaps they anticipated that the least scrutiny of this conduct would reveal layers upon layers of misconduct.

The 11 Fuck-Ups Pam Bondi’s DOJ Made in Indicting Jim Comey

Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick has ordered the government to give Jim Comey grand jury materials by 3PM.

He provided four bases for doing so. First, it’s likely the material presented to the grand jury violated Comey’s Fourth Amendment, as I explained in a video this morning.

As Fitzpatrick describes, there were several errors. DOJ didn’t scope most of the communications seized in 2019 and 2020 (that is, a Bill Barr fuck-up). And then, they chose not to obtain a new warrant to access the materials for a totally different investigation.

By the summer of 2025, the FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia (USAO-EDVA) had initiated a criminal investigation into Mr. Comey. ECF Nos. 172-1 and 172-2. As part of the investigation, on September 12, 2025, an FBI agent assigned to the Director’s Advisory Team was instructed, apparently with the concurrence of the USAOEDVA, 7 to review “a Blu-ray disc that contained a full Cellebrite extraction and Reader reports of [Mr. Richman’s] iPhone and iPad backups.” ECF 172-1.

Inexplicably, the government elected not to seek a new warrant for the 2025 search, even though the 2025 investigation was focused on a different person, was exploring a fundamentally different legal theory, and was predicated on an entirely different set of criminal offenses. The Court recognizes that a failure to seek a new warrant under these circumstances is highly unusual. The Court also recognizes that seeking a new warrant under these circumstances would have required a fresh legal analysis and likely resulted in some delay, a delay the investigative team could not afford given that the statute of limitations would expire in a mere 18 days. See 18 U.S.C. § 3282(a).

If a new warrant had been sought by the government and issued by the Court, the Fourth Amendment would have required it to be narrowly tailored, authorizing access only to materials within a limited time frame and relevant to the new offenses under investigation. See Williams, 592 F.3d at 519. In addition, any new warrant would have imposed strict procedural safeguards to ensure privileged information was not reviewed by the prosecution team. As a result, the parameters of the 2025 search would inevitably have had a different and much narrower scope than the Richman Warrants. Faced with this prospect, the government chose to unilaterally search materials that were (1) seized five years earlier; (2) seized in a separate and since closed investigation; (3) that were never reviewed to determine whether the seized information was responsive to the original warrants; (4) that were likely improperly held by the government for a prolonged period of time; (5) that included potentially privileged communications; (6) did so without ever engaging the privilege holders; and (7) did so without seeking any new judicial authority.

Second, after being exposed to privileged communications, Miles Starr nevertheless still presented the case to the grand jury.

Third, Lindsey Halligan fundamentally mis-informed the jury, first by suggesting that Comey would have to testify at trial, and second by implying there was a bunch more evidence that would be used at trial (which might reflect taint from the privileged comms Starr knew of).

Fourth, she apparently did not re-present the charges the grand jury approved — what I surmised last week.

The short time span between the moment the prosecutor learned that the grand jury rejected one count in the original indictment and the time the prosecutor appeared in court to return the second indictment could not have been sufficient to draft the second indictment, sign the second indictment, present it to the grand jury, provide legal instructions to the grand jury, and give them an opportunity to deliberate and render a decision on the new indictment. If the prosecutor is mistaken about the time she received notification of the grand jury’s vote on the original indictment, and this procedure did take place, then the transcript and audio recording provided to the Court are incomplete.12 If this procedure did not take place, then the Court is in uncharted legal territory in that the indictment returned in open court was not the same charging document presented to and deliberated upon by the grand jury. Either way, this unusual series of events, still not fully explained by the prosecutor’s declaration, calls into question the presumption of regularity generally associated with grand jury proceedings, and provides another genuine issue the defense may raise to challenge the manner in which the government obtained the indictment.

12 It is the responsibility of the United States Attorney’s Office to record and, if required, transcribe all grand jury proceedings.

All in all, Fitzpatrick lists 11 things that might merit throwing out the indictment — if there is one — altogether.

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