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The Most Complex Friday Night News Dump, Ever?

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President Trump arrived late to a healthcare announcement yesterday and didn’t take any questions.

Starting around the same time, DOJ launched some of the most complexly executed Friday Night News dumps going.

Epstein Limited Hangout

The big attraction was the release of the first batch of the Epstein files. The limited release violates the law, which required all files to be released yesterday.

Instead, there were a whole bunch of Bill Clinton photos, the document reflecting Maria Farmer’s complaint from 1996, that went ignored for years, and redacted grand jury transcripts that clearly violate the law. [Update: They have now released the SDNY ones.] The government did not release the proposed indictment and prosecution memo for the indictment that should have been filed in 2007; that may be sealed as deliberative.

Todd Blanche’s wildly dishonest letter (particularly with regards to his claimed concern for victims, after being admonished repeatedly by judges for failing to take that responsibility seriously and a last minute bid that promised but failed to put Pam Bondi on the phone) explaining the release emphasizes how Bondi took over a hundred national security attorneys off their job hunting hackers and spies to conduct a second review; it does not mention the even bigger review the FBI accomplished in March.

The review team consisted of more than 200 Department attorneys working to determine whether materials were responsive under the Act and. if so, whether redactions or withholding was required, The review had multiple levels. First, 187 attorneys from the Department’sNational Security Division (NSD) conducted a review of all items produced to JMD for responsiveness and any redactions under the Act. Second, a quality-control team of 25 attorneys conducted a second-level review to ensure that victim personally identifying information wasproperly redacted and that materials that should not be redacted were not marked for redaction.The second-level review team consisted of attorneys from the Department’s Office of Privacy and Civil Liberties (OPCL) and Office of Information Policy (OIP)—these attorneys are experts in privacy rights and reviewing large volumes of discovery. After the second-level review team completed its quality review, responsive materials were uploaded onto the website for public production as required under the Act. See Sec. 2(a). Finally, Assistant United States Attorneys from the Southern District of New York reviewed the responsive materials to confirm appropriate redactions so that the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York could certify that victim identifying information was appropriately protected.

That John Eisenberg’s department was in charge of a second pass on these documents is of some interest; there’s no specific competence Nat Sec attorneys would have, but Eisenberg has helped Trump cover stuff up in the past, most notably the transcript of his perfect phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Thus far the limited hangout has shifted the focus onto Clinton and away from Trump, but as Kyle Cheney lays out, it risks creating a WikiLeaks effect, in which a focus remains on Epstein for weeks or even months.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed Friday that the documents would be released on a rolling basis through the holidays — and possibly beyond. And, in court papers filed shortly after Friday’s partial release, the Justice Department emphasized that more files are still undergoing a review and redaction process to protect victims and new Trump-ordered investigations before they can be released.

The daily drip is a remarkable result for President Donald Trump, who has urged his allies to move past the Epstein files — prompting jeers from Democrats who say he’s trying to conceal details about his own longtime relationship with Epstein. Trump has maintained for years that he and Epstein had a falling out years ago, and no evidence has suggested that Trump took part in Epstein’s trafficking operation. Trump advocated for the release of the files only after Republicans in Congress rebuffed his initial pleas to keep them concealed.

[snip]

Trump is no stranger to the political power of intermittent disclosures of derogatory information. In 2016, Trump led the charge to capitalize on the hack-and-leak operation that led to daily publications of the campaign emails of Hillary Clinton and her top allies. The steady drumbeat of embarrassing releases — amplified by Trump and a ravenous press corps — helped sink Clinton’s campaign in its final weeks.

And that’s before the political and legal response to this limited hangout. Some victims are already expressing disappointment — most notably, by the redaction of grand jury material and names they know they shared, as well as the draft indictment from Florida.

Tom Massie and Ro Khanna, while originally giving DOJ the benefit of the doubt, are now contemplating measures they can take — potentially including contempt or impeachment — to enforce this law.

After Fox News was the first to report that the names of some politically exposed persons would be redacted, DOJ’s favorite transcriptionist Brooke Singman told a different story.

And Administration officials are getting burned by Elon’s fascism machine for their dishonesty.

Once again, Trump’s top flunkies may be overestimating their ability to contain their scandal.

Todd Blanche behind the selective prosecution

Meanwhile, efforts by those same flunkies to punish Kilmar Abrego continue to impose costs.

There have been parallel proceedings with Abrego in the last month. Just over a week ago in his immigration docket, Judge Paula Xinis ordered Kilmar Abrego to be released from ICE custody for the first time since March, and then issued another order enjoining DHS from taking him back into custody at a check-in the next day. Effectively, Xinis found the government had been playing games for months, making claims they had plans to ship Abrego to one or another African country instead of Costa Rica, which had agreed to take him. Those games were, in effect, admission they had no order of removal for him, and so could no longer detain him.

[B]ecause Respondents have no statutory authority to remove Abrego Garcia to a third country absent a removal order, his removal cannot be considered reasonably foreseeable, imminent, or consistent with due process. Although Respondents may eventually get it right, they have not as of today. Thus, Abrego Garcia’s detention for the stated purpose of third country removal cannot continue.

But even as that great drama was happening, something potentially more dramatic was transpiring in Abrego’s criminal docket.

Back on December 4, Judge Waverly Crenshaw, who had been receiving, ex parte, potential evidence he ordered the government turn over in response to Abrego’s vindictive prosecution claim, canceled a hearing and kicked off a fight over disclosures with DOJ. Four days later he had a hearing with the government as part of their bid for partial reconsideration, but then provided a limited set of exhibits to Kilmar’s attorneys.

Then yesterday, in addition to a request that Judge Crenshaw gag Greg Bovino — who keeps lying about Abrego — Abrego’s team submitted filings in support of the bid to dismiss the indictment. One discloses that Todd Blanche’s office was pushed by people within Blanche’s office, including Aakash Singh, who is centrally involved in Blanche’s other abuse of DOJ resources, including by targeting George Soros.

Months ago now, this Court recognized that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s “remarkable” admission that this case was brought because “a judge in Maryland…questioned” the government’s decision to deport Mr. Abrego and “accus[ed] us of doing something wrong”1 may “come close to establishing actual vindictiveness.” (Dkt. 138 at 7-8). The only thing the Court found missing from the record was evidence “tying [Mr. Blanche’s statements] to actual decisionmakers.” (Id. at 8). Not anymore. Previously, the Court rightly wondered who placed this case on Mr. McGuire’s desk and what their motivations were. (Dkt. 185 at 2). We now know: it was Mr. Blanche and his office, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, or “ODAG.” On April 30, 2025, just three days after Mr. McGuire personally took on this case, one of Mr. Blanche’s chief aides, Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh, told Mr. McGuire that this case was a [redacted]2 (Abrego-Garcia000007). That same day, Mr. Singh asked Mr. McGuire: [redacted] (Abrego-Garcia000008). Mr. McGuire responded with a timing update, saying he wanted to about a strategic question, and assuring Mr. Singh [redacted] and [redacted] (Abrego-Garcia000008). These communications and others show, as the Court put it, that [redacted] and [redacted] (Dkt. 241 at 5, 7). The “remarkable” statements “com[ing] close” to establishing vindictiveness (Dkt. 138 at 7-8) came from the same place— ODAG—as the instructions to Mr. McGuire to charge this case. The only “independent” decision (Dkt. 199 at 1) Mr. McGuire made was whether to acquiesce in ODAG’s directive to charge this case, or risk forfeiting his job as Acting U.S. Attorney—and perhaps his employment with the Department of Justice—for refusing to do the political bidding of an Executive Branch that is avowedly using prosecutorial power for “score settling.”3

2 The Court’s December 3 opinion (Dkt. 241) remains sealed, and the discovery produced to the defense in connection with Mr. Abrego’s motion to dismiss for vindictive and selective prosecution was provided pursuant to a protective order requiring that “[a]ny filing of discovery materials must be done under seal pending further orders of this Court” (Dkt. 77 at 2). Although the defense does not believe that any of these materials should be sealed for the reasons stated in Mr. Abrego’s memorandum of law regarding sealing (Dkt. 264), the defense is publicly filing a redacted version of this brief out of an abundance of caution pending further orders of the Court.

3 See Chris Whipple, Susie Wiles Talks Epstein Files, Pete Hegseth’s War Tactics, Retribution, and More (Part 2 of 2), Vanity Fair (Dec. 16, 2025), https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-susie-wiles-interview-exclusive-part-2.

While the specific content of this discovery remains redacted, the gist of it is clear: Blanche’s office ordered Tennessee prosecutors to file charges against Abrego in retaliation for his assertion of his due process rights.

We know similar documents exist in other cases — most notably, that of LaMonica McIver, Jim Comey, and Letitia James — but no one else has succeeded in getting their hands on the proof.

The Jim Comey stall

Speaking of which, the news you heard about yesterday is that DOJ filed its notice of appeal in both the Jim Comey and Letitia James’ dismissals.

The move comes after DOJ tried to indict James again in Norfolk on December 4 and then tried again in Alexandria on December 11, after which the grand jury made a point of making the failure (and the new terms of the indictment, which Molly Roberts lays out here) clear; Politico first disclosed the Alexandria filings here.

But I think the more interesting development — filed close to the time of the notice of appeals (the notices landed in my email box around 5:44-46PM ET on the last Friday before Christmas and the emergency motion landed in my email box around 5:17PM) — was yet another emergency motion in the Dan Richman case, something DOJ (under Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s name) keeps doing. After Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued her ruling that sort of said DOJ had to return Dan Richman’s stuff and move the remaining copy to EDVA, DOJ filed an emergency motion asking for clarification and an extension and (in a footnote) reconsideration. After Kollar-Kotelly granted the extension and some clarification (while grumbling about the tardiness and largely blowing off the motion for reconsideration), DOJ asked for another extension. Then DOJ filed a motion just informing Kollar-Kotelly they were going to do something else, the judge issued a long docket order noting (in part) that DOJ had violated their assurances they wouldn’t make any copies of this material, then ordering Richman to explain whether he was cool with this material ending up someplace still in DOJ custody rather than EDVA.

In its December 12, 2025, Order, the Court ordered the Government to “return to Petitioner Richman all copies of the covered materials, except for the single copy that the Court [] allowed to be deposited, under seal, with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.” See Dkt. No. 20. The Court ordered the Government to certify compliance with its Order by 4:00 p.m. ET on December 15, 2025. Id. The Court further ordered that, until the Government certified compliance with its December 12 Order, the Government was “not to… share, disseminate, or disclose the covered materials to any person, without first seeking and obtaining leave of this Court.” See Order, Dkt. No. 20 at 2 (incorporating the terms of Order, Dkt. No. 10).

On December 15 (the Government’s original deadline to certify compliance with the Court’s December 12 Order), the Government requested a seven-day extension of its deadline to certify compliance with the Court’s December 12 Order. Dkt. No. 22. Petitioner Richman consented to this extension. Id. And the Government represented that it would “continue to comply with its obligation… not to access or share the covered materials without leave of the Court.” Id. at 11 (citing Order, Dkt. No. 10 and Order, Dkt. No. 20). So the Court granted the Government’s request for extension, thereby continuing the Government’s deadline to certify compliance with the Court’s December 12 Order to 4:00 p.m. ET on December 22. Order, Dkt. No. 26.

As of this date, the Government has not certified compliance with the Court’s December 12 Order. Accordingly, the Government is still under a Court order that prohibits it from accessing Petitioner Richman’s covered materials or sharing, disseminating, or disclosing Petitioner Richman’s covered materials to any person without first seeking and obtaining leave of this Court. See Dkt. No. 10; Dkt. No. 20; Dkt. No. 22; Dkt. No. 26. As the Government admits, the Government provided this copy of Petitioner Richman’s materials to the CISO “after the Government filed its emergency motion,” Gov’t’s Mot., Dkt. No. 31 at 1, fn. 1, in which the Government represented that it would “continue to comply with its obligation… not to access or share the covered materials without leave of the Court.” Dkt. No. 22 at 11.

In last night’s motion for emergency clarification (which had all the clarity of something written after a Christmas happy hour), DOJ explained that they couldn’t deposit the materials (which according to Kollar-Kotelly’s orders, would no longer have the single up-classified memo that Richman first shared his entire computer so FBI could get eight years ago) because there was no Classified Information Security Officer in the courthouse serving DOD, CIA, and ODNI. So they raised new complaints — basically, yet another motion for reconsideration. After having claimed, last week, that they had just a single copy of Richman’s data, they noted that actually they had it in a bunch of places, then pretended to be confused about storage devices.

d. The Court further clarified its order on December 16, 2025, stating that the Court “has not ordered the Government to delete or destroy any evidence.” ECF No. 27 at 2. But the Court has also instructed the Government that it may not “retain[] any additional copies of the covered materials.” ECF No. 20 at 2. The government has copies of the information in its systems and on electronic media. It is not clear how the government can avoid “retaining” the materials without deleting them.

e. The Court has not yet otherwise explained whether the Government must provide to Richman the original evidence “obtained in the Arctic Haze investigation (i.e., hard and/or flash drives and discs currently in the custody of the FBI,” ECF No. 22 at 9, some subset thereof (e.g., not including classified information), whether the Government must provide Richman the covered materials in some other fashion, and what else the Government must do (or not do) to comply with the December 12, 2025 order.

After they confessed, last week, that neither the discontinued e-Discovery software nor the now-retired and possibly impaired FBI agent could reconstruct what happened with Richman’s data five years ago, they insisted they were really keeping track of the data, Pinky Promise.

f. Notwithstanding the passage of time, changes in personnel, and the limits of institutional memory, the Government emphasizes that the materials at issue have at all times remained subject to the Department of Justice’s standard evidence-preservation, record-retention, and chain of custody protocols. The Government is not aware of any destruction, alteration or loss of original evidence seized pursuant to valid court-authorized warrants. Any uncertainty reflected in the Government’s present responses regarding the existence or accessibility of certain filtered or derivative working files does not undermine the integrity, completeness, or continued preservation of the original materials lawfully obtained and retained. The Government’s responses are offered to assist the Court in tailoring any appropriate relief under Rule 41(g) in a manner consistent with its equitable purpose, while preserving the Government’s lawful interests and constitutional responsibilities with respect to evidence obtained pursuant to valid warrants and subject to independent preservation obligations.

Every single thing about the treatment of Richman’s data defies this claim, which is why he had a Fourth Amendment injury to be redressed in the first place.

Nevertheless, in this their second motion fashioned as a motion for clarification, they they propose, can’t we just keep all the data and Pinky Promise not to do anything with it?

g. Rather than require the government to “return” or otherwise divest its systems of the information, the government respectfully suggests that the more appropriate remedy would simply be to direct the government to continue not to access the information in its possession without obtaining a new search warrant. It is not clear what Fourth Amendment interest would be served by ordering the “return” of copies of information (other than classified information) that is already in the movant’s possession, and that the government continues to possess, at least in the custody of a court (or the Department of Justice’s Litigation Security group, as may be appropriate given the presence of classified information). And the Court’s order properly recognizes that it is appropriate for the government to retain the ability to access the materials for future investigative purposes if a search warrant is obtained. ECF No. 20 at 1. Forcing transfer of evidentiary custody from the Executive Branch to the Judiciary would depart from the traditional operation of Rule 41(g), which is remedial rather than supervisory, and would raise substantial separation-of-powers concerns. The government respectfully suggests that the best way to do that is to allow the executive branch of government to maintain the information in its possession, rather than forcing transfer of evidence to (and participation in the chain of custody by) a court. See, e.g., United States v. Bein, 214 F.3d 408, 415 (3d Cir. 2000) (applying then-Rule 41(e) and noting that it provided for “one specific remedy—the return of property”); see also Peloro v. United States, 488 F.3d 163, 177 (7th Cir. 2007) (same regarding now-Rule 41(g)).

Having violated their promise not to make copies without permission once already, they Pinky Promised, again, they wouldn’t do so.

b. The Government shall continue not to access or share the covered materials without leave of the Court. See ECF No. 10 at 4; ECF No. 20 at 2.

And then they offered a horseshit excuse to ask for a two week extension beyond the time Kollar-Kotelly responds to their latest demands (partly arising from their own stalling of this matter into Christmas season) — that is, not a two week extension from yesterday, which would bring them to January 2, but instead two weeks from some date after December 22, which was at the time Richman’s next deadline.

a. Because it is yet not clear to the Government precisely what property must be provided to Richman by December 22, 2025 at 4:00 PM (and what other actions the Government must or must not take to certify compliance with the December 12, 2025 order as modified), the Government respectfully requests that it be provided an additional fourteen days (because of potential technological limitations in copying voluminous digital data and potential personnel constraints resulting from the upcoming Christmas holiday) from the date of the Court’s final order clarifying the December 6, 2025 order to certify compliance. 1

1 An extension of the compliance deadline is merited by the extraordinary time pressure to which the Government has been subjected and the necessity of determining, with clarity, what the Government must do to comply with the December 12, 2025 order as clarified and modified. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(6); see also ECF No. 22 at 6–7 (summarizing applicable legal principles). [my emphasis]

They asked, effectively, to stall compliance for a month.

As a reminder, the grand jury teed up before Aileen Cannon convenes on January 12.

Kollar-Kotelly’s response (which landed in my email box at 7:06, so definitely after prime Christmas happy hour time) was … weird. In addition to granting the government part of the extension they requested (until December 29), she all of a sudden asked Richman what happened after he voluntarily let the FBI image his computer so they could ensure there was no classified information in it.

At present, in this second request, the Court would benefit from additional detail from Petitioner Richman regarding the Government’s imaging of Petitioner Richman’s personal computer hard drive in 2017. In 2017, Petitioner Richman consented to have the Government seize his personal computer hard drive, make a copy (an “image”) of his personal computer hard drive, and search his personal computer hard drive for the limited purpose of identifying and deleting a small subset of specified material. The Court is requesting information as to whether the hard drive that Petitioner Richman consented to have imaged by the Government was ever returned to Petitioner Richman, and, if so, whether any of the specified material had been removed from the hard drive that was returned.

Now maybe she’s asking this question simply to refute DOJ’s claim that any material independently held has to be held by a CISO.

The answer to this question is publicly available in the 80-page IG Report on this topic.

On June 13, 2017, FBI agents went to Richman’s home in New York to remove his desktop computer. On June 22, 2017, FBI agents returned the desktop computer to Richman at his home in New York after taking steps to permanently remove the Memos from it. While at Richman’s residence on June 22, 2017, the FBI agents also assisted Richman in deleting the text message with the photographs of Memo 4 from his cell phone.

It’s not clear why they ever kept the image in the first place (remember, they didn’t obtain a warrant to access it until well over two years later).

But I worry that Kollar-Kotelly is getting distracted from the clear recklessness — including DOJ’s most recent defiance of her order and their own Pinky Promises — for which Richman is due a remedy by the distinction between his physical property (the hard drive he got back eight years ago) and his digital property (the image of that hard drive, his Columbia emails, his iCloud, his iPhone, and iPad). The most serious abuse of his Fourth Amendment rights involved his phone, which DOJ only ever had in digital form, regardless of what kind of storage device they stored that content on (which we know to be a Blu-ray disc).

And meanwhile, everything about the government’s actions suggest they’re going to string Kollar-Kotelly along until they can get a warrant from the judge, Cannon, who once said Trump had to be given boxes and boxes of highly classified documents back because they also contained a single letter written by Trump’s personal physician and another letter published in Mueller materials.

They are just dicking around, at this point.

There’s a lot of shit going down in documents signed (as this emergency motion is) with Todd Blanche’s name. He still seems to believe he can juggle his way through politicizing the Department of Justice with some carefully executed Friday Night document dumps.

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The National Security Letter Seamus Hughes Found When Looking for a Dan Richman Docket

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Not long after something happened in November to prevent four Dan Richman dockets from being unsealed in DC District, Judge Anthony Trenga ordered a docket about a National Security Letter from the same period as the Dan Richman investigation (which he referred in 2019 to then Magistrate Judge Michael Nachmanoff) to be unsealed.

Both the four Dan Richman dockets and the NSL docket remain substantially sealed.

As I have laid out before, when Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick first held a hearing about DOJ’s bid to breach Jim Comey’s privilege on November 5, he started the hearing by focusing on all the sealed documents. When he asked Loaner AUSA Tyler Lemons about the status of the underlying warrants, Lemons equivocated.

THE COURT: Mr. Lemons, what’s the status of that?

MR. LEMONS: Thank you, Your Honor. Your Honor, we have made a request to the issuing district as to those search warrants, for them to be unsealed. My understanding, last speaking with an AUSA in that district, is that motion has not been filed at this time. They are preparing to provide notice to other potentially interested parties, per their practice and the rules they have to abide by in that district. So we requested it, and our understanding is at this time that the warrants all remain completely under seal. That is the only reason why the government designated these search warrants as protected material and filed them under seal and understands why the defense filed them under seal. If it was in my power and ability here today, those search warrants would be totally unsealed. [my emphasis]

After the hearing Fitzpatrick ordered that the parties take steps to unseal both the underlying warrant dockets and the sealed filings about them.

ORDERED that the Government shall, on or before November 10, 2025, move in the issuing district to unseal the four 2019 and 2020 search warrants referenced in the Government’s Reply to Defendant’s Response to the Government’s Motion for Implementation of Filter Protocol (ECF 132), together with all attendant documents, or, in the alternative, file a motion in the issuing district setting forth good cause as to why the subject search warrants and all attendant documents should remain under seal, in whole or in part; and it is further

[snip]

ORDERED that, if necessary, the Court shall hold a hearing on the pending motions to seal (ECFs 56, 72, 109, and 133) on November 21, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. in Courtroom 500, and the materials subject to those motions shall remain UNDER SEAL until further order of the Court; and it is further

ORDERED that, to the extent the Government seeks to seal Exhibit A to Defendant’s Response to the Government’s Motion for Expedited Ruling (ECF No. 55-1), the Government shall file a supporting brief in accordance with Local Criminal Rule 49 on or before November 12, 2025; Defendant may file a response on or before November 19, 2025; and, if necessary, the Court shall hold a hearing on the Government’s sealing request on November 21, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. in Courtroom 500;

Over a month ago, by November 10, the Loaner AUSAs in EDVA should have filed to unseal the four warrant dockets in DC or they should have filed a motion in DC “setting forth good cause as to why the subject search warrants and all attendant documents should remain under seal.”

If the Loaner AUSAs followed that order, it would seem to suggest someone insisted on keeping the dockets in DC sealed.

Fitzpatrick listed those dockets in a footnote of his November 17 opinion (that is, a week after DOJ would have had to file to keep everything sealed) granting Comey access to the grand jury transcripts in his case.

2 Search warrant 19-sw-182 was issued on August 27, 2019, and authorized the search of Mr. Richman’s hard drive from February 1, 2017 to April 30, 2017. ECF 89-1.

Search warrant 19-sc-2097 was issued on October 22, 2019, and authorized the search of Mr. Richman’s Columbia University and Law School email accounts from March 1, 2016 to May 30, 2017. ECF 89-2.

Search warrant 20-sw-200 was issued on January 31, 2020, and authorized the search of Mr. Richman’s iCloud account from March 1, 2016 to May 30, 2017. ECF 89-3. Attachment B to the warrant specifically limits the information to be seized to “non-privileged communications.” Id.

Search warrant 20-sw-143 was issued on June 4, 2020, and authorized the search of the backup files for Mr. Richman’s iPad and iPhone from March 1, 2016 to May 30, 2017. ECF 89-4. Attachment B to the warrant specifically limits the information to be seized to “non-privileged communications.” Id.

I just checked. They’re still sealed.

Some weeks ago, I did what any resourceful person would do to try to solve a docket mystery: I asked Seamus Hughes (of CourtWatch fame) if he could find anything.

He didn’t find any docket at DC asking to keep the files sealed.

What he did find is at least as interesting.

He found a docket, described as National Security Letter 19-498157 and listing Bill Barr as the defendant, which was originally referred to Michael Nachmanoff when he was a Magistrate Judge, with a recent update. On December 10, Judge Anthony Trenga, citing a response from DOJ on November 14 (which is sealed), ordered the docket about a 2019-2020 National Security Letter to be unsealed.

Aside from that order though, it remains substantially sealed.

This docket may be totally unrelated to the Comey case.

But the table above shows how neatly the two overlap. The NSL docket was opened a month after a Dan Richman interview in November 2019, and it was closed before DOJ obtained warrants to seize the iPhone which they’ve since been snooping into.

Maybe Santa can help us unwrap this in time for Christmas.

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Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s Attempted Baby-Splitting Leads to Exploding Diaper

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I suppose I should have reminded readers, somewhere in my close tracking of Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s attempt to craft a nifty solution to a difficult Fourth Amendment question, that she authored a 2004 FISA opinion from which a decade of bulk collection on Americans arose.

I delayed doing so, in part, because Tulsi Gabbard has deprecated the link to the official version and so I need to go find a copy. But this post describes the substance of the opinion. This post describes how subsequent phone dragnet opinions relied on it. And this timeline explains how, after Kollar-Kotelly was just the second FISA Judge read into the unconstitutional Stellar Wind program, and after she raised concerns about it, a guy named Jim Comey refused to reauthorize it in its then current form, which led to a famous standoff in a hospital, much drama, but only limited (and still largely undisclosed!) changes in the program, before Kollar-Kotelly wrote an opinion authorizing bulk collection that would be the cornerstone for 11 more years of bulk collection.

Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has a history with difficult Fourth Amendment decisions.

And she has a history with Jim Comey.

When we last reviewed this difficult Fourth Amendment question, Kollar-Kotelly had simply waved her hands over the original sins of unscoped seizures and overseized data targeting Dan Richman — which she deemed plausible Fourth Amendment violations but not something she had to deal with, she said, because she had found the later search of that likely unscoped data was itself a violation of the Fourth Amendment and so could apply a bunch of DC precedents that all addressed property that was, in the initial seizure, lawfully collected to data she agreed was plausibly also unlawfully collected. Then she ordered the government to send that unlawfully searched data to EDVA, where different precedents would apply, and where the government could get a warrant to access what they wanted.

In a motion to modify and clarify that was also, in a footnote, a motion for reconsideration, the government deftly asked to change the rules such that they would be able to keep the fruits of several iterations of unlawful searches, and Dan Richman would be gagged from revealing that’s what happened.

So here’s what Kollar-Kotelly — she of the history of difficult Fourth Amendment decisions and she with the two decade history with Jim Comey — has done since.

First, she issued an order bitching about the government’s last minute request and complaining that they didn’t raise these issues on the first go-around, but giving the government permission to keep anything derivative of those three iterations of unlawful seizures.

The Government’s [22] Motion, which was filed approximately one hour before the deadline for the filing of a certification of compliance set forth in this Court’s [20] Order, raises a variety of issues related to the handling of classified information and information that may be subject to the Government’s own privileges, including the attorney-client privilege and the deliberative process privilege. The Government could have-and should have-raised many of these issues earlier in its initial Response to Petitioner Richman’s [1] Motion for Return of Property, but it did not do so. The Court will clarify its [20] Order at greater length by separate order and, if appropriate, will request further briefing from the parties. For now, the Court notes three important clarifications:

[snip]

Further, this Court’s Order directed the return of Petitioner Richman’s own materials (and any copies of those materials), not any derivative files that the Government may have created. See Order, Dkt. No. 20, at 1 (directing the return of the original materials, copies of those materials, and any materials “directly obtained or extracted” from them); see also id. at 41 (explaining that the Court would not bar the Government from “using or relying on” the relevant materials in a separate investigation or proceeding). Accordingly, compliance with the Court’s Order will not intrude upon any of the Government’s privileges.

This order, by itself, would amount to permitting the government to use stuff tainted by a breach of attorney-client privilege (Jim Comey’s attorney-client privilege), something she has not dealt with at all.

Then yesterday, Kollar-Kotelly issued an order noting (in a footnote) the government request for reconsideration they buried in a footnote, but blowing it off …

1 In a footnote, the Government requests reconsideration of this Court’s merits ruling that the Government’s retention of the materials at issue violates Petitioner Richman’s Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures. See Gov’t’s Mot., Dkt. No. 22, at 7 n.5. However, the primary focus of the Government’s [22) Emergency Motion is the proper scope of the remedy to be awarded. Accordingly, the Court focuses here on issues that are directly relevant to the issue of remedy.

… But also requiring (among other things) the parties to explain three things, with the following deadlines:

  • By 9:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, the government should share its great ideas on how to keep all this data secure at EDVA.
  • By 10:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, the government should explain what it has from the original searches.
  • By 2:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, December 16, 2025, Richman should explain what he wants back, some of which may be influenced by the 10AM briefing.

The order pertaining to that 10AM explanation betrays how inadequate the original baby-splitting solution was, not least because Kollar-Kotelly doesn’t unpack that the stuff the government originally seized from Richman is evidence — or at least includes it.

Second, the Government argues in its [22] Emergency Motion that the Court’s Order “appears to require the Government to delete or destroy evidence originally, and lawfully, obtained pursuant to search warrants issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2019 and 2020.” Gov’t’s Mot., Dkt. No. 22, at 5. To be clear, the Court has not ordered the Government to delete or destroy any evidence; instead, it has ordered the Government to return certain materials to Petitioner Richman, while depositing others with a third-party custodian for safekeeping. However, to ensure that the remedy awarded in this case is appropriately tailored to the facts, the Court would benefit from more factual details regarding the Government’s execution of the search warrants issued in this District in 2019 and 2020. Id. Accordingly, it is ORDERED that, no later than 10:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, the Government shall file with the Court a brief response to the following questions:

(1) Does the Government have in its possession a complete copy of any of the following:

(i) the “forensic image” of Petitioner Richman’s personal computer hard drive that the Government was authorized to search under the warrant issued in this District on August 27, 2019;

(ii) the information disclosed by Columbia University to the Government pursuant to the warrant issued in this District on October 22, 2019;

(iii) the information disclosed by Apple to the Government pursuant to the warrant issued in this District on January 30, 2020; or

(iv) the “contents of a hard drive … containing backup files of one Apple iPad 4 and one Apple iPhone 5S” that the Government was authorized to search under the warrant issued in this District on June 4, 2020?

(2) Under each of the four search warrants at issue, the Government was authorized to seize only responsive material, which constituted a subset of the information it was permitted to search. Did the Government create a separate file, disk, hard drive, or any other segregated collection of responsive material for any of the following:

(i) the material seized from Petitioner Richman’s personal hard drive pursuant to the warrant issued in this District on August 27, 2019;

(ii) the material seized from Petitioner Richman’s Columbia University email accounts pursuant to the warrant issued in this District on October 22, 2019;

(iii) the material seized from Petitioner Richman’s iCloud account pursuant to the warrant issued in this District on January 30, 2020; or

(iv) the material seized from the backup files of Richman’s Apple iPad 4 and Apple iPhone 5S pursuant to the warrant issued in this District on June 4, 2020? [my emphasis]

As Kollar-Kotelly alludes to elsewhere, these questions should have been answered before she made her original decision. But she doesn’t acknowledge that she would have needed this information, in part, to understand whether the first two seizures violated the Fourth Amendment, which — if they do — would mean her application of multiple precedents that all assume the initial seizure was lawful would be totally inapt.

But there are two reasons why even these belated questions are inadequate to her purpose.

First, as Kollar-Kotelly noted in her own opinion, which she cited via William Fitzpatrick’s opinion which in turn cited this FBI declaration, when the FBI searched all this data in September, they searched a full extraction of Richman’s phone and iPad.

For this search, an FBI agent was instructed to review “a Blu-ray disc that contained a full Cellebrite extraction and Reader reports” for two of Petitioner Richman’s devices to identify “conversations between [Petitioner Richman] and [Mr. Comey].”

As the full quote from the FBI declaration explained, when Francis Nero did that search, he received a Blu-ray sealed with red evidence tape.

On or about September 12, 2025, while assigned to the Director’s Advisory Team, I was requested by Special Agent Spenser Warren to review a Blu-ray disc that contained a full Cellebrite extraction and Reader reports of an iPhone and iPad backups. I was requested to review the Cellebrite extraction for conversations between RICHMAN and JAMES COMEY. SA Warren handled this agent a manilla envelope sealed with red evidence tape that contained the Blu-ray disc with the Cellebrite extraction.

We know this full extraction contained attorney-client communications. Kollar-Kotelly doesn’t ask, in her second question above, how privileged communications were treated back in 2019 and 2020. She needed to ask whether the FBI only scoped the data not covered by Richman’s privilege declarations (which is what happened, if they scoped it at all) or whether they gave him scoped materials on which to make privilege declarations. Whichever it is, though, there needs to be a question 3, because the government never had the right to search privileged materials (except, arguably, on the original image itself, because such searches were not yet explicitly prohibited).

More importantly, if Spenser Warren handed Nero the full extraction, then it doesn’t matter what happened in step 2 of Kollar-Kotelly’s question above, because the government simply searched, without a warrant, unscoped data that should have been destroyed. That red evidence tape may well be what the government did to ensure that the FBI didn’t snoop on unscoped data. If so, the smoking gun in this chain of unlawful seizures was the decision, by someone on the Director’s Advisory Team, to search unscoped data without a warrant. That’s not covered by Kollar-Kotelly’s questions at all.

The other reason Kollar-Kotelly’s questions are inadequate is because of this disclosure (which didn’t make Fitzpatrick’s opinion and so may not be before her).

5 The Order also required the government to provide, in writing, by the same deadline: “Confirmation of whether the Government has divided the materials searched pursuant to the four 2019 and 2020 warrants at issue into materials that are responsive and non-responsive to those warrants, and, if so, a detailed explanation of the methodology used to make that determination; A detailed explanation of whether, and for what period of time, the Government has preserved any materials identified as non-responsive to the four search warrants; A description identifying which materials have been identified as responsive, if any; and A description identifying which materials have previously been designated as privileged.” ECF No. 161 at 1-2.

Despite certifying on November 6 that it had complied with the Court’s Order, ECF No. 163, the government did not provide this information until the evening of November 9, 2025, in response to a defense inquiry. The government told the defense that it “does not know” whether there are responsive sets for the first, third, and fourth warrants, or whether it has produced those to the defense, and said that in that regard, “we are still pulling prior emails” and the “agent reviewed the filtered material through relativity but there appears to be a loss of data that we are currently trying to restore.” [my emphasis]

On November 9, in response to the same questions Kollar-Kotelly asked in her order but posed by Fitzpatrick, the government told Comey — but not in writing! — that they had no fucking clue what happened with the first, third, and fourth warrants, because something happened with Relativity, the software on which these distinctions would have been preserved. So they had to pull prior emails to figure out what the fuck they were doing searches on.

The government may still have no fucking clue what they’re dealing with, because they asked for a 48-hour extension on both their own deadlines.

Richman agreed to that delay but only if he also got an extension.

Counsel for Petitioner has informed the Government that he takes no position on this request, but respectfully requests that the Court provide Petitioner an equivalent extension of time to file his brief, see ECF No. 27 at 3, should the Court grant the Government’s motion.

Late yesterday, Kollar-Kotelly issued a docket order granting the government its two-day extension on the easier question — how to keep this data secure at EDVA — but just a two hour extension to the harder deadline — what the fuck happened with this data. She did not, however, grant Richman an extension at all, so his response must now be filed two hours after the government’s response.

The Court is in receipt of the Government’s 28 Motion for Additional Time to Respond to this Court’s 27 Order for supplemental submissions, which the Government filed at 6:28 p.m. ET this evening. The Government’s 28 Motion is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. The Government’s Motion is GRANTED as to the 9:00 a.m. deadline for the submission of “best practices on safekeeping evidence,” which is CONTINUED to 9:00 a.m. ET on Friday, December 19, 2025. The Motion is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART as to the Government’s deadline to respond to the factual questions presented in this Court’s 27 Order. The Government shall file brief responses to these questions no later than 12:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, December 17, 2025. The Motion is otherwise DENIED. Petitioner Richman’s response deadline is unchanged.

Again, Kollar-Kotelly needed answers to these questions before she crafted the baby-splitting solution. Because if the original data was overseized and then not preserved in its scoped form (or if someone fiddled with Relativity in the interim to muddle what data was properly seized in the first search), then her application of DC precedent was inappropriate. At least some of this data was — as far as we know (though there may be other warrants) — always unlawfully seized.

That 2004 opinion Kollar-Kotelly wrote was an attempt to solve an enormous problem caused by unlawful government spying, but it served as the cornerstone for 11 more years of unlawful government spying. This particularly baby-splitting solution may lack the gravity of that earlier opinion, but in its currently muddled form, has the potential of causing another decade of problems.

Update: DOJ’s response is here. They actually admit to the problem with Relativity (though don’t name Relativity and try to obscure the timing of DOJ dropping it, which almost certainly has to post-date the January 6 investigation).

These responses are provided with the qualification that the search warrants were obtained five and six years ago.

[snip]

Search warrants directed at these materials were issued by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. These warrants included language for following a filter process for attorney-client privileged information. As to the iCloud account and backup files for the iPad 4 and iPhone 5S, these materials were combined and provided to Richman and his counsel for filtering. The filtered version was then provided back to the government for review. Correspondence reviewed by the present investigative team indicates that the primary case agent then committed to reviewing the filtered version through an e-discovery program. Between 2020 and 2025, the Department of Justice stopped using this e-discovery program and a loss of data occurred. The government has attempted to restore this data but has not been successful.

The government has contacted the primary case agent. The primary case agent stated that he always followed and complied with the terms of a search warrant, and that his behavior in this case would have been no different. However, due to the passage of time [redacted], the primary case agent could not specifically describe the process followed in 2019 and 2020.

In a redaction in this passage and an earlier one (for which DOJ appears not to have filed a motion to seal), they must describe something that happened to the original lead case agent. That is, for some reason he can’t fully reconstruct what he did five years ago.

And they have yet to reconstruct what was lost in dropping Relativity.

In short, they’re basically saying these warrant returns are so old, neither the person who managed them nor the software paid to preserve them are available to do so any longer.

Their solution to that, DOJ says, is for them to have a filter AUSA and a filter Agent review it all to find out if there is a segregated version within the larger set.

Finally, as to the materials described in this section, the government respectfully requests that the Court allow a filter FBI agent and a filter AUSA to review only the previously filtered versions, which, according to FBI records, are contained on the relevant storage devices. The purpose of this limited review would be to determine whether any sort of segregated version of responsive material exists on the storage devices.

This should change Kollar-Kotelly’s entire approach. DOJ confesses they have no fucking clue whether the data they have is legal or not.

But it likely will not.

Update: Richman’s response is here. It goes big, demanding that all materials be taken away from the government.

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The Government Attempts to Gag Dan Richman from Speaking about His Own Data

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There’ve been a flurry of government filings in the Dan Richman case.

In addition to correcting Lindsey Halligan’s confusion over her own identity and that of Robert McBride, the government has written an emergency request asking for a week to comply with Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s order to destroy all evidence after depositing a copy with EDVA.

Only, the entire motion reneges on that claim.

Some of the government requests are reasonable — they’ll promise not to access the data in the interim week, they don’t want to return the Jim Comey memo that was up-classified after he sent it to Richman in 2017 because it is now classified, and they don’t want Pam Bondi to make promises herself (which is different from Todd Blanche doing so).

To that latter end, though, they cannot imagine any reason why it’d be necessary for someone at Main DOJ — and not someone at EDVA — to certify compliance, not even given Pam Bondi’s repeated intrusion in this matter.

The Attorney General has directed appropriate Department of Justice personnel to seek clarification of the obligations imposed by this Court’s order and to take steps to comply with those obligations. But there is no practical or legal reason to require the Attorney General to immediately and personally certify compliance on the unusually expedited timeframe imposed by the Court’s order, rather permit her to rely on any of her hundreds of attorneys and officers, including any attorney employed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia or the Department of Justice, generally.

The reason why, of course, is that lawyers have shared this information between — at least — EDVA, WDVA, and SDFL. And the only people with authority over all those offices are Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche.

In a footnote, the DOJ request preserves a request for reconsideration, which makes you wonder whether there’s not more going on.

5 The Government maintains its position that the Government did not engage in an impermissible search in the 2025 investigation, nor did the Government engage in an unreasonable seizure by continuing to hold the documents obtained by the Government through a lawful search warrant in 2019. Petitioner Richman voluntarily provided these documents pursuant to consent, and while the consent agreement with Petitioner Richman includes limitations on searches, it does not provide, in the event of a prohibited search, for return of property or render continued possession of the property an unlawful seizure. Accordingly, this Court erred in treating any impermissible search as authorizing this Court’s order under Rule 41(g)—which addresses unlawful or harmful seizures—and the Court should grant reconsideration on that basis.

In a paragraph that could invite estoppel considerations, half of Trump’s defense team from his Florida prosecution (in which Todd Blanche and Lindsey Halligan argued the government had no business seizing records because their retention violated the Federal Records Act) argued that they can’t turn over the materials because … they’re covered by the Federal Records Act.

The Government is simultaneously complying with a litigation hold put in place pursuant to a preservation letter from counsel for James Comey.3 See Gov. Ex. 1 at 19. The Government further understands that copies of portions of the relevant files are in the possession of government personnel (e.g., having been printed, saved locally, or emailed). Finally, the Government understands that the relevant files may include e-mails and other electronic communications between Petitioner Richman and James Comey, when both individuals were employed at the FBI, and regarding government business. 4 Such files are undoubtedly property of the Government and are likewise required to be maintained by the Government, and in the Government’s possession, pursuant to the Federal Records Act of 1950.

3 The Government’s compliance with the order may also implicate the Government’s obligation to maintain files pursuant to the Federal Records Act. See 44 U.S.C. § 3301 et seq.

4 Indeed, as the Court noted in its December 12, 2025 opinion, the Arctic Haze investigation in part concerned alleged “theft and conversion of public records.” See ECF No. 19 at 8; see also 18 U.S.C. § 641.

Nothing about this claim is consistent with a goddamn thing Blanche and Halligan argued before Aileen Cannon in 2022.

Not.

A.

Thing.

As noted, the government wants to avoid giving Richman the stuff they’ve copied and emailed, deeming those government records.

It repeats this concern in its request for clarification.

b. It is similarly unclear to the Government whether the Court means for the Government to provide Richman with all copies of portions of the covered materials that are in the possession of government personnel (e.g., having been printed, saved locally, or emailed) in addition to a full and complete copy of the covered materials, or whether the Court intended that such documents be destroyed by the Government. The provision of such documents to Richman might in some cases (e.g., if a document from the covered materials was attached to an email sent by an attorney for the Government) seriously implicate the Government’s attorney-client privilege, the attorney work-product doctrine, attorney-client confidentiality, the deliberative process privilege, and, potentially, other applicable law, including, but not limited to, sealing orders accompanying the search warrants and any potential grand jury material subject to Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

And then it repeats it in the order itself!

3. Other than providing full and complete copies of the covered materials to Richman (not including any classified information) and the Classified Information Security Officer for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the Government shall maintain the original evidence (and any other portions of the covered materials in the possession of the Government) and shall not access the covered materials or share, disseminate, or disclose the covered materials to any person without first seeking and obtaining a Court order.

This is the opposite of what Kollar-Kotelly ordered. They’re asking only for the protective order, not the return — or at least destruction — of Richman’s property!

Most interestingly, though, the proposed order seeks to prevent Richman from using the hypothetically returned data — his own data!!! — for any purpose other than “this proceeding,” which would permit him to expand his Fourth Amendment complaints, but not to bitch (or sue) about what they did with his data.

8. Materials produced to Richman pursuant to this Order may be used solely for purposes of this proceeding and shall not be disclosed, disseminated, or used for any other purpose absent further order of the Court.

The problem, of course, is that it is his data. DOJ would be returning this data because … it is his data. While this may be in the order for no reason other than boilerplate, this would gag Richman from talking about what the FBI did when they conducted unlawful searches of his data (which evidence would be withheld anyway on the other complaints).

Sorry, FBI, maybe you shouldn’t have conducted warrantless searches of someone’s data if you wanted to withhold evidence othe unlawful searches of Dan Richman’s data you did.

But a judge has ruled it is his data — it belongs to him. And the notion that you’re going to gag him about what the data looked like after being returned from six years of FBI custody defies the very claims of property rights that Judge Kollar-Kotelly has already granted.

Update: Judge KK clarified her order on these two issues, while granting the delay (but complaining that DOJ didn’t raise them in briefing).

Further, this Court’s Order directed the return of Petitioner Richman’s own materials (and any copies of those materials), not any derivative files that the Government may have created. See Order, Dkt. No. 20, at 1 (directing the return of the original materials, copies of those materials, and any materials “directly obtained or extracted” from them); see also id. at 41 (explaining that the Court would not bar the Government from “using or relying on” the relevant materials in a separate investigation or proceeding). Accordingly, compliance with the Court’s Order will not intrude upon any of the Government’s privileges.

Finally, it was not the Court’s intention to require a personal certification of compliance by the Attorney General of the United States. The Court’s Memorandum Opinion makes clear that a designee of the Attorney General could discharge this responsibility. See Mem. Op., Dkt. No. 21, at 4 (“The Court shall further ORDER the Attorney General of the United States or her designee to certify …. “). The Court also understood the certification of compliance to be among the responsibilities that the Attorney General may delegate in the routine performance of her duties. Consistent with these understandings, the Court shall clarify its Order to specify that a designee of the Attorney General may certify compliance.

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Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s Baby-Splitting with Dan Richman’s Devices

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Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued an order that — if DOJ abides by it — should have the effect of forcing DOJ to do what they should have done in the first place before charging Jim Comey: Obtain a warrant for materials it claims supports their imagined crime.

At first, this looks like a tidy solution — and (as Politico notes) it may well present unbridgeable barriers to a renewed indictment of Jim Comey in EDVA, to say nothing of the Grand Conspiracy in SDFL. It’s also a solution that may prove resilient to appeal and because of that, avoid further scrutiny of its apparent tidiness.

But I’m not sure it is a just solution.

Start with the end result: DOJ has to destroy all copies of Dan Richman’s data in its possession, but first, Kollar-Kotelly ordered, they must give a copy of it all under seal to EDVA.

[T]he Court shall further ORDER that, before returning the covered materials to Petitioner Richman, the Government may create one complete electronic copy of those materials and deposit that copy, under seal, with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, which shall have supervisory authority over access to this material, for future access pursuant to a lawful search warrant and judicial order. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia may then exercise its discretion to decide whether to allow Petitioner Richman an opportunity to move to quash any such warrant before it is executed.

Kollar-Kotelly describes this as a balancing solution, protecting Richman but preserving the government’s ability to use this data against Comey.

Allowing the Government to retain a copy in its own possession therefore would not provide adequate redress to Petitioner Richman. Meanwhile, requiring the Government to return all copies of the files to Petitioner Richman could unduly impede the Government’s interests in pursuing future investigations and prosecutions if—as the Government strongly suggests in its briefing—it intends to pursue further prosecution of Mr. Comey. See supra Section III.C. The appropriate way to balance these interests, and to provide redress to Petitioner Richman without transforming his motion into a “collateral (and premature) motion to suppress evidence in another criminal proceeding,” see Gov’t’s Opp’n & Mot. at 7, is to allow a copy of the files to be retained for

As noted, this solution may well pose grave problems for the government, at least its hopes of reindicting in EDVA.

When Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick first laid out the Fourth Amendment violations involved in the searches targeting Jim Comey, he speculated that the reason DOJ did not get a warrant to access the material is because they were rushing to beat the statute of limitations.

That may be part of it, but there’s another reason. The theory of crime behind the indictment is that Jim Comey lied in September 2020 when he said that he had never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak anonymously. But as Comey laid out as part of his bid for a Bill of Particulars, none of the exhibits presented to the grand jury match that theory: they either involve stuff Richman did publicly or stuff he did after he left the FBI.

Here, the government has repeatedly failed to provide a coherent factual basis for its theory that Mr. Comey authorized Mr. Richman to be an “anonymous source” in news reports regarding the Midyear Exam investigation while Mr. Richman was “at the FBI.” Of the communications following Mr. Comey’s October 28, 2016 letter that the government cites in both briefs, none reflect Mr. Comey authorizing Mr. Richman to be an anonymous source. For instance, the communications show Mr. Richman discussed materials that were already public, like Mr. Comey’s letter to Congress. See, e.g., Opp. at 3 (“Wittes and I are spending a lot of time saying your letter means exactly, and only what it says.” (emphasis added)); id. at 3-4 (quoting the defendant as telling Mr. Richman that Richman’s contributing to a New York Times Opinion piece “would [be] shouting into the wind,” and “that they would ‘figure it out’” without Richman’s contributions). And even where the government alleges that Mr. Comey encouraged Mr. Richman to speak to the press in late October and early November 2016, there is no indication that Mr. Richman did so anonymously; to the contrary, one of the exhibits the government cites references Mr. Richman’s televised interview with Anderson Cooper. Opp. at 4 (citing ECF No. 138-6, 138- 7). The remaining communications cited by the government in its Opposition to Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss Indictment Based on Vindictive and Selective Prosecution suffer from numerous defects, but most critically, all occurred after February 7, 2017, when Mr. Richman left the FBI. This alone makes the government’s theory that Mr. Richman was “at the FBI” when these communications occurred incomprehensible. [Emphasis original]

To get a warrant — at least for the theory of the case presented in the EDVA indictment — DOJ would have to lay out what it failed to here, that there’s probable cause that Comey intentionally had Richman leak stuff anonymously while still at the FBI. Worse, in a warrant affidavit, unlike in a grand jury, the FBI would have to be honest about all the exculpatory evidence, such as the date Richman left. And even assuming DOJ could get that warrant, they would have to adhere to the terms of it; the warrant likely would not permit them to access materials that post-date Richman’s FBI departure, for example, which is the stuff they want the most.

Putting the materials at EDVA — where DOJ claims, unpersuasively, any and all ongoing investigation is — would ensure that prosecutors from WDVA or SDFL have to go there to obtain this information for other investigations. Even if Aileen Cannon approved an outrageous warrant for the Grand Conspiracy investigation, EDVA would have some visibility on it, most notably on any claim that there’s something criminal about releasing a memo showing Trump’s corruption when John Durham couldn’t find a crime in that after four years of looking.

And putting the material at EDVA would ensure that prosecutors do what they tried to avoid with their bid for a filter protocol: ignoring Fourth Circuit precedent by excluding courts from any privilege determination. They will not get a warrant in EDVA that does not provide Comey an opportunity to assert his own privilege claims.

Where I have some discomfort with Kollar-Kotelly’s opinion, though, is in limiting her holding to how badly DOJ fucked Richman’s Fourth Amendment rights.

As she laid out, Richman described three ways DOJ violated his Fourth Amendment rights: (1) by seizing data outside the temporal limits of the warrants, (2) by failing to scope the data specific to the crimes under investigation and sealing or destroying the rest, and then (3) by searching the raw data without a warrant five years later.

To obtain the return of his property under Rule 41(g), Petitioner Richman must show that “the property’s seizure was illegal.” United States v. Wright, 49 F.4th 1221, 1225 (9th Cir. 2022) (citation modified). Petitioner Richman contends that the Government’s seizure of his property violated his Fourth Amendment rights “in at least three ways.” Pet’r’s T.R.O. Mem., Dkt. No. 9- 1 at 17. First, he argues that the Government “exceeded the scope” of the prior warrants it obtained in 2019 and 2020 to search his property by “seizing both responsive and non-responsive materials.” Id. at 17–20. Second, he argues that the Government has continued to retain his materials for an “unreasonable” period of time. Id. at 17, 20–22. Third, he argues that the Government executed an unreasonable warrantless search of the retained property in 2025. Id., at 17, 22–23.

William Fitzpatrick, in ruling these were likely Fourth Amendment violations, put the fault on the original Arctic Haze investigators more than on the current Jim Comey team.

There is nothing in the record to suggest the government made any attempt to identify what documents, communications or other materials seized from Mr. Richman constituted evidence of violations of 18 U.S.C. § 641 and § 793. To be clear, ensuring that agents and prosecutors seize only those things which a court has authorized is a critical early step in the execution of any warrant and an elemental responsibility of all government agents.

But having laid those out as three problems, Kollar-Kotelly then flattens item one and two into one issue: the initial seizure. Her initial discussion discusses only whether or not the government scoped the material it seized within the two crimes at question; it ignores the question of the temporal overseizure, which (unless there are warrants DOJ is hiding) should be clearcut.

Petitioner Richman’s motion concerns the Government’s seizure of his property pursuant to four different search warrants executed in 2019 and 2020. Petitioner Richman claims that the Government’s execution of these warrants violated his Fourth Amendment rights because the Government seized more material than the warrants authorized. Pet’r’s Mem., Dkt. No. 2-1 at 13. Petitioner Richman neither contests the validity of the four search warrants nor disputes the fact that the warrants permitted the Government to search his property “broadly.” Id. Petitioner Richman, however, claims that the warrants only authorized the Government to seize information that constituted “evidence and/or instrumentalities of” a violation of either 18 U.S.C. § 641 (theft and conversion of government property) or 18 U.S.C. § 793 (unlawful gathering or transmission of national defense information).

But then she just waves her hands and says she doesn’t have enough information to hold that that is a Fourth Amendment violation.

In light of Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick’s findings, the Court concludes that Petitioner Richman has established a reasonable basis for his claim that the Government exceeded the scope of the 2019 and 2020 “Arctic Haze” warrants when seizing his property. On the present record, however, the Court shall not determine whether Petitioner Richman has conclusively established a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights based on his claim that the 2019 and 2020 “Arctic Haze” seizures at issue were overbroad. Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick’s findings raise a substantial question as to whether Petitioner Richman’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when the Government executed the 2019 and 2020 warrants at issue. However, the parties have not provided the Court with additional information in the record that would enable the Court to make a conclusive determination of Petitioner Richman’s Fourth Amendment claim about over-seizure as to the 2019 and 2020 “Arctic Haze” warrants.

So Kollar-Kotelly bases her baby-splitting ruling exclusively on DOJ’s search in 2025 without a warrant.

The Court will address each of Richman’s arguments in turn. In doing so, the Court concludes that, although the Government’s initial seizure of Richman’s property and its continued retention of that property did not violate Richman’s Fourth Amendment rights, the Government’s warrantless search of his property in 2025—approximately five years after it initially seized that property—did violate those rights. The Court further concludes that the Government’s mishandling of Petitioner Richman’s property renders its continued retention of that property an unreasonable Fourth Amendment seizure.

My guess is Kollar-Kotelly did this because she didn’t need to pursue the question further to achieve her Solomonic outcome. Simply finding a clear Fourth Amendment violation — here, in searching Richman’s data without a warrant — proved enough to find him aggrieved and injured.

There are several problems with this.

Having dispensed with the mystery overseizure by date and the failure to seize the data pertinent to two suspected crimes and seal the rest, Kollar-Kotelly then applies four different decisions to this data:

  • United States v. Jacobsen: A 1984 case about the test of white powder after having seized it.
  • Asinor v. DC: An effort to get a bunch of physical cell phones (one belonging to an independent journalist) back years after DC’s Metropolitan Police Department seized them at an August 13, 2020 George Floyd protest. Last year, Greg Katsas ruled for the protesters.
  • In the Matter of the Search of 26 Digital Devices: A set of opinions in which first Magistrate Judge Michael Harvey and subsequently then-Chief Judge Beryl Howell considered a warrant to access a bunch of devices. Harvey first held that the government could not go back into data retractions after closing an investigation. Howell reversed that.

Here’s how Kollar-Kotelly incorporated these decisions.

Judge Howell noted two critical procedural requirements for searches of stored extracts of digital device data from prior investigations, both of which had been satisfied in the case before her. First, and most fundamentally, “in order for the [G]overnment to search a cell phone’s digital data[,] the [G]overnment must get a probable cause warrant.” Digital Devices II, 2022 WL 998896, at *15 (citing Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014)). Second, “[o]nce the government’s investigation unearths the likelihood that evidence of offenses not covered by the initial warrant exists, the government must set forth adequate probable cause and particularity to secure a warrant expanding the scope of its search of previously seized evidence.” Id.

Although nearly all of Judge Howell’s reasoning remains powerfully persuasive, one aspect of her analysis appears to have been altered by the D.C. Circuit’s intervening decision in Asinor v. District of Columbia, 111 F.4th at 1262. Judge Howell’s decision that the closure of the prior investigation did not preclude the Government from obtaining a warrant to search the stored extracts for a later proceeding rested in part on a conclusion that “[t]he Fourth Amendment does not operate as an arbiter of law enforcement retention policies for lawfully seized evidence.” Digital Devices II, 2022 WL 998896, at *1. Although Judge Howell’s conclusion on this point is consistent with the law of many circuits, the D.C. Circuit recently held in Asinor that the Fourth Amendment does regulate the Government’s retention of evidence by requiring “continuing retention of seized property to be reasonable.” 111 F.4th at 1261. The court reasoned that although it is not clear from the text of the Fourth Amendment’s protection of the right to be “secure” against “unreasonable . . . seizures” whether the provision regulates retention after an initial lawful seizure, history and common-law tradition from the Founding era support the conclusion that the reasonableness requirement governs not only the “taking possession” but also the “continued retention” of property. Id. at 1254–55.

[snip]

Applying each of these principles, the Court concludes that it was reasonable for the Government to retain Petitioner Richman’s files after it closed the “Arctic Haze” investigation, but only so long as the Government adequately protected those files by refraining from accessing or searching them without a warrant.

But let’s go back and look at the problems. The most direct precedent, the 26 Digital Devices, involves warrants served the same year (2021) as the phones were originally seized. There’s a difference between retention for a matter of months and for years.

And all of these rulings assume the initial seizure was legal; by hand-waving over the two claimed overseizures in 2020 (one based on temporal overseizure, another based on failure to scope and seal), Kollar-Kotelly has applied potentially inapt precedents to this case, and in so doing simply said that the government needed a warrant and the government needs a warrant.

And then she sent the data to EDVA in the Fourth Circuit, where a different set of precedents apply which … now that part of the decision looks especially reckless.

From there, Kollar-Kotelly goes further, refusing to adopt Richman’s application of taint to the data the government already unlawfully seized (Kollar-Kotelly dodges all discussion of DOJ’s attorney-client violations in this opinion as well).

Finally, Petitioner Richman requests an order barring the Government from “using or relying on in any way” the information derived from the image of his laptop. See Pet’r’s Rule 41(g) Mem. at 26; see also id. at 19 (arguing that the Government should be “barred from using evidence obtained from” the image in its case against Mr. Comey). This remedy would be broader than an order for return of property to which Petitioner Richman is entitled. It would not only deprive the Government of the opportunity to use Petitioner Richman’s materials as evidence, but it would also presumably bar the Government from presenting testimony or Finally, Petitioner Richman requests an order barring the Government from “using or relying on in any way” the information derived from the image of his laptop. See Pet’r’s Rule 41(g) Mem. at 26; see also id. at 19 (arguing that the Government should be “barred from using evidence obtained from” the image in its case against Mr. Comey). This remedy would be broader than an order for return of property to which Petitioner Richman is entitled. It would not only deprive the Government of the opportunity to use Petitioner Richman’s materials as evidence, but it would also presumably bar the Government from presenting testimony or pursuing investigative leads based on what Government agents learned by reviewing those materials before returning them. Such a broad order might also bar the Government from seeking to obtain the materials again in the future by obtaining a valid search warrant from a judicial officer

Here, too, Kollar-Kotelly’s initial scope — accepting just one of Richman’s three claimed injuries — allows her a baby-splitting solution. The searches that got into Jim Comey’s privileged communication would have been illegal on the scope issue, but Kollar-Kotelly is making it available the government (pending a warrant and privilege review) in a way in which Comey would not have Fourth Amendment injury.

As I said, perhaps Kollar-Kotelly adopted this solution because she just wants an answer that is far easier than the data provides. Perhaps she adopted the solution because something that the unnamed AUSA with whom she was in communication (who might be Jocelyn Ballantine) explained — at least — the temporal overcollection but did so in such a way that renders the AUSA’s testimony unavailable to Richman.

First, although the Court has been in communication with attorneys from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, 1 the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has not yet entered an appearance to make representations on behalf of the Government, and counsel for the Government has not yet been identified. See Pet’r’s Ex. A, Dkt. No. 9-2.

1 These attorneys have helpfully facilitated communication on administrative matters. The Court appreciates counsel’s prompt assistance on these matters.

And maybe it’ll work? Maybe this will result in Richman’s entire digital life collecting dust in EDVA, where his standing to challenge it is much less clear.

Or maybe DOJ will give the data to Richman (as opposed to simply destroying it) and he’ll have basis to prove the two underlying Fourth Amendment injuries and be able to (and willing to) ask for more.

But while it is an interesting ruling for the Comey case, it is a highly unsatisfying ruling from a Fourth Amendment.

Update: The government is requesting a week, during which period they claim they won’t access the data. But in a footnote they ask for reconsideration because Kollar-Kotelly found a Fourth Amendment violation with a search, not a seizure.

5 The Government maintains its position that the Government did not engage in an impermissible search in the 2025 investigation, nor did the Government engage in an unreasonable seizure by continuing to hold the documents obtained by the Government through a lawful search warrant in 2019. Petitioner Richman voluntarily provided these documents pursuant to consent, and while the consent agreement with Petitioner Richman includes limitations on searches, it does not provide, in the event of a prohibited search, for return of property or render continued possession of the property an unlawful seizure. Accordingly, this Court erred in treating any impermissible search as authorizing this Court’s order under Rule 41(g)—which addresses unlawful or harmful seizures—and the Court should grant reconsideration on that basis.

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Ed Martin and Lindsey Halligan posing together in his office. They both look really weird, with him being bottom-heavy and forward leaning,and her propped up on ugly shoes.

Lindsey Halligan Can’t Tell the Difference between a Man, a Woman, and a Ham Sandwich

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Oh hey!

If it’s Thursday, it must be get no-billed by the Letitia James grand jury again!

Virtually every outlet (Politico, NYT, WaPo, AP, CNN) reports that DOJ tried again to indict New York’s Attorney General, once again getting no-billed by the grand jury. Maybe, just maybe, there’s not probable cause that Attorney General James did what frothers claim she did?

The day was not entirely a loss for Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer Masquerading as a US Attorney, though.

She almost managed to comply with Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s order yesterday to comply with Judge KK’s earlier order from last Saturday.

Before Judge KK’s deadline of 10 AM, Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer Masquerading as a US Attorney filed something called, “NOTICE of Appearance by Lindsey Halligan on behalf of UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (Halligan, Lindsey) (Entered: 12/11/2025),” dated Monday, which looks like this:

The metadata shows that Fay Brundage created the document. It also shows that it was actually created on December 8, as if they thought the better of actually filing a notice of appearance.

And at the same time, Robert McBride filed something called, “NOTICE of Appearance by Robert Kennedy McBride on behalf of UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (McBride, Robert) (Entered: 12/11/2025),” also dated Monday, which looks like this:

The metadata for that show no one changed the metadata from the original US Courts template created in 2008.

Hours and hours after Judge KK’s deadline, Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer Masquerading as a US Attorney filed something called, “NOTICE Certificate of Compliance by UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (Halligan, Lindsey),” meant to comply with this order from Judge KK.

The United States and its agent, the Attorney General of the United States, are ORDERED to identify, segregate, and secure the image of Petitioner Richman’s personal computer that was made in 2017, his Columbia University email accounts, and his iCloud account; any copies of those files; and any materials obtained, extracted, or derived from those files (collectively, “the covered materials”) that are currently in the possession of the United States.

The United States and its agents, including the Attorney General of the United States, are further ORDERED 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.

Here’s the language of the certificate of compliance, which is also dated December 8, which — hey! — is closer than Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer Masquerading as a US Attorney normally gets.

On December 6, 2025, the Court entered an Order [DE 10] stating that the government would “identify, segregate, and secure the image of Richman’s computer that was made in 2017, his Columbia University email accounts, and his iCloud account; any copies of those files; and any materials obtained, extracted, or derived from those files . . . currently in the possession of the United States.” The Court further ordered the government to not access, share, disseminate, or disclose these materials without further permission of the Court. Finally, the Court required the government to certify compliance with the Order by 12:00 p.m. ET on December 8, 2025.

The metadata shows that our good friend James Hayes — the guy in the thick of efforts to try to use material unlawfully accessed — is back, if only in spirit.

According to Carol Leonnig, Lindsey will be formally nominated to be US Attorney (which was already in the works). But Chuck Grassley pushed back on Trump’s complaints about the confirmation process (though without mentioning blue slips specifically). Honestly, it would be a lot of fun to have a Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer confirmation hearing.

But she may be too busy studying up on the difference between a man, a woman, and a ham sandwich.

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The False Claims Todd Blanche, Robert McBride, and Some Lady Impersonating a US Attorney Tell to Justify a Crime

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Update: I realize that DOJ never complied with this part of Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s order.

The Attorney General of the United States or her designee is further ORDERED to certify that the United States is in compliance with this Order no later than 12:00 p.m. ET on Monday, December 8, 2025.

This court filing is a smokescreen.

DOJ — in the persons of Todd Blanche, some lady impersonating a US Attorney, and First AUSA Robert McBride — have responded to Dan Richman’s demand that they stop illegally rifling through his data.

It’s a remarkable filing for two reasons.

First, they cite a bunch of precedents claiming that one cannot use Rule 41 to thwart a prosecution. Best as I can tell, every single one of those precedents pertain to someone trying to withhold his own property to thwart his own prosecution. Michael Deaver trying to stop a Special Prosecutor investigation of himself. Paul Manafort trying to thwart a prosecution of himself. Justin Paul Gladding in a case where he was trying to get his own non-CSAM data back after a conviction. A grand jury case where the subject of the investigation tried to get his files back.

None of these apply here.

Effectively, Todd Blanche is saying Dan Richman has to lay back and enjoy digital compromise to allow the FBI to prosecute his friend and who cares if they’re breaking the law to do so.

But I’m also struck by the lies Blanche and the lady impersonating a US Attorney tell along the way. Consider this passage.

Richman served as a special government employee at the FBI between June 2015 and February 2017.1 Shortly after his departure from the FBI, the Government began investigating whether Richman had disclosed classified information to The New York Times concerning Comey’s decisionmaking process concerning the FBI’s investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. See CM/ECF No. 1-1 at 3. The investigation demonstrated, among other things, that Comey had used Richman to provide information to the media concerning his—that is, Comey’s—decisionmaking process concerning the Clinton email investigation and that Richman had served as an anonymous source in doing so.

During the course of the investigation, the Government sought and obtained four search warrants in this district authorizing the Government to search for and seize evidence of violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 641 and 793 from certain email accounts utilized by Richman, a hard drive containing a forensic image of his personal computer, and his iCloud account.2 See CM/ECF No. 1-1 at 3.

Comey provided relevant testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee shortly before his employment as FBI Director was terminated, and again in September 2020. In May 2017, he testified in response to questioning from Senator Grassley that he had never authorized someone at the FBI to serve as an anonymous source regarding the Clinton email investigation. And in September 2020, he reaffirmed that testimony in response to questioning from Senator Cruz.

1 The government has provided the concise factual summary herein out of an abundance of caution as a result of the Court’s December 6, 2025 temporary restraining order (the “TRO”). See CM/ECF No. 9 at 4. Should the Court have meant the TRO to permit the government to use materials obtained via the relevant search warrants as part of this litigation, the government is prepared to provide a more detailed factual summary if necessary.

2 The investigators sought to obtain evidence of violations of 18 U.S.C. § 641 because it appeared that Richman and Comey were using private email accounts to correspond regarding official government business, i.e., that their correspondence were “record[s]” of the United States. See id.

First, the passage makes a confession, one that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer Impersonating a US Attorney’s Loaner AUSAs never made: the use of May 2017 files involving attorney-client privilege had no basis in the prosecution, because they long post-dated the time Dan Richman left the FBI.

The filing misstates the genesis of Arctic Haze and the focus on Dan Richman. The investigation didn’t start by focusing on Richman. The focus on Richman appears to have started when John Durham discovered his communications while rifling through the image he shared with the Inspector General (a detail that seems quite sensitive, given the redactions).

The claim that the investigation demonstrated that Comey used Richman,

to provide information to the media concerning his—that is, Comey’s—decisionmaking process concerning the Clinton email investigation and that Richman had served as an anonymous source in doing so.

Is not backed by anything in the public record. Richman was not anonymous when doing this in fall 2016, and there’s no evidence that Comey asked Richman to do this in February 2017, where he was also an on-the-record source.

This filing obscures the fact that when Comey told Chuck Grassley he had not leaked anything anonymously, it preceded the time when Richman did share his memos anonymously, and he disclosed that publicly a month later, meaning it could not conceivably have been a lie on May 3, 2017 (before he shared the memo) or after June 8, 2017, in September 2020, because he had already disclosed it.

McBride claims he’s not using the unlawfully accessed materials in this filing, but he did disclose something new: that Richman and Comey were investigated under 18 USC 641 not because Comey shared a memo that the Inspector General would later rule was official FBI material, but because they were conducting official business on personal accounts (which is rich given that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer masquerading as US Attorney used Signal for official business).

The lies are important for a reason beyond the cynicism: They obscure that if the FBI tried to get a warrant for these very same files, they would never be able to access the files they want.

And so they’re telling Dan Richman to just lay back and enjoy the Fourth Amendment violations.

Update: Richman’s response says exactly what I did (but in fancy lawyer-speak): The citations DOJ relied on all pertain to someone trying to get their own content back to prevent their own prosecution.

[I]n every single case cited by the government on this point, the movant was the target of an active investigation or the defendant in a charged criminal case. See In re Sealed Case, 716 F.3d at 604, 607 (observing that “the [DiBella] Court . . . found that each motion was tied to a criminal prosecution in esse because both movants had been arrested and indicted at the time of appeal” and that the movant in the case before it was “the subject of an ongoing grand jury investigation”) 6 ; Martino v. United States, 2024 WL 3963681, at *1 (3d Cir. Aug. 28, 2024) (movant was the “subject of an ongoing grand jury investigation” and brought a Rule 41(g) Motion tied to “his criminal prosecution”) (emphasis added); United States v. Nocito, 64 F.4th 76, 79 (3d Cir. 2023) (movant entities were owned by person charged with crime); In re Grand Jury, 635 F.3d 101, 105 (3d Cir. 2011) (finding DiBella’s second requirement met because “the property was seized in connection with an ongoing grand jury investigation of which the appellant is a target”) (emphasis added); In re Warrant Dated Dec. 14, 1990 & Recs. Seized From 3273 Hubbard Detroit, Mich. on Dec. 17, 1990, 961 F.2d 1241, 1242 (6th Cir. 1992) (involving “records . . . sought in connection with a criminal investigation of the appellants for tax evasion, filing of fraudulent tax returns, and conspiracy”).

Professor Richman is not a subject, target, or defendant. Though the government elides this fact, it bears repeating: because Professor Richman is not a prospective criminal defendant, he has no suppression remedy to address an ongoing violation of his constitutional rights. His property was seized five years ago, pursuant to warrants tied to a separate and since concluded investigation, and there is no indictment and no pending criminal case.

I actually think they might envision including him in a Grand Conspiracy indictment. But they’re pretending they’re not currently working on this and so got too cute for their own good — he notes that they twice dismissed his claims of irreparable harm because he was only at risk of being a witness at trial.

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Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly Asks DOJ for Signs of Life

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Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted Dan Richman his request for a Temporary Restraining Order, preventing the government from snooping in his stuff, one that goes through Friday. And while I agree with Gerstein and Cheney (and Bower and Parloff) that it could have the effect of thwarting another indictment of Jim Comey — indeed, it may undercut an attempt to stonewall Richman — I find KK’s order interesting for other reasons.

Partly, it’s the way she’s demanding signs of life from DOJ.

Judge KK attempts to forestall a stonewall

As a reminder, Judge Cameron Currie threw out the indictment against Jim Comey on November 24, the Monday of Thanksgiving week. Two days later, the day before Thanksgiving, Richman cited that dismissal and the expired Statute of Limitations in his bid to get his data back. As far as I know, no one noticed it until Anna Bower pointed to it on Tuesday.

Notably, Richman attached the warrants used to obtain his records as sealed exhibits.

The same day Bower noted it (the day it was assigned), December 2, Judge KK issued an order, half of which dealt with Richman’s sealing request, which she provisionally granted. But she also told him that if he wants to keep the government out of his data, he needs to get a Temporary Restraining Order. Her order emphasized that that request must submit some sign of life from DOJ.

Finally, Petitioner Richman’s 1 Motion requests that this Court “issue a temporary restraining order enjoining the [G]overnment from using or relying on in any way” the materials at issue in his 1 Motion while this matter is pending. Consistent with Local Rule of Civil Procedure 65.1, it is ORDERED that Petitioner Richman shall file his application for a temporary restraining order by separate motion, accompanied by a certificate of counsel that either (1) states the Government has received actual notice of the application and “copies of all pleadings and papers filed in the action to date or to be presented to the Court” in connection with the application; or (2) identifies “the efforts made by the applicant to give such notice and furnish such copies.”

A Certificate of Service Richman filed later that day explains part of the reason KK made that order: For some reason, the motion was not docketed. So, Richman attorney Mark Hansen explained that he formally served Jocelyn Ballantine and DC USAO on December 1.

This Corrected Certificate of Service corrects the service date listed for the public redacted Motion for Return of Property and accompanying attachments, see ECF No. 1 at 3, and the sealed version of that Motion with accompanying attachments, see ECF No. 2, from November 26, 2025, to December 1, 2025. Although Petitioner filed those papers on November 26, 2025 and intended to serve them on that date, the filings were not docketed at that time. I promptly caused the filings to be served on counsel for respondent upon receiving notification from the Clerk’s Office, on December 1, 2025, that the filings had been accepted for submission and docketed.

But to comply with the other part of her order, Richman’s attorneys also included the emails they exchanged with Ballantine. And among the things those emails showed is that after agreeing to attorney Nick Lewin’s midafternoon December 3 request to respond by close of day on December 4,

Based on the government’s use of such property in connection with the Comey case (as described in Judge Fitzpatrick’s November 17, 2025 opinion), we are concerned that, absent a TRO, the government may continue to use the property in a manner that violates Professor Richman’s rights – particularly in light of recent news reports that the DOJ may seek a new indictment of Mr. Comey. However, if the government has no such intention and will agree to refrain from searching, using, or relying in any way upon Professor Richman’s property pending resolution of the Rule 41(g) motion, that would address our concerns and obviate the need for a TRO.

Please let us know the government’s position by COB tomorrow.

[snip]

Nick,

Thanks for your email. I will reach out to the appropriate people at DOJ with your request and will respond to you tomorrow by COB.

Jocelyn

Ballantine had not responded by 9PM on December 4.

Hi Jocelyn,

Did you get an answer? Please let us know.

Ballantine had a good excuse: she was busy prosecuting accused pipe bomber Brian Cole. Nevertheless, when she did respond at 9:12PM Thursday night, she said that her leadership — Jeanine Pirro — had already engaged with DOJ leadership (Bondi spent part of Thursday with Pirro bragging about the pipe bomber arrest), but she would not have an answer until “early next week.”

Thank you so much for the prompt. I met with my leadership today, and they have engaged Department of Justice leadership. I have also shared your pleadings and request with the prosecutors who handled the Comey prosecution out of EDVA.

I do not have an answer for you this evening, but I expect to have one early next week.

That’s what led Richman to file his motion for a TRO, maybe around 10PM Friday night. Judge KK responded just under a day later.

Her order specifically ruled that DOJ knows about Richman’s request.

Third, the Court finds that the Government has received actual notice of Petitioner Richman’s [9] Motion, ensuring that the Government is positioned to act promptly to seek any appropriate relief from this Order. Specifically, counsel for the Government may move to dissolve or modify this Order immediately upon entering an appearance, and the Court will resolve any such motion “as promptly as justice requires.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(b). Under the circumstances, the Court will allow and consider such a motion at any time upon contemporaneous notice to counsel for Petitioner Richman. See id. (providing that such a motion may be filed “[o]n 2 days’ notice to the party who obtained the order” or “on shorter notice set by the court”).

And barring the government requesting a different schedule, Judge KK’s order set up the following schedule:

  • Richman should “promptly” serve Judge KK’s order and everything filed in the docket to Pam Bondi (KK identifies Bondi by title specifically).
  • By noon on Monday, “the Attorney General of the United States or her designee” must confirm “the United States,” so everyone!, is in compliance with KK’s order not to “access … share, disseminate, or disclose” Richman’s data “to any person.”
  • By Tuesday at 9AM, DOJ must respond to both of Richman’s requests.
  • He must reply by 5PM that day.
  • The order will expire at 11:59PM on Friday night if Judge KK has not issued an order first.

If DOJ follows Judge KK’s order, then it will have the effect of:

  1. Slightly accelerating the response deadline for DOJ, which may have been due sometime on Tuesday anyway, while dramatically accelerating Richman’s reply, which is now due that same day.
  2. Flip the default status of Richman’s data, restricting DOJ from accessing it before Judge KK issues an order rather that allowing them to access it until any such order is in place.

In other words, the government can’t stall Richman’s effort in a bid to use the data in the interim. If DOJ follows the order, then it would prevent DOJ from using the data to get a new indictment before such time as Ballantine responds, “early next week.” Unless DOJ got an indictment on Friday with hopes of a big show arrest tomorrow morning, then KK would have thwarted any effort to stonewall Richman’s assertion of his rights.

If DOJ blows off the order, it’ll make it even easier for Comey to argue any indictment is malicious (unless, of course, he has to argue that to Aileen Cannon).

Did Judge KK smell a rat?

That’s the logistics of the order. The other parts of it are more interesting.

First, KK’s analysis on the TRO is cursory: just one paragraph stating that the government probably has violated Richman’s Fourth Amendment rights by searching his data without a warrant.

The Court concludes that Petitioner Richman is likely to succeed on the merits of his claim that the Government has violated his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures by retaining a complete copy of all files on his personal computer (an “image” of the computer) and searching that image without a warrant. See United States v. Comey, No. 1:25-CR272-MSN-WEF, 2025 WL 3202693, at *4–7 (E.D. Va. Nov. 17, 2025). The Court further concludes that Petitioner Richman is also likely to succeed in showing that, because of those violations, he is entitled to the return of the image under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g).

That’s on the third page of the four-page memo.

Before she gets there (and in addition to formally finding that DOJ has notice of Richman’s request), she focuses on the way DOJ is playing dumb. She notes she has spoken to unnamed people from DC USAO, who were helpful on administrative matters, thank you very much.

First, although the Court has been in communication with attorneys from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, 1 the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has not yet entered an appearance to make representations on behalf of the Government, and counsel for the Government has not yet been identified. See Pet’r’s Ex. A, Dkt. No. 9-2.

1 These attorneys have helpfully facilitated communication on administrative matters. The Court appreciates counsel’s prompt assistance on these matters.

But no one, including Jocelyn Ballantine, wants to put their name on this docket.

And that’s a problem, Judge KK notes, because until someone files notice of appearance, there’s no formal way to start figuring out who has the data.

Second, the Government has not yet indicated who has custody of the material at issue, and neither the Petitioner nor the Court can determine the identity of the custodian until the Government appears in this case. Given that the custody and control of this material is the central issue in this matter, uncertainty about its whereabouts weighs in favor of acting promptly to preserve the status quo.

Maybe it’s something those helpful DC USAO personnel told her. Maybe it’s the way Ballantine deftly shared Richman’s motion with the Loaner AUSAs at EDVA, but not the DOJ leadership with whom Pirro had consulted by late day Thursday.

It’s like Colleen Kollar-Kotelly suspects DOJ is hiding the ball, and that’s why she ordered Richman to go right to the top with his request, to ensure Pam Bondi can’t pretend she’s ignorant of his request.

The perma-sealed Bill Barr dockets

There’s something else sketchy going on here.

As I noted, Richman attached the warrants used to seize his stuff. They’re still sealed and Judge KK has provisionally permitted them to remain that way.

But why are they still sealed?

Back on November 5, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick ordered the Loaner AUSAs to get them unsealed or, if not, then to file a motion justifying the seal in DC.

ORDERED that the Government shall, on or before November 10, 2025, move in the issuing district to unseal the four 2019 and 2020 search warrants referenced in the Government’s Reply to Defendant’s Response to the Government’s Motion for Implementation of Filter Protocol (ECF 132), together with all attendant documents, or, in the alternative, file a motion in the issuing district setting forth good cause as to why the subject search warrants and all attendant documents should remain under seal, in whole or in part;

In that same order, he ordered that there’d be a discussion about unsealing all the references to the warrants in the Comey docket on November 21, which was before Judge Currie dismissed the indictment on November 24. The government was also going to have to defend keeping the filing explaining the notice given to Comey — and submitted as an exhibit to his first response to the effort to get a taint team — sealed that same day.

ORDERED that, if necessary, the Court shall hold a hearing on the pending motions to seal (ECFs 56, 72, 109, and 133) on November 21, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. in Courtroom 500, and the materials subject to those motions shall remain UNDER SEAL until further order of the Court; and it is further ORDERED that, to the extent the Government seeks to seal Exhibit A to Defendant’s Response to the Government’s Motion for Expedited Ruling (ECF No. 55-1), the Government shall file a supporting brief in accordance with Local Criminal Rule 49 on or before November 12, 2025; Defendant may file a response on or before November 19, 2025; and, if necessary, the Court shall hold a hearing on the Government’s sealing request on November 21, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. in Courtroom 500;

Best as I can tell, that never happened. For example, there are no gaps in the Comey docket hiding a sealed discussion about these sealed warrants.

And that’s interesting because when Fitzpatrick asked about all this back on November 5 — this is the hearing that led to the order to unseal the warrants — Rebekah Donaleski revealed that they asked Loaner AUSA Tyler Lemons about the warrants twice at that point, but had gotten no response.

Before we begin, what I’d like to do is — before we address the underlying issues, the government’s motion for a filter protocol, the defendant’s position, we have four outstanding sealing motions, and I do think those sealing motions will touch, at least in some way, on this motion; if not, motions that you-all are going to argue in the future. So what I’d like to do is see if we can nail down what the parties’ positions are and see if we can kind of resolve some of those sealing issues now, if possible.

As I understand it, there are four sealing motions that are outstanding. The defense has filed three; the government has filed one. All these sealing motions deal with either warrants that were issued in a sister district or one document that the government has provided to the defense in discovery.

MS. DONALESKI: Thank you, Your Honor. With respect to the one document provided in discovery, that’s our position, we have no objection. With respect to the underlying warrants which we attached to our motions, my understanding from Mr. Lemons is that he has moved to unseal those. We don’t know where — he hasn’t moved to unseal them — when. We’ve asked him twice for that information, and he hasn’t provided it. The defense’s view is that we should be entitled to proposed reasonable redactions for PII of those warrant affidavits and warrant materials. We have asked for an opportunity to do that and have not heard from the government. So our position is, the information in our motions, in the motion papers themselves, we have no objection to that being under seal — to that being publicly filed; but with respect to the warrants, which my understanding is those remain under seal by the District of D.C. court, we would ask that we be permitted an opportunity to propose redactions with the government.

[snip]

But with respect to the information that we’ve described in our motion papers, specifically referring to the offenses at issue in the Artic Haze warrants, the dates that the warrants authorize to search, the defense believes that those should be discussed publicly and those can be discussed publicly.

THE COURT: What about the affidavits in support of the warrants?

MS. DONALESKI: Those remain under seal. I don’t expect that we’ll need to get into what is in those affidavits in this hearing today, but if the government or the Court feels differently, we’d welcome that discussion.

And when Fitzpatrick asked Lemons about the warrants, the Loaner AUSA got a bit squirmy. Lemons had asked the AUSA to unseal the warrants. He had not filed a motion to unseal them, as if someone — maybe the AUSA in question, who may be Jocelyn Ballantine — advised him that was not a good idea.

THE COURT: Mr. Lemons, what’s the status of that?

MR. LEMONS: Thank you, Your Honor. Your Honor, we have made a request to the issuing district as to those search warrants, for them to be unsealed. My understanding, last speaking with an AUSA in that district, is that motion has not been filed at this time. They are preparing to provide notice to other potentially interested parties, per their practice and the rules they have to abide by in that district. So we requested it, and our understanding is at this time that the warrants all remain completely under seal. That is the only reason why the government designated these search warrants as protected material and filed them under seal and understands why the defense filed them under seal. If it was in my power and ability here today, those search warrants would be totally unsealed. [my emphasis]

“Preparing to provide notice to other potentially interested parties”? Who else would need notice? Richman and Comey were the ones suspected of leaking!

It has been a month but these dockets remain sealed.

One possible explanation for that is that the Loaner AUSAs (or perhaps Ballantine) filed a motion in DC on November 10 that is under seal, one that should not be sealed for Judge KK. So perhaps everyone is trying to hide the fact that after being ordered by Fitzpatrick not to access this data, Kash Patel just dealt it to someone else (possibly Jason Reding Quiñones). That might explain why Judge KK ordered the government they can only contest her order after giving “contemporaneous notice to counsel for Petitioner Richman:” because (hypothetically), having been ordered by MJ Fitzpatrick to stay out of Richman’s data, they instead dove deeper into it without telling him.

Or maybe the squirminess is about hiding how the underlying warrants were managed … by Jocelyn Ballantine.

Revealing those warrants, after all, should not thwart the effort to keep snuffling about Richman’s data, except insofar as it would raise questions not directly addressed in Judge KK’s order. Just as one example, even though Richman in his initial motion and TRO request relied heavily on Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick’s opinion effectively describing rampant Fourth Amendment violations, he does not mention that when the FBI seized his iCloud account in 2020, they took content through August 13, 2019, more than two years after the date of the warrant (basically, through the date of the Comey Memo IG Report release).

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.

Did Ballantine — in whom Pirro has invested the trust to limit the blowback of the pipe bomb prosecution — allow the FBI to obtain data outside the scope of a warrant? Are there secret John Durham warrants someone is hiding?

It’s not clear who all this squirminess is designed to protect. But I feel like, whether or not Judge KK’s order halts DOJ efforts to dive into this unlawfully collected data, it may lead to some interesting disclosures about why everyone is so squirmy.

Update: Right wing propagandist (and daughter of a former whack job FBI agent) Mary Margaret Olohan gives the game away. One of her DOJ sources says this won’t be a setback … which sort of confirms that DOJ intends to continue to violate Richman’s Fourth Amendment.

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Dan Richman Wants His Data Back

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There are a number of articles (Reuters, Politico) describing discussions about reindicting Jim Comey and Letitia James. Neither addresses the issue I lay out here — namely, that the ultimate goal of the Comey prosecution, at least, is to support the Grand Conspiracy in Florida, perhaps by obtaining at least probable cause that Comey lied to cover up the import of (Grand Conspiracy nutballs claim to believe) the “Clinton Plan” CIOL and Comey’s decision to release a memo documenting Trump’s corruption.

More importantly, neither addresses a new wrinkle: That Dan Richman wants his data back. (Anna Bower first noted the suit.)

Last Wednesday, Richman moved under Rule 41(g) to get his property, in the form of an image of his computer made by the Inspector General, as well as emails and additional content obtained derivative to that.

While there are redacted bits describing the original imaging by DOJ IG of the computer and the overcollection at that stage (as well as the warrants themselves, which would have been unsealed by now if the indictment hadn’t been dismissed), it relies heavily on and largely tracks William Fitzpatrick’s ruling effectively cataloging the many Fourth Amendment violations involved in the searches of Richman’s data, which Richman points to in order to claim that Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly need not consider the normal balancing considerations.

While the government may argue that it needs the Hard Drive to obtain evidence to prosecute Mr. Comey, the Comey case has now been dismissed and any charges related to the underlying conduct are time-barred. [citation omitted] (noting that had Mr. Comey not been indicted, the statute of limitations would have expired on September 30, 2025). Even if the case were to somehow proceed, the government should be barred from using evidence from the Hard Drive. The materials from the Hard Drive that the government presented to the grand jury in the Comey case were only identified by the government because it (1) exceeded the scope of the Warrants and seized non-responsive data, (2) illegally retained materials it should have destroyed or returned, and (3) searched the illegally seized and retained data without a warrant.

As Comey was preparing to move to suppress this content, the Loaner AUSAs claimed that he had no Fourth Amendment interest in Richman’s data. That was contestable for at least a subset of the data. But Richman clearly has a Fourth Amendment interest in it.

If this effort by Richman is successful, in particular his request for “a temporary restraining order enjoining the government from using or relying on in any way the improperly seized materials until such time as the Court can further consider the merits of his claims,” all the data would become inaccessible, both for any reindictment of the false statements indictment or for the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy.

Oh sure, the FBI could attempt to obtain new warrants — or subpoena Richman for the same material. But much of their use of this data (Exhibits 8, 9, and 10 post-dated Richman’s departure from the FBI, and Exhibits 3 through 7 involved sourcing for which Richman was public) did not fit basic criteria arising from the imagined crimes, Richman leaking information while still at FBI. Of what the Loaner AUSAs presented to the grand jury, they’d be stuck with the “Clinton CIOL” that the jury no-billed.

And to get the files they really want — Exhibit 10 — the FBI would undoubtedly rely on the tainted searches Richman invokes here to justify demanding the return of his data. Plus, there’s a chunk of data DOJ unlawfully seized that went through 2019; if DOJ found anything enticing in there, it too would become inaccessible.

Kash Patel’s FBI fucked up pretty badly in the way they searched Richman’s data for dirt on Jim Comey. The dismissal of the indictment might have otherwise shielded them from consequences. But at the very least this effort may thwart their ongoing witch hunt targeting Comey.

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Fridays with Nicole Sandler, Thanksgiving Wednesday Edition!

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Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

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