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Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s Story Gets Stupider

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In an attempt to unfuck Pam Bondi’s Halloween attempt to ratify Lindsey Halligan’s attempt to indict Jim Comey, the blondes from Florida have fucked things worse.

Bondi submitted a declaration effectively saying, never mind that the last time I claimed to ratify Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s work, I didn’t read closely enough to notice that the transcripts were incomplete. This time, I have read “the entirety of the record now available to the government” and I re-ratify what Lindsey did almost two months ago.

The district court has subsequently raised questions about the completeness of the record of the grand jury proceedings presented to me at the time of the initial ratification. For the avoidance of doubt, I have reviewed the entirety of the record now available to the government and confirm my knowledge of the material facts associated with the grand jury proceedings.

Lindsey, for her part, claims there was no gap and confessed she did not re-present the charges after getting no-billed. There was only one presentment.

1. Accordingly, I, Lindsey Halligan, submit this declaration to clarify the precise sequence of events on September 25, 2025, to confirm that the grand jury transcript accurately reflects the full extent of my appearance before the grand jury, and to explain that the period in question consisted solely of the grand jury’s private deliberations, during which no prosecutor, court reporter, or other person may be present pursuant to Rule 6(d) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. There are no missing minutes, contrary to the suggestion raised by the court.

2. On September 25, 2025, I presented the case of the United States v. James B. Comey, Jr., to a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division. I have reviewed the full transcript of the grand jury proceedings, and the transcript accurately reflects the entirety of the government’s presentation and presence in front of the grand jury. There was no additional presentation, interaction, or discussion with the grand jury outside of what is reflected in the transcript. Below is a brief timeline of the events that day.

3. On September 25, 2025, I appeared before the grand jury. After introducing myself and the case proposed for indictment, the case was presented through testimony. At the conclusion of the presentment, I provided a brief summation to the grand jury and then departed along with the court reporter. The process of presenting the indictment took place from approximately 02:18 PM to 04:28 PM.

4. Approximately two hours later, at 06:40 PM, I was notified by then-First Assistant United States Attorney Maggie Cleary that the grand jury had returned a true bill as to the presented Count Two and Count Three of the indictment and that the grand jury had not returned a true bill as to the presented Count One. I then proceeded to the courtroom for the return of the indictment in front of the magistrate judge.

There are a slew of problems with that.

First, there are two indictments — or rather, three:

  • The no-billed indictment as Lindsey first presented it, with the signature page from the real indictment, which starts in blue ink and ends in black.
  • The no-billed indictment as it subsequently got corrected, with both a (claimed) signature from herself and the foreperson, all in blue ink.
  • The indictment purportedly supported by the grand jury, signed in black.

Lindsey now claims she only presented the case once, yet there are — or purport to be — two indictments.

For what it’s worth, when Amicus12 first pointed this out, I called the clerk to find out WTF, but have gotten no response.

Also of interest, right wing propagandist Julie Kelly (who is quite chummy with Pam Bondi’s corrupt DOJ) claims that yesterday morning, the Chief Judge in EDVA, Leonie Brinkema, restricted Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s US Marshal detail from the courthouse.

But even if there’s not the colossal paperwork error there appears to be, there’s another problem.

The Loaner AUSAs confirmed … yesterday, that they plan to include Comey’s “Clinton Plan” statements — the stuff no-billed in original Count One — in the obstruction charge.

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

Comey attorney Pat Fitzgerald had already promised some challenge to this, in the halcyon days when everyone believed there were two presentments.

I think there’s another motion coming from us, in light of some disclosures that were made Monday, where we think that the government is expanding its case, we believe, to include the conduct that was no true billed in Count One as part of its proof of Count Two, which raises serious issues for us. So we’ll do everything we can, but to do all that while getting Mr. Comey access to materials…

But now Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer is claiming that she can rely on Count One even though grand jurors in the very same vote she’s claiming to rely on rejected that claim.

And Pam Bondi is signing on willingly to that claim.

Whatever else has happened, Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer has guaranteed that Comey will get to review what went down. The only remaining question, I suspect, is when he gets that — whether it is soon enough to help him throw out the evidence against him. But it seems like Judge Currie is not the only one alarmed by what she saw in these transcripts.

Update: I should add, given my continued obsession with the authors who have not noticed their appearance, Gabriel Diaz authored the document submitted today.

Meanwhile, Gabriel Cohen is the author of the digitally signed but unsworn declaration from Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer.

Someone named lheim authored Pam Bondi’s signed but unsworn declaration.

Update: Holy hell.

Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer appears to have resubmitted the entire package, not to fix her stupid story, but instead to fix her signature line (which Josh Gerstein first noted).

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Lindsey Halligan’s Seven Times 18-Minute Gap

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Update As I lay out here, Lindsey Halligan has submitted a digitally signed unsworn statement saying that there is nothing missing from the transcript. One possible explanation is that she did not instruct the grand jury as to the law. In any case, she now appears to claim she only presented the case once.

It’s time to return to the mystery of the magical disappearing Jim Comey grand jury transcript.

On October 28, Senior Judge Cameron McGowan Currie — the woman presiding over Jim Comey and Letitia James’ challenge to Lindsey Halligan’s appointment, ordered the government to provide her, no later than Monday, November 3, 2025, at 5:00 pm, all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts.

On November 3, Currie revealed that when prosecutors gave her the transcripts on October 31, they hadn’t given her the part she most needed — revealing what Lindsey Halligan said to the grand jury — and ordered them to try again, asking them to provide a complete transcript and/or recording of what Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did.

On Friday, October 31, 2025, the court received a package containing, inter alia, a “Transcript of Grand Jury proceedings on September 25, 2025.” This court has reviewed the transcript and finds it fails to include remarks made by the indictment signer both before and after the testimony of the sole witness, which remarks were referenced by the indictment signer during the witness’s testimony. In addition, the package contains no records or transcripts regarding the presentation of the three-count indictment referenced in the Transcript of the Return of Grand Jury Indictment Proceedings before the Magistrate Judge. See ECF No. 10.

Accordingly, the Government is directed to submit, no later than Wednesday, November 5, 2025, at 5:00 pm, for in camera review, a complete Transcript and/or recording of all statements made by the indictment signer to the grand jury on September 25, 2025, to include statements made prior to and after the testimony of the witness and during the presentation of the three-count and subsequent two-count indictments.

On the morning of November 5, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick, presiding over Comey’s challenge to DOJ’s bid to breach his privilege, ordered the government to provide all of that to Comey.

As part of this, I am going to order the government to disclose to the defense all grand jury materials, not just the testimony of the agent, but anything that was said during the course of the grand jury. How the grand jury was instructed, any presentation to the grand jury, any questions that were asked of either the agent or the United States Attorney, all of that is to be disclosed because I think the defense needs that in order to marry up the information that they have or the information that they will get to how it was used.

Among the concerns Pat Fitzgerald raised was that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer had presented materials pertaining to the “Clinton Plan” that had been rejected during her first attempt as part of her obstruction charge.

And on top of that, Your Honor, I think there’s another motion coming from us, in light of some disclosures that were made Monday, where we think that the government is expanding its case, we believe, to include the conduct that was no true billed in Count One as part of its proof of Count Two, which raises serious issues for us. So we’ll do everything we can, but to do all that while getting Mr. Comey access to materials…

Later that day, November 5, Loaner AUSA Tyler Lemons submitted a filing claiming he had complied with Currie’s order; he explained they had previously only provided the grand jury transcript that “was previously provided to the government [passive voice] by the transcription service.” But now, in response to Judge Currie’s order, they were providing “the complete recording.”

The Court had previously Ordered the government to provide, for in camera review, all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts. [DE 95]. In response, the government provided the transcript of the Grand Jury proceedings that was previously provided to the government by the transcription service.

The Court’s subsequent Order at Docket Entry 148 additionally requested the recording from the Grand Jury presentation. Upon receiving this order, the government immediately contacted the transcription service and requested the complete recording.

But Loaner AUSA Lemons did not make the grand jury transcript available to Comey. Instead, on November 6 (and in this order), he (or rather James Hayes, the guy at Main DOJ who keeps writing these things but who has not filed an appearance) claimed he would comply with the order to provide all the material seized from Dan Richman. Then he (or rather Hayes) appealed the order to share grand jury transcripts.

The next day, November 7, Judge Currie noted she had received the grand jury materials on November 5.

In advance of a hearing on November 10, Comey revealed that Loaner AUSA Lemons had not complied with Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick’s order.

This Court subsequently entered a written order denying the government’s motion for implementation of a filter protocol and compelling production of seized materials4 and the grand jury materials, together with restrictions on further government review.

4 On November 6, 2025, the government produced various copies of what appear to be the raw returns for the search warrants at issue, unscoped for responsiveness and filtered for Mr. Richman’s privileges. But the government provided incorrect passwords to large subsets of those materials. The defense engaged a vendor who worked throughout the weekend to load and process those materials; the government provided the correct passwords on November 9, 2025.

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]

Nevertheless, Fitzpatrick adopted the government request that he first review the “transcript” to see whether Comey’s suspicions about privilege and Fourth Amendment violations could result in the dismissal of the entire indictment.

Later that day, November 10, the government submitted what should have been the grand jury materials for Fitzpatrick’s review.

At that point, both Judge Currie and Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick should have had a record of everything Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did in her attempt to indict Jim Comey.

In spite of the urgency, we haven’t heard from Fitzpatrick yet; I was wondering if he wanted to get a sense of how the Currie hearing today went.

But maybe he’s having the same problem Currie did.

In the disqualification hearing today, Currie revealed (ABC; CNN; Politico)  that nothing from 4:28 on was recorded.

Currie also laid into Whitaker during the hearing on whether Attorney General Pam Bondi had reviewed the grand jury transcript in James Comey’s case, noting there was no record of anything that happened after 4:28pm ET that day. Comey wasn’t indicted for nearly two hours after that, according to available court transcripts.

“It became obvious to me that the attorney general could not have reviewed” the entire proceeding, Currie said, adding that it appeared “there was no court reporter present” at the time of the missing portion.

In preparation for Thursday’s hearing, Currie privately reviewed the transcripts and said previously that she thought looking at the transcripts was “necessary to determine the extent of the indictment signer’s involvement in the grand jury proceedings.”

That’s what I said, Judge Currie!! Pam Bondi couldn’t have reviewed the transcripts when she claimed to ratify this prosecution on October 31!

If Lindsey presented in the order of the exhibit numbers, the latter part of this presentment focused on the Mike Schmidt communications and the “Clinton plan” documents — the things Comey expressed particular interest in. Plus, if you’re missing the latter bit of the presentment, you don’t have proof the grand jury voted to indict.

Remember that the foreperson did not specify that just one of the charges was no-billed (though there definitely were two indictments, both of which Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer signed).

Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer has done Rosemary Woods one, two, three, four, five, six, seven better, creating a gap of 139 minutes, from 4:28 until 6:47, over seven 18-minutes worth long.

Not bad for a rookie.

Update: Per CNN, DOJ claims nothing is missing.

In a statement to CNN following the hearing, a representative for the Justice Department denied that there was anything missing from the transcript.

“There is no ‘missing two hours.’ That time period refers to when the jurors were deliberating behind closed doors, which would not be included in a transcription,” the statement said.

The DOJ, however, did not offer an explanation for the gap in court.

Update: I think the answer is that the last bit of Lindsey’s instruction is missing, plus the entirety of the deliberation, which wouldn’t be recorded.

Update: Corrected “indictment” which would be dismissed for “transcript.”

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Corruption Is All Fun and Games Until It Threatens to Tank the Economy

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WSJ has a follow-up to the story Reuters published a week ago, on November 5 (which I wrote about here). The Reuters piece described that FHFA’s Inspector General had been fired as he was preparing to share information relevant to EDVA’s cases — so Letitia James — and also Congress.

The ouster of Joe Allen, FHFA’s acting inspector general, follows the agency’s director, Bill Pulte, becoming an outspoken voice in support of the Trump administration. Across the government, the Trump administration has so far fired or reassigned close to two dozen agency watchdogs, who police waste, fraud and abuse. It has also defunded the group that supervises those offices.

[snip]

Allen received notice of his termination from the White House after he made efforts to provide key information to prosecutors in that office, according to four sources. The information he turned over was constitutionally required, two of them said, while a third described it as being potentially relevant in discovery.

His ouster also came about as he was preparing to send a letter to Congress notifying lawmakers that the FHFA was not cooperating with the inspector general’s office, three of the sources said.

WSJ describes that Allen was investigating whether Bill Pulte ordered people to snoop in Trump’s adversaries’ records. It also confirms that Allen did share that information with EDVA (it doesn’t mention whether Allen had succeeded in sending off any letter to Congress).

Fannie Mae watchdogs who were removed from their jobs had been probing if Trump appointee Bill Pulte had improperly obtained mortgage records of key Democratic officials, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to people familiar with the matter.

Fannie’s ethics and investigations group had received internal complaints alleging senior officials had improperly directed staff to access the mortgage documents of James and others, according to the people. The Fannie investigators were probing to find out who had made the orders, whether Pulte had the authority to seek the documents and whether or not they had followed proper procedure, the people said.

That group elevated the probe about the James documents to the more senior Office of Inspector General for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and that Pulte heads, the people said. The acting inspector general then passed the report to the U.S. attorney’s office in eastern Virginia, some of the people said.

[snip]

The FHFA acting inspector general sent the office the report at least in part because it could be considered material information for James’s defense in the case, one of the people said.

The very days this all happened, on November 4, the Loaner AUSA in the James case, Roger Keller, filed a notice saying DOJ was not going to comply with Judge Jamar Walker’s order to turn over vindictive and selective prosecution evidence, specifically pointing to the carve out in Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure for “reports, memoranda, or other internal government documents” made by “other government agents in connection with the investigation,” language that would cover any FHFA reports into Bill Pulte’s corruption.

Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16 does not require the Government to produce vindictive/selective prosecution-related evidence before a defendant files such a motion. The Rule permits a defendant to discover evidence material to her defense, FED. R. CRIM. P. 16(a)(1)(C), but “defense” means the “defense against the Government’s case in chief, . . . not to the preparation of selective prosecution claims.” Armstrong, 517 U.S. at 462 (citing FED. R. CRIM. P. 16(a)(1)(C))(emphasis added). FED. R. CRIM. P. 16(a)(2) underscores the limitation to “defense” as it “exempts from defense inspection ‘reports, memoranda, or other internal government documents made by the attorney for the government or other government agents in connection with the investigation or prosecution of the case.’” Id. (quoting FED. R. CRIM. P. 16(a)(2)). “If a selective-prosecution claim is a ‘defense,’ Rule 16(a)(1)(C) gives the defendant the right to examine Government work product in every prosecution except his own.” Id. [my emphasis]

James did mention the earlier Reuters report in her vindictive and selective prosecution motion, submitted last Friday.

The retribution campaign against AG James had only just begun. Around the same time, another federal agency, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), led by Director William Pulte, was also looking for dirt to use against AG James. By April 14, they had concocted it. Mr. Pulte delivered a criminal referral “[b]ased on media reports” to DOJ against AG James, claiming she had “in multiple instances, falsified bank documents and property records to acquire government backed assistance and loans and more favorable loan terms.” Ex. F at 1. The criminal referral cherry-picked documents to claim fraud over three properties—one even going back to 1983—none of which was the Peronne Property at issue in the indictment.16 The referral asked DOJ to open a criminal investigation into AG James. See Ex. F at 1. Mr. Pulte also coordinated with Edward Martin—the self-described “captain” of DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group who is President Trump’s close confidante and would later also be named a Special Attorney.17

16 Mr. Pulte’s conduct demonstrates how far allies of the President would go to carry out his “get James” orders. Public reports indicate that Mr. Pulte “skipped over his agency’s inspector general when making criminal referrals” against President Trump’s political enemies. Reports also indicate he may have bypassed ethics rules in doing so. Marisa Taylor & Chris Prentice, Exclusive: Trump official bypassed ethics rules in criminal referrals of Fed governor and other foes, sources say, Reuters (Oct. 6, 2025), https://perma.cc/HK6Y-LJVR. The FHFA has no generalized crimefighting or anti-fraud authority. It does not even have an express authority to make criminal referrals besides those granted to the FHFA’s Inspector General under the Inspector General Act of 1978. In addition to violations of the act itself, Mr. Pulte may have failed to comply with the FHFA’s own Privacy Act regulations, which require FHFA to “ensure” that records containing personally identifiable information are “protected from public view.” Domenic Powell, Are Pulte’s “Mortgage Fraud” Investigations Legal?, Yale J. Reg.: Notice and Comment (Nov. 1, 2025), https://perma.cc/2U6G-S46X.

17 Alan Feuer et al., Trump Demands That Bondi Move ‘Now’ to Prosecute Foes, N.Y. Times (Sept. 20, 2025), https://perma.cc/FC9R-U8TK. [link added]

This story may provide opportunity to submit a follow-up (or at least revisit the issue in a reply memo due in two weeks).

By then, of course, we may have more visibility into who got Allen fired, and whether simply the referral to Lindsey Halligan did the trick.

Particularly if Allen did succeed in getting that letter sent to Congress.

All this is happening at a curious time. First, just yesterday Politico claimed someone in Trump’s immediate orbit was furious at the way Pulte sold Trump on an insanely stupid 50-year mortgage plan.

White House officials are furious with Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, who talked the president into suggesting a 50-year mortgage plan.

The White House was blindsided by the idea, according to two people familiar with the situation granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, and is now dealing with a furious backlash from conservative allies, business leaders and lawmakers.

On Saturday evening, Pulte arrived at President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach Golf Club with a roughly 3-by-5 posterboard in hand. A graphic of former President Franklin Roosevelt appeared below “30-year mortgage” and one of Trump below “50-year mortgage.” The headline was “Great American Presidents.”

Roughly 10 minutes later, Trump posted the image to Truth Social, according to one of the people familiar, who was with the president at the time.

Almost immediately, aides were fielding angry phone calls from those who thought the idea – which would endorse a 50 year payback period for a mortgage – was both bad politics and bad policy, a move that could raise housing costs in the long run, the person said.

After describing fury about how Pulte did this — hitting Trump up with visuals at the golf club — Politico spends 11 paragraphs describing a range of people panning the idea before describing the last time Pulte did this: when pitching a plan to bring Fannie and Freddie public, another insanely stupid idea.

“Anything that goes before POTUS needs to be vetted,” said the person present for Pulte’s poster presentation. “And a lot of times with Pulte they’re not. He just goes straight up to POTUS.”

[11 ¶¶ of influencers and experts panning the idea]

This is not the first time Pulte’s policy proposals have caused headaches. He was also behind the idea Trump floated earlier this year to take Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public, which also resulted in significant pushback from industry.

Which brings us to the very last paragraph of the WSJ story, a story mostly focused on Pulte’s investigation-related corruption. It suggests Pulte’s corruption may make it harder to bring Fannie and Freddie public, that prior idea he floated by cornering Trump with unvetted ideas.

The Trump administration is considering an initial public offering for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, one of the biggest IPOs in history at a crucial moment for the mortgage market. That process will require convincing potential investors, and the broader mortgage-bond market, the management of the companies is stable.

As I read both James’ and Comey’s motions to dismiss for vindictive prosecution, there’s part of me that selfishly wants this process to be one step harder than it needs to be: rather than simply dismissing on the abundant evidence of vindictive prosecution laid out (or, even more likely, because Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer is only playacting as US Attorney, about which there is a hearing tomorrow), I want them to get discovery so we can unpack all this process and bring down the corrupt enablers like Pulte, Eagle Ed Martin, on up to Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche.

Still, there’s something that may force this to go even more public than it otherwise would: Lisa Cook, into whose private records Pulte was likely also snooping, who will have a hearing about whether Trump attempted to fire her “for cause,” or because Pulte snooped in her private records looking for cause.

Corruption is all fun and games until it gets fast-tracked to SCOTUS (where, admittedly, Justices have been all too happy to legalize corruption). It’s all fun and games, Trump’s team seems to believe, until it poses a risk to the housing market.

For whatever reason, Bill Pulte seems to be getting fast-tracked in Trump world, from a useful corrupt flunky to a dangerous liability.

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Gabriel Diaz’ 14 Exhibits

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As I noted here, in a telephone hearing yesterday, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick ordered the government to provide him with the grand jury transcripts in the Jim Comey case, which he will review after reading an ex parte filing from Comey’s team laying out the unlawful evidence they suspect got presented to the grand jury.

Loaner AUSA Gabriel Diaz may have helped them write that memo by confirming there were 14 exhibits presented to the grand jury.

His claim — that there were 14 exhibits — may not be entirely true.

I say that because that number — 14 — matches the number of exhibits included in last week’s response to Comey’s vindictive prosecution claim (the reply to which Comey submitted yesterday, which I’ll return to). The exhibits posted to docket last week, which all include exhibit tags, consist of the following:

This order would suggest they laid out the evidence that Comey lied, focusing heavily on the 2016 exchange (the only one from when Richman was at the FBI), and presenting Comey’s April 23, 2017 thank you email to Richman ahead of Richman’s February 11, 2017 recruitment of Chuck Rosenberg, possibly creating the misimpression that Comey asked for Richman to weigh in on what became the April 2017 story.

Then they presented the Comey memo exchange (Exhibits 10 and 11), and the “Clinton Plan” (Exhibits 12-14). As presented, they did not present the “Clinton plan” referral itself to the grand jury (which might have made it even more apparent that Lindsey was not asking about what Comey’s notes laid out).

There must be at least one more exhibit as presented for the indictment the grand jury approved. As laid out here, the grand jury was not shown how Comey responded to Ted Cruz’ question (to say nothing of Chuck Grassley’s question on which Cruz’ question was based). That is, as laid out here, prosecutors did not include the exhibit that laid out the one lie actually charged.

There must be a video or something — though I find it interesting that they didn’t provide a transcript of Cruz’ question (if they didn’t), since he garbled it about ten different ways.

There are three other questions this exhibit list raises for me.

First, one concern Comey’s attorneys have is the treatment of the materials obtained with a second warrant for Dan Richman’s Columbia emails  — presumably the source of Exhibits 4-9.

What’s interesting is the Bates stamps for those are inconsistent. The earlier set are marked with a Richman Bates stamp.

The two later ones, including the one from the same Jim Comey ReinholdNiebuhr7 alias Gmail, have COLUM Bates stamps.

That suggests those two sets of communications were treated differently. Possibly, the earlier one was part of Richman’s privilege log.

The Bates stamps on the texts between Richman and Mike Schmidt also raise questions, because there’s no source of any kind noted (or if there is, it is redacted), just a series starting with 4801.

Given some of the other details we’ve learned: that all the Feebs involved in this report directly to Kash Patel, that the agent who read the attorney-client privileged text was reading the entire Cellebrite extraction of Richman’s phone — that is, without privileged texts removed — it raises real questions about whether some other team provided them, a team with its own (obscured) Bates stamp.

Worse still, the one of the two agents who read the privileged text attested that he only handed Miles Starr two pages of texts, all dated May 11.

SA Warren provided the indictment preparation team a two-page document containing limited text message content only from May 11, 2017, predating the reference to potential future legal representation.

But the exhibit is eight pages long!

Having been told there was privileged communication there and shielded from it, someone went back to those texts to get more of them, to present them to the grand jury. And that same someone led the Loaner AUSAs to believe that sharing the Comey memos after consulting with attorneys was a crime.

Effectively, SA Warren has reported a crime committed by his superiors, the willful violation of Jim Comey’s privilege.

Which is undoubtedly why James Hayes is so intent on letting the FBI lead a privilege review.

Finally, one more thing. Remember how weird the no-billed indictment is, which I laid out here?

The indictment the grand jury approved charged Comey with lying to Ted Cruz (as Diaz would have it, without being shown what that lie is), and obstructing a Congressional proceeding, “by making false and misleading statements before that committee.”

The exhibit list makes clear that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did shoehorn the no-billed charge into the obstruction charge, presumably treating questions about the Comey memos and “Clinton plan” — the only things in the indictment that were material to the scope of the hearing — as “misleading” rather than “false” statements. Last week, Pat Fitzgerald had said they were going to raise concerns about that this week, but they may be waiting to get that grand jury transcript.

Now go back and look at how that obstruction charges looks in the no-billed (top) and approved (bottom) indictment.

Update: As Amicus12 points out below, sometime within a day or so of the indictment, this error got fixed. Here’s what the fixed document looks like:

It is increasingly clear that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer literally replaced what would have been Count Three of the no-billed indictment with Count Two of the approved indictment. That explains why that page has:

  • Staple and scan marks matching the real indictment
  • The numbering from the second indictment (these paragraphs should be numbered 7 and 8 in the no-billed indictment)
  • Both the signature of the foreperson (note the part of a signature that crosses into the “U” of the True Bill line) and Lindsey herself on that page

She simply swapped the page.

There’s good reason to ask whether she wasn’t just being dumb and inexperienced (which is what it looked like in the 7-minute hearing with the judge), but was also being deceitful.

For example, it’s possible that the original indictment charged Comey with obstructing the Senate’s investigation only by making false statements, but in a bid to get the material things in there pertinent to the larger investigation, the “Clinton plan” and the Comey memos, Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer added the word “misleading” to lower the bar to get a vote from the grand jurors.

It’s unclear whether Fitzpatrick will or can review some of these issues. He’s scrutinizing the indictment for unlawful and privileged exhibits. That also might explain why Diaz tried hard to prevent Comey from providing a list of things to look for.

The unlawful exhibits are bad enough. But there seems to be worse still.

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An awkward picture of Eagle Ed Martin and Lindsey Halligan posing in his office.

Letitia James Highlights Eagle Ed Martin Just Before He Goes on a Conspiratorial Rant

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Vindictive and selective prosecution cases are always nearly impossible to win, because of how narrowly the precedent draws the analysis. To prove vindictive prosecution, the defendant has to prove that the prosecutor who made a charging decision harbored animus to the defendant.

But of course, in Jim Comey and Letitia James’ case, the playacting prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, is just doing what her boss installed her to do. She didn’t act out of animus towards Comey and James, except insofar as such animus is a litmus test for belonging in Trump’s tribe (though her brief stint at the Smithsonian also exposed her as a dumb bigot, which could be relevant in James’ case). She acted out of a corrupt willingness to do anything her boss tells her to do.

Here’s how Lindsey’s Loaner AUSAs argued that Comey had not met that standard in their response to his vindictive and selective prosecution motion.

To start, the relevant analysis is whether the “prosecutor charging” the offense “harbored vindictive animus.” Wilson, 262 F.3d at 316; see United States v. Gomez-Lopez, 62 F.3d 304, 306 (9th Cir. 1995) (noting that the focus “is on the ultimate decision-maker”). Here, that prosecutor is the U.S. Attorney. Yet the defendant doesn’t present any evidence that she harbors animus against him. Instead, he says that he doesn’t need any such evidence because his claim “turns on the animus harbored by the official who prompted the prosecution.” See Def. Mem., Dkt. No. 59 at 21. And, according to him, that is the President. See id. As discussed below, the President does not harbor vindictive animus against the defendant in the relevant sense. Before reaching that issue, however, the Court should determine whether the defendant has offered sufficient evidence to find that the President displaced the U.S. Attorney as “the ultimate decision-maker” in bringing this prosecution. See Gomez-Lopez, 62 F.3d at 304. The only “direct evidence” on the issue says otherwise. See Wilson, 262 F.3d at 314.

The defendant’s argument relies on the imputed-animus theory. The Fourth Circuit has never adopted that theory. In fact, when a defendant asked the Fourth Circuit to impute animus from investigating law-enforcement agents, the Fourth Circuit categorically rejected the theory. See United States v. Hastings, 126 F.3d 310, 314 (4th Cir. 1997) (“We will not impute the unlawful biases of the investigating agents to the persons ultimately responsible for the prosecution.”); see also United States v. Cooper, 617 F. App’x 249, 251 (4th Cir. 2015). That is consistent with other circuits’ application of the theory in that context. See, e.g., United States v. Gilbert, 266 F.3d 1180, 1187 (9th Cir. 2001) (“In all but the most extreme cases, it is only the biases and motivations of the prosecutor that are relevant.”); United States v. Spears, 159 F.3d 1081, 1087 (7th Cir. 1998).

When courts have entertained the imputed-animus theory in other contexts, they have required a significant evidentiary showing: there must be “evidence that the federal prosecutor did not make the ultimate decision to bring the indictment.” Spears, 159 F.3d at 1087.

It is true that Comey and James (in a filing submitted Friday) both did ultimately say Trump ordered up their prosecutions, relying heavily on his tweet ordering Pam Bondi to install Lindsey Halligan to do so.

But they took a different approach in laying out the weaponization of DOJ. Comey, relying on a 60-page exhibit of Trump tweets to demonstrate the President’s animus, focused relentlessly on Trump. He didn’t even mention the now-FBI Director’s equally rabid animus.

Tish James had her exhibit showing how obsessively Trump hates her too; it includes not just tweets, but also speeches, and at 113 pages is almost twice as long as Comey’s exhibit.

But James also focused on the way the Trump Administration, more generally, has been (literally) stalking her, notably in the form of Eagle Ed Martin, as well as Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller, and Bill Pulte (this section is where James includes the Reuters report about firing the FHFA IG to prevent him from sharing information with prosecutors; that footnote and others are at the bottom of this page).

AG Bondi took the President’s mission to heart, and on the first day of her appointment, established DOJ’s “Weaponization Working Group,” with the stated objective to examine “[f]ederal cooperation with the weaponization” by “New York Attorney General Letitia James” to “target President Trump, his family and his businesses,” among other top priorities. 15 Ex. C. The goal was to retaliate against the President’s perceived political enemies, including AG James.

In March, President Trump also issued a Presidential Memorandum, “Rescinding Security Clearances and Access to Classified Information from Specified Individuals,” specifically calling out AG James, claiming “it is no longer in the national interest” for her, along with fourteen of his other perceived political opponents, to have a security clearance or access classified information. Ex. D.

The retribution campaign against AG James had only just begun. Around the same time, another federal agency, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), led by Director William Pulte, was also looking for dirt to use against AG James. By April 14, they had concocted it. Mr. Pulte delivered a criminal referral “[b]ased on media reports” to DOJ against AG James, claiming she had “in multiple instances, falsified bank documents and property records to acquire government backed assistance and loans and more favorable loan terms.” Ex. F at 1. The criminal referral cherry-picked documents to claim fraud over three properties—one even going back to 1983—none of which was the Peronne Property at issue in the indictment.16 The referral asked DOJ to open a criminal investigation into AG James. See Ex. F at 1. Mr. Pulte also coordinated with Edward Martin—the self-described “captain” of DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group who is President Trump’s close confidante and would later also be named a Special Attorney.17 Reporting even indicates that President Trump had been bypassing his senior DOJ lead regularly telephoning Martin for updates on his work, leaving [DAG Todd] Blanche ‘frustrated and annoyed,’” according to sources.18

Standing outside the White House on the day the referral was released, one of the President’s aides, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, told reporters AG James “is one of the most corrupt, shameless individuals ever to hold public office” and “is guilty of multiple, significant, serial criminal violations” for having “persecute[d] an innocent man,” referring to President Trump.19 President Trump also did not withhold his views about FHFA’s criminal referral to DOJ, attacking AG James directly in several social media posts discussing the referral:

Turns out you can’t have your principal residence in Virginia and be AG of New York. You can’t say your dad’s your husband. Or claim a five-unit is a four. But that’s what Letitia James did—while going after Trump for the same thing. You’ve got to be kidding me

Ex. A. at No. 334;

Letitia James, a totally corrupt politician, should resign from her position as New York State Attorney General, IMMEDIATELY. Everyone is trying to MAKE NEW YORK GREAT AGAIN, and it can never be done with this wacky crook in office.

Id. at No. 333.

On the heels of the referral to DOJ, in May, Mr. Martin admitted that he planned to use his authority to expose and discredit opponents of the President whom he believes to be guilty. 20 He made plain that it did not matter if there were no facts to back up President Trump’s accusations or even if a charge had no merit: “If they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them. And we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, there should be people that are shamed.”21 Discussing targets for criminal investigation, Martin stated that the Weaponization Working Group’s prerogative included “Letitia James.”22

And to support this additional prong of animus, James included a second, 12-page exhibit, which includes (among other things), all the creepy pictures Eagle Ed has posted of himself stalking James, including pictures showing him reviewing files with Halligan just before she indicted James or just randomly chatting up someone at FHFA.

It also documents Eagle Ed’s juvenile trolling on Xitter.

It may be an awkward time, for Eagle Ed, to have such a focus on his trollish obsessions.

That’s because he is currently involved in equally pathetic troll campaign targeting a woman that right wing nutjobs have decided must be the Pipe Bomber based off gait analysis — I guess they’ll get around to using phrenology? — and their dislike of how she testified against Guy Reffitt, the first Jan6er to go to trial.

Anna Bower has been spending her weekend documenting how Eagle Ed first posts, then deletes, tweets trying to gin up the frothy mob. In the first such instance, someone — maybe Todd Blanche — made Eagle Ed affirmatively deny the gait-analysis claims as a “fake.”

These tweets show not just that a key cog in the James prosecution — the guy who accepted allegations from Bill Pulte and then ferried them to the woman playacting as US Attorney — is a wild conspiracy theorist happy to magnify any kind of bullshit he gets from frothy right wingers, but also that some babysitter at DOJ knows he is, and is attempting to rein him in.

I’m not sure whether Comey’s more focused approach or James’ wholistic one works better. Given that prosecutors dismissed Comey’s comparators because none had precisely the same role he once did, he certainly has an opportunity to use the opening memo that Tyler Lemons submitted last week which led to these charges to show that the current FBI Director lied his ass off to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he told Mazie Hirono that he had no intention of revisiting history to prosecute Comey.

Senator Hirono (02:18:49):

Do you plan to investigate James Comey, who’s on your list?

Kash Patel (02:18:54):

I have no intentions of going backwards-

The opening memo shows that Kash wasted no time in doing just that — not just chasing the John Durham prosecution predicated of Russian disinformation, but putting Durham’s wildly-conflicted lead investigator in charge, literally finding a lame excuse to revisit the Durham investigation.

The broad or narrow scope may not matter. Indeed, unless the cases get dismissed because Lindsey was just playacting as US Attorney, there’s a non-zero chance these arguments will be appealed through the Fourth Circuit together, which is presumably why Comey had loaded his team with appellate lawyers and scores of people are submitting amicus briefs.

These vindictive and selective prosecution arguments may make new precedent, about whether the President can repurpose the Department of Justice to prioritize jailing his political adversaries.

But Eagle Ed has now made clear that one element of that repurposed DOJ is seizing and stoking baseless conspiracy theories to rile up the base.

15 Ryan Lucas, New attorney general moves to align Justice Department with Trump’s priorities, NPR (Feb. 5, 2025), https://perma.cc/WLU8-FPBL.

16 Mr. Pulte’s conduct demonstrates how far allies of the President would go to carry out his “get James” orders. Public reports indicate that Mr. Pulte “skipped over his agency’s inspector general when making criminal referrals” against President Trump’s political enemies. Reports also indicate he may have bypassed ethics rules in doing so. Marisa Taylor & Chris Prentice, Exclusive: Trump official bypassed ethics rules in criminal referrals of Fed governor and other foes, sources say, Reuters (Oct. 6, 2025), https://perma.cc/HK6Y-LJVR. The FHFA has no generalized crimefighting or anti-fraud authority. It does not even have an express authority to make criminal referrals besides those granted to the FHFA’s Inspector General under the Inspector General Act of 1978. In addition to violations of the act itself, Mr. Pulte may have failed to comply with the FHFA’s own Privacy Act regulations, which require FHFA to “ensure” that records containing personally identifiable information are “protected from public view.” Domenic Powell, Are Pulte’s “Mortgage Fraud” Investigations Legal?, Yale J. Reg.: Notice and Comment (Nov. 1, 2025), https://perma.cc/2U6G-S46X.

17 Alan Feuer et al., Trump Demands That Bondi Move ‘Now’ to Prosecute Foes, N.Y. Times (Sept. 20, 2025), https://perma.cc/FC9R-U8TK.

18 Andrew Feinberg, Trump ally probing rivals’ ‘mortgage fraud’ speaks directly with the president – and skips typical DOJ hierarchy, The Independent (Aug. 29, 2025), https://perma.cc/4LXUUUAC.

19 Statement of Stephen Miller, White House Homeland Security Adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, to Reporters outside the White House (Apr. 18, 2025), https://perma.cc/9X5GX7YB (emphasis added).

20 U.S. Attorney Ed Martin Holds News Conference, C-SPAN (May 13, 2025), https://www.cspan.org/program/news-conference/us-attorney-ed-martin-holds-news-conference/659817.

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Tyler Lemons Narcs out Pam Bondi: She Couldn’t Have Ratified Lindsey Halligan’s Actions

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Now that Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick has ordered that prosecutors provide Jim Comey with the grand jury transcripts along with all the evidence they used in their latest filing (which they had not provided to Comey beforehand), let’s return to the saga of the missing grand jury transcripts, shall we? Because they get closer to implicating Pam Bondi in misleading the court.

As I laid out here, on October 28, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ordered prosecutors to give her all the transcripts of Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer’s actions in the grand jury. On October 31, DOJ delivered a package to her. Yesterday, Judge Currie ordered prosecutors to deliver what she had actually asked for: “remarks made by the indictment signer both before and after the testimony of the sole witness” during the presentment of the indictment the jury accepted, as well as “transcripts regarding the presentation of the three-count indictment” that the grand jury no-billed.

“Upon receiving this order” (which would have been yesterday, November 4), according to a new filing from Tyler Lemons, “the government immediately contacted the transcription service and requested the complete recording.” And then “the government requested that the transcription service transcribe the entire recording, which had not been done previously.” It provided those materials, for the first time recording the things Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer had done in the grand jury — both during the presentment where the grand jury rejected one of the counts, and before and after the presentment where they approved the indictment — today.

But that means that when Attorney General Pam Bondi ratified what Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer had done on October 31 …

In addition, based on my review of the grand jury proceedings in United States v. Corney and United States v. James, I hereby exercise the authority vested in the Attorney General by law, including 28 U.S.C. § 509, 510, and 515, to ratify Ms. Halligan’s actions before the grand jury and her signature on the indictments by the grand jury in each case.

… (using the same transcripts that were delivered to Judge Currie), those transcripts didn’t reveal what Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer had done.

At all!

This means two things:

First, that Pam Bondi in fact has not ratified anything Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did, because she could not have reviewed any of it. DOJ did not yet have the recording, much less a transcript.

And it means that Pam Bondi ratified what Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer did, seemingly seeing precisely what Judge Currie did: the transcripts actually excluded everything Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer had done.

Update: An interesting wrinkle. Normally it’d take a long time to drag someone in the AG’s vicinity to answer for these irregularities. But not so here. Henry Charles Whitaker has filed notices of appearances in both the Comey and James cases in advance of next week’s hearing on these challenges. He’s the former FL Solicitor General, now serving as Bondi’s Counselor. That may backfire.

Update: Journalists who were in Currie’s hearing today report that DOJ still didn’t give Judge Currie the entire transcripts. There was a several minute section missing!

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The IG Firing that May Matter: FHFA

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Yesterday, Reuters reported that the Inspector General for FHFA, which oversees Fannie and Freddie, got fired by the White House yesterday.

The ouster of Joe Allen, FHFA’s acting inspector general, follows the agency’s director, Bill Pulte, becoming an outspoken voice in support of the Trump administration. Across the government, the Trump administration has so far fired or reassigned close to two dozen agency watchdogs, who police waste, fraud and abuse. It has also defunded the group that supervises those offices.

The report attracted little notice; Reuters even notes that this is just one among dozens of IG firings. But this firing may blow up sooner rather than later.

That’s because Allen was preparing to share information with EDVA prosecutors.

Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who was hand-picked for the job by Trump, subsequently indicted James after her predecessor declined to do so, citing a lack of evidence.

Allen received notice of his termination from the White House after he made efforts to provide key information to prosecutors in that office, according to four sources. The information he turned over was constitutionally required, two of them said, while a third described it as being potentially relevant in discovery.

His ouster also came about as he was preparing to send a letter to Congress notifying lawmakers that the FHFA was not cooperating with the inspector general’s office, three of the sources said. These individuals said the FHFA director would typically have been notified of such a letter. Reuters was unable to independently determine whether Pulte was informed.

By the end of the day, the Loaner AUSA in the Letitia James case had submitted a letter stating they would not comply with Judge Jamar Walker’s order, issued during the arraignment, that they turn over evidence on selective and vindictive prosecution.

A grand jury returned a two-count indictment against Defendant on October 9, 2025. Doc. 1. Defendant’s Initial Appearance and Arraignment occurred on October 24, 2025. Doc. 24. At that hearing, the Court ordered Defendant to file her motion to dismiss based on vindicative/selective prosecution by November 7, 2025. Hear’g Tr., 23:18-20. It also indicated its expectation “that the discovery associated with this potential first motion needs to be frontloaded . . . .” Id. at 23:14-16. Consistent with this Court’s instruction, the Government provided newspaper articles to Defendant’s counsel. Defendant’s counsel also indicated that he intends to request substantial discovery from the Government.

The Government provides notice of its intent not to provide vindictive/selective prosecution-related discovery prior to Defendant’s motion because the law does not “allow[ ] a defendant to have discovery on the government’s prosecutorial decisions [until] the defendant . . . overcome[s] a significant barrier by advancing objective evidence tending to show the existence of prosecutorial misconduct. The standard is a ‘rigorous’ one.” Wilson, 262 F.3d at 315 (quoting Armstrong, 517 U.S. at 468). Until Defendant meets her threshold requirements, the Court’s instruction to produce any vindictive/selective prosecution-related discovery is premature.

The letter specifically describes that Rule 16 discovery does not include internal government reports made by government agents in connection with the case — something that would be covered by any review that FHFA’s IG did of this and other Bill Pulte referrals.

FED. R. CRIM. P. 16(a)(2) underscores the limitation to “defense” as it “exempts from defense inspection ‘reports, memoranda, or other internal government documents made by the attorney for the government or other government agents in connection with the investigation or prosecution of the case.’”

The filing is not dissimilar from a letter prosecutors sent in the LaMonica McIver case, telling McIver’s attorneys they would not abide by Judge Jamel Semper’s August 26 order to meet and confer about selective and vindictive evidence.

The Government has reviewed your letter of September 3, 2025 detailing the specific discovery requests sought in conjunction with your client’s motion to dismiss based on selective prosecution and enforcement, and vindictive prosecution. As we discussed during our Zoom call yesterday, we believe that the discovery sought in your September 3rd letter is not covered by Rule 16. Discovery in support of selective prosecution and selective enforcement claims is not provided as a matter of right, and we do not believe your client has satisfied the applicable threshold evidentiary showings required by Amstrong/Bass and Washington to compel discovery. We therefore believe that Judge Semper should first rule on your client’s motion for discovery, which we will oppose, and we will revisit the discovery demands outlined in your letter should the Court grant her request.

And while Semper ruled that prosecutors have to provide McIver the communications from Delaney Hall to her, they otherwise appear to have gotten away with this stance.

But two things may lead to a different outcome here.

First, by firing Allen, the White House has made the firing itself an issue, not unlike the Erez Reuveni firing did in the Kilmar Abrego case. At the very least, this news report will add to the bases to claim vindictive prosecution.

But also because Attorney General James shares an attorney, Abbe Lowell, with Lisa Cook. No one has charged Lisa Cook yet — maybe they never will; but nevertheless she has a date at the Supreme Court in January. And that may have the effect of putting several issues before the Court at once (the lawsuit by a bunch of Inspectors General fired at the beginning of Trump’s term is stayed pending all these other cases).

None of that’s to say that SCOTUS will reverse course on letting presidents (or at least this one) fire everyone put in place to exercise some oversight.

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Cat Got the Indictment Singer’s [sic] Tongue?

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On October 28, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie — the senior South Carolina Judge who’ll preside over Jim Comey and Tish James’ challenges to Lindsey Halligan’s appointment — instructed the government to give her the grand jury transcripts.

The undersigned has been appointed to hear this motion and finds it necessary to determine the extent of the indictment signer’s involvement in the grand jury proceedings. Accordingly, the Government is directed to submit, no later than Monday, November 3, 2025, at 5:00 pm, for in camera review, all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts.

On October 30, Jim Comey submitted a motion describing all the reasons it might be useful for him to see those transcripts, too.

Although those motions must be decided on their own merits, the circumstances described in both motions raise a strong possibility that there were “irregularities in the grand jury proceedings” that would provide a “basis for dismissal of the indictment.” Nguyen, 314 F. Supp. 2d at 616 (citations omitted). Indeed, Judge Currie has already ordered the government to produce for in camera review “all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts.” ECF No. 95. Mr. Comey has argued that if Ms. Halligan alone secured and signed the indictment, dismissal would be required because she was unlawfully appointed.

[snip]

For similar reasons, disclosure of the grand jury materials is reasonably calculated to provide additional support for Mr. Comey’s argument that he would not have been prosecuted but for President Trump’s animus toward Mr. Comey, including because of his protected speech.

On October 31, the government delivered a package of grand jury transcripts to Judge Currie.

Only, they didn’t include “all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts.”

Judge Currie exhibited remarkable patience when instructing DOJ, for the second time, to give her all the transcripts.

On October 28, 2025, the undersigned entered an order directing the Government to submit, for in camera review, “all documents relating to the indictment signer’s participation in the grand jury proceedings, along with complete grand jury transcripts.” ECF No. 95. On Friday, October 31, 2025, the court received a package containing, inter alia, a “Transcript of Grand Jury proceedings on September 25, 2025.” This court has reviewed the transcript and finds it fails to include remarks made by the indictment signer both before and after the testimony of the sole witness, which remarks were referenced by the indictment signer during the witness’s testimony. In addition, the package contains no records or transcripts regarding the presentation of the three-count indictment referenced in the Transcript of the Return of Grand Jury Indictment Proceedings before the Magistrate Judge.

Did DOJ really think Currie is stupid enough for this to work?

What makes all of this exceptionally stupid, though, is that Pam Bondi described reading the transcripts before she ratified the prosecution back on October 31, the same day the transcripts mysteriously weren’t all delivered to Judge Currie.

In addition, based on my review of the grand jury proceedings in United States v. Corney and United States v. James, I hereby exercise the authority vested in the Attorney General by law, including 28 U.S.C. § 509, 510, and 515, to ratify Ms. Halligan’s actions before the grand jury and her signature on the indictments by the grand jury in each case.

So whatever it is that led someone to withhold the most important parts of the Jim Comey transcript, Pam Bondi is now complicit in it.

And all of that will make it more likely that Judge Michael Nachmanoff will himself review the transcripts to see what all the fuss is about.

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Tyler Lemons’ Vindictive and Selective Bill of Particulars

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I want to congratulate Loaner AUSA Tyler Lemons, who after confessing that Kash Patel’s FBI had violated Jim Comey’s Fourth Amendment rights on Sunday, went on to lay out why Comey is right to demand a Bill of Particulars on Monday. As NYT quipped,

the prosecutors who wrote the filing spent as much time suggesting that Mr. Comey had used the confidant, Daniel C. Richman, a law professor at Columbia University, as a conduit to the news media as they did seeking to reject allegations that the indictment was vindictive.

The introduction is one page. The conclusion is 30 words. And before the 25-page discussion competently addressing Comey’s vindictive and selective prosecution claim, the brief spends 15 pages trying to claim that this prosecution caught Jim Comey lying and obstructing an investigation that would merit charges.

Mostly, though, it demonstrates that poor Tyler Lemons can’t sort out what it is he is prosecuting.

Lemons establishes the need to include transcripts omitted from the indictment

Start with transcripts. The government motion itself includes:

  • A transcription of Jim Comey’s May 3, 2017 exchange with Chuck Grassley (before he released a memo describing Trump’s misconduct)
  • A transcription of an exchange Comey had on June 8, 2017 with Susan Collins describing sharing that memo through Richman
  • A transcription of the September 30, 2020 exchange Comey had with Ted Cruz that is charged as Count One of the indictment

In footnotes to the first,

6 The transcript attached to the defendant’s motion non-substantively corrects Senator Grassley’s second question. See C-Span, User Clip: Sen. Grassley Questions James Comey (May 3, 2017), https://www.c-span.org/clip/senate-committee/user-clip-sen-grassley-questions-jamescomey/4853218.

And third transcriptions, Lemon makes observations about the inaccuracy of transcripts Comey included as exhibits to his vindictive and selective motion (Grassley, Cruz) — though neither were transcripts Comey himself produced.

9 The transcript attached to the defendant’s motion non-substantively corrects Senator Cruz’s questions and the defendant’s first answer; the transcript also erroneously adds the word “that” to Senator Cruz’s final question and omits the word “is” from the same question. See, e.g., POLITICO, Archive: Sen. Ted Cruz questions James Comey on Trump and Clinton investigation leaks (Sept. 26, 2025), https://www.politico.com/video/2025/09/26/archive-sen-ted-cruzquestions-james-comey-on-trump-and-clinton-investigation-leaks-1759922.

But Lemons relegates the transcription of the exchange between Comey and Graham from the September 30, 2020 hearing to an exhibit, thereby facilitating his effort to hide that Graham’s question was about a September 7, 2016 CIA referral, and not about the Russian fabricated Clinton plan generally.

The transcriptions of the Grassley-Comey and Cruz-Comey exchange that Comey included in his literal truth motion do not include the inaccuracies Lemons noted. But as a footnote explained, Comey relied primarily on the video he submitted with that exhibit.

For the rest of this brief, references to the exchange between Mr. Cruz and Mr. Comey cite to the Oversight Hearing Video Clip, which provides the most accurate depiction of the exchange. But the Oversight Hearing Transcript is a useful reference as well.

But as Comey notes in his vindictive motion, his literal truth motion, and his request for a Bill of Particulars motion, the indictment itself misquotes the exchange and in no way identifies what specifically Comey lied about.

the text of Count One both misstates the testimony Mr. Comey actually gave and misquotes the question posed by Senator Ted Cruz. See Mot. to Dismiss Indictment Based on Vindictive & Selective Prosecution, ECF No. 59 at 15; Mot. to Dismiss Based on Fundamental Ambiguity & Literal Truth at 2-4.

So as charged, Comey is being prosecuted for an exchange that didn’t happen the way Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer claimed it did. Comey has asked for accurate specifics, and Lemons emphasized the inaccuracies of what is out there.

Lemons can’t distinguish between the investigations and leaks at issue

Now consider the claimed structure of that passage and what it actually says. Doing so reveals that Lemons doesn’t understand what he’s referring to (or, worse, deliberately misrepresents it).

A. The defendant’s service as FBI Director and the Midyear Exam investigation. (pages 2-4)

This section summarizes the declination part of the DOJ IG Report on Midyear Exam. While this section notes that Trump fired Comey (it doesn’t say on what date in May 2017 Trump did so), it doesn’t admit that the ostensible purpose Trump gave for firing Comey pertained to Comey’s treatment of Hillary, not his refusal to shut down the Russian investigation … an oversight (and Mueller evidence) that Comey now has cause to raise in his Reply.

B. The defendant’s correspondence with Daniel Richman—and Richman’s correspondence with the press—regarding the Midyear Exam investigation. (pages 4-8)

This section starts with a description of Dan Richman, describing him as, “a Columbia Law School professor who also served as an FBI Special Government Employee since 2015.” Nowhere does Lemons mention that Richman’s SGE appointment was lapsed at least as late as October 27, nor that Richman left the FBI on February 7, 2017.

It then spends 2.5 pages describing correspondence Comey had with Dan Richman in advance of this NYT flowchart, citing these exhibits:

Then it spends a page describing correspondence relating to this article, the article at the core of Arctic Haze. But it does so backwards. It first describes Comey’s April 23, 2017 email thanking Richman for what he said — on the record — in it. Then it describes emails Richman sent on February 11, 2017, four days after FBI claims he left FBI, soliciting Chuck Rosenberg’s involvement in what would be the April 23 story. There’s no mention of Comey’s involvement, in advance, in that story.

And then, still under the heading of articles about Midyear Exam, Lemons describes texts between Mike Schmidt and Richman, between May 11 and 16, about Comey’s firing, specifically referencing the dinner at which Trump demanded Comey’s loyalty. Those text messages culminate in the publication of this story, “Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation,” the story first revealing that Trump asked Comey to let the Flynn prosecution go.

C. The defendant’s disclosure of memoranda concerning meetings with the President and his pertinent Senate testimony. (pages 9-12)

Having already described the publication of the story about the memos, Lemons then describes Comey’s testimony in 2017 about them. He describes Comey telling Grassley on May 3, 6 days before he was fired and 8 days before the Schmidt and Richman texts start, that he had not asked anyone to serve as an anonymous source in news stories about the Clinton or Trump investigations (note, on that day there was no Trump investigation, there was an investigation into others). He describes Comey, three weeks after the story (Lemons doesn’t provide the date, June 8, which is important context to the next section showing Trump wailing about “leaks”) truthfully telling Susan Collins that he asked a friend to share the memo with a reporter.

COMEY: I asked—the president tweeted on Friday [May 12], after I got fired, that I better hope there’s not tapes. I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night, because it didn’t dawn on me originally that there might be corroboration for our conversation. There might be a tape.

And my judgment was, I needed to get that out into the public square. And so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn’t do it myself, for a variety of reasons. But I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. And so I asked a friend of mine to do it.

Which he immediately follows with Ted Cruz’ questions from 2020, as if Richman sharing the memos could be responsive (much less material) to Ted Cruz’ question about asking someone at the FBI to share stuff anonymously.

D. The President’s concern with the defendant’s official conduct. (pages 12-14)

The next bit is central to the Loaner AUSAs’ claim that Trump wasn’t prosecuting Comey for his opposition but instead out of a legitimate concern about leaks. A one page description of Trump’s obsession with what he claimed were Comey’s leaks treats the Richman memos as a leak, even though Comey admitted to releasing them within a month.

Shortly after the defendant was fired, the President began to publicly express his concern that the defendant had leaked (or authorized the leak of) investigative information and had given false or misleading testimony to cover it up. For example, on May 31, 2017, he referenced “the false or misleading testimony by James Comey.” Def. Mem., Dkt. No. 59-4 at 2. On June 9, he posted, “Comey is a leaker!” Id. Two days later, he posted, “I believe the James Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible. Totally illegal?” Id. In July, he reposted a news report stating, “Report accuses material James Comey leaked to a friend contained top secret information.” Id. In October 2017, he posted that “James Comey lied and leaked and totally protected Hillary Clinton.” Id. at 3. In March 2018, the President posted, “Wow, watch Comey lie under oath to Senator G when asked ‘have you ever been an anonymous source … or known someone else to be an anonymous source…?’ He said strongly ‘never, no.’ He lied as shown clearly on @foxandfriends.” Id. at 6.

This passage is triply misleading.

First, sharing the memos was anonymous at first, but it was not a leak, Comey admitted to it within a month, and it was investigative mostly insofar as it predicated an investigation into Trump. It became investigative because Trump fired Comey.

Second, as noted, through the structure of this section, Lemons does a number of things to falsely suggest this could be the charged lie, when it could not, for several different reasons I’ll explain below.

Most importantly, it ignores the nine complaints Trump made about Comey, listed in Comey’s 60 page exhibit of those complaints, before the first one listed in the response, which started with a claim (debunked by the exhibits in this motion) that “Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton,” to say nothing of Trump’s “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press,” to which the memo release was a response.

E. The defendant’s public posts about President Trump. (page 14)

The next section attempts to show that Trump was concerned about Comey’s “leaking” (that is exposure of Trump’s misconduct) before Comey said anything bad about Trump — but I’m very confused how this sentence — “his motion shows his first social-media post speaking out about the Trump administration (not the President directly) came in June 2017, over a month after he was fired—and after the President had publicly posted about his “false or misleading testimony” — is consistent with Comey giving testimony about Trump’s misconduct and Comey’s accurate prediction Trump would lie about it on June 8, 2017, exactly a month after he was fired (in the hearing in which he told Collins about the memos). Maybe I just don’t understand. Or maybe in his desperation to sell a narrative, Lemons is lying to the court about the substance of Comey’s testimony.

This has the effect of making the memos the chicken and the egg of this investigation, which nevertheless could not be included in either charge against Comey.

F. Law enforcement’s investigations into unauthorized public disclosures. (pages 14-15)

Having already confessed he doesn’t know what a leak is and doesn’t know what FBI employ is, Lemons then introduces his desperate attempt to claim that receiving a briefing that might be about what we now know is Russian disinformation 19 days after not receiving a memo about it that probably emphasizes something else should be recalled when Lindsey Graham asked about it in specific reference (a reference Lemons buries) to memo redacted in a way that would obscure its import.

I will return to this section’s description of the 18 USC 2071 investigation trying to criminalize the non-removal of documents from the FBI as removal from the FBI. (!?!?!) Apparently, on July 21, 2025, Jack Eckenrode and Miles Starr decided that leaving a bunch of documents that were already preserved in FBI servers in an inventory room amounted to removal. Mostly it’s an attempt to indulge Kash Patel’s stupidest conspiracy theories.

But the important point, for the purpose of this filing, is that, under the heading promising information about “unauthorized public disclosures,” Lemons falsely claims an investigation into what would, if true, be an effort to bury evidence, was instead an investigation into sharing it.

G. Appointment of U.S. Attorney Halligan and the indictment. (pages 15-17)

And that’s important because the excuse Lemons offers for the hiring of Lindsey Halligan is Trump’s obsession with wildly inaccurate propaganda about the release of the Arctic Haze file, which leads directly from a John Solomon article treating the NYT article about the Hillary investigation as if it pertained to Russia.

On August 13, 2025, the President posted a link to a Fox News segment with the text, “DOCUMENTS REVEAL JAMES COMEY ASSOCIATE LEAKED CLASSIFIED INFORMATION TO THE NYT.” Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), TruthSocial (Aug. 13, 2025 at 12:42 ET). 12 The next day, he posted a link to a news article discussed in the segment. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), TruthSocial (Aug. 14, 2025 at 7:02 ET). 13 The article detailed FBI documents recently disclosed to Congress and indicated that Richman had admitted “that he was given access by Comey to what turned out to be highly classified information up to the SCI level and sometimes provided information to reporters on an anonymous basis.” John Solomon and Jerry Dunleavy, Comey’s media mole told FBI he shaped Russia narrative, needed ‘discount’ to deny leaking intel, Just the News (Aug. 12, 2025).14 On September 20, 2025, the President posted:

Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, “same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.” Then we almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past. A Woke RINO, who was never going to do his job. That’s why two of the worst Dem Senators PUSHED him so hard. He even lied to the media and said he quit, and that we had no case. No, I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot. We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT

None of this actually helps Lemons, because it suggests Trump hired Halligan specifically to open an investigation into an already declined prosecution.

But it does create a narrative, one Lemons uses to claim that Trump was not out to get Comey because Comey disclosed Trump’s fundamental corruption, but instead because Comey leaked classified information, a claim not backed by a single thing in this filing.

Indeed, what the filing does, in part, is prove that Trump falsely accused Comey of leaking classified information for years, without anything to back that claim.

In Section A, Lemons declines to address that Trump ostensibly fired Comey because of the Hillary investigation, not the Russian one. In Section B, Lemons treated a story about the Trump’s misconduct as instead about Hillary investigation. In Section D, he pretended Trump was concerned about leaking rather than being exposed as corrupt. In Section F, Lemons misrepresents a bogus cover-up claim as instead a leak investigation. In Section G, Lemons relies on a John Solomon post confusing the Hillary investigation with the Russian investigation.

The guy who plans to present all this to a jury in a few months appears unable to distinguish between the Hillary investigations (remember, the Andrew McCabe sourcing Ted Cruz asked about was about the Clinton Foundation, not the emails) and the Russian investigation, which Lemons exacerbates by imagining that the Russian investigation was always about Trump.

Lemons may already recognize that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer charged the wrong things (which is why Comey’s request for grand jury transcripts is merited).

None of these stories match the elements of the offense

The problem for Lemons is that none of these scenarios fit the elements of the offense for the crimes charged.

For the 18 USC 1001 charge, prosecutors need to prove that Comey knowingly lied about a leak about Hillary he authorized Richman to share anonymously while he was at the FBI.

As a threshold matter, Comey will be able to argue the charges cannot survive, because the hearing scope did not include the Hillary investigations.

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

So any story about Hillary is, by definition, outside of scope.

The only one of these stories where there’s some evidence that Comey authorized a story about Hillary in which Richman was not named was the November 2016 one. Even by then, however, the FBI was trying to fix Richman’s Special Government Employee.

As for the 18 USC 1505 charge, prosecutors will need to prove that Comey told lies that were intentional that impeded that investigation. Because of the scope of the hearing (and therefore the investigation), they can’t argue the two Hillary stories are material. Comey was aware of the scope of the hearing and Hillary wasn’t part of it.

There’s no way they can argue that Comey should have admitted asking Richman to serve as an anonymous source for the May 2017 story impeded the Senate investigation, because he had admitted that years earlier!!

That leaves just the Lindsey Graham question, which was specifically about whether Comey remembered the CIA referral, dated September 7, that Kash Patel had recently released in redacted — and therefore likely hopelessly misleading — form. As the transcript Lemons buries in an exhibit makes clear, the question — the one the grand jury no-billed — was not whether Comey was briefed; it was whether he recalls getting the document itself (Lindsey misstates what this document even was).

Lindsey: Do you recall getting an inquiry from the CI, excuse me, the intelligence community in September, 2016, about a concern that the Clinton campaign was going to create a scandal regarding Trump and Russia?

Mr. Comey: I do not.

Senator Graham: You don’t remember getting a investigatory lead from the intelligence community, hang on a second … Let me find my document here.

Speaker 3: There it is.

Senator Graham: September the Seventh, 2016, the US intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to FBI Director James Comey and Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server. You don’t remember getting that or being talk, that doesn’t …

Mr. Comey: That doesn’t ring any bells with me.

Lemons makes much of the fact that a copy of the referral was found in a storage room at FBI where other Durham materials were found; he claims to have evidence that it was once in the FBI Director’s office (but does not date when that was). That fact will face admissibility problems given Jack Eckenrode’s role in all that, which will in turn elicit questions why Eckenrode continues to base his investigations on what he discovered four years ago was Russian disinformation.

Poor Loaner Lemons will be forced to explain why Brennan was briefing Comey on a topic Comey had been informed of 19 days earlier, and why Comey would write that down as if it were news.

It will not be a slam dunk proving that the reference, HRC plan to tie Trump, pertains to the same SVR documents that the referral did. I know how I would do it. But I also know how a focus on “undermine HRC” just above that will make it easy to present this reference as Brennan (presumably) said he understood it–to be a reference to the victimization of Hillary, meaning Graham’s description of it would unrecognizable to Comey. As this reference appears, it backs Brennan’s conception of how most of the IC (aside from the Cyber Agents who fucked up the Alfa Bank Spectrum Health investigation) viewed this reference, as an attack on Hillary.

Ultimately, the defense to treating this as the basis for the obstruction charge (which I suspect it is) is to lay out how painfully wrong right wingers have been about what happened in 2016 from the start.

In Lemons’ bid to claim there was basis to charge Comey, he instead made it quite clear that none of his claimed issues match the charges as charged.

Which is to say, he made an exceptionally good case that Comey has reason to wonder what the fuck he is actually charged with.

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The Halloween Special Attorney’s Loaner AUSAs’ Loaner AUSA Forgot to Describe Jim Comey’s Imaginary Crime

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Lindsey Halligan’s Loaner AUSAs have submitted their responses to Jim Comey’s initial motions, which I’ve laid out below.

The Tl;dr of the response to the observation that Lindsey was not lawfully appointed (DOJ submitted the same motion in both Comey and Tish James’ case) is that Lindsey was lawfully appointed even though two judges had said she wouldn’t be by the time she was appointed, and if not, then the indictments are still valid because Pam Bondi retroactively appointed Halligan to be a very Special Attorney on Halloween.

No.

Really.

The response to the vindictive and selective prosecution spends a lot of time saying that Lindsey didn’t vindictively prosecute Trump, and Donald Trump’s animus to Jim Comey wasn’t about his First Amendment speech, but about Trump’s claim that Comey leaked information, when the filing doesn’t actually show that Comey did that at all.

Not only that, the filing makes clear the problems with DOJ’s case that Comey lied about authorizing Dan Richman to share information.

None of the times Richman served as a source fit the criteria of Ted Cruz’ question (that is, from when Richman was at FBI, speaking about the Clinton investigation, anonymously, with Jim Comey’s involvement ahead of time).  The closest was for this flowchart regarding Jim Comey’s decision to announce he had reopened the investigation into Hillary’s emails — the act that cost Hillary the election.

The next day, Mr. Richman sent the defendant an email regarding an op-ed he had been asked to write for The New York Times about the defendant’s letter. Gov. Ex. 5 (Oct. 30, 2016 emails). Mr. Richman stated that he was “not inclined” to “write something,” but that he would “do it” if the defendant thought it would “help things to explain that [the defendant] owed cong absolute candor,” and that the defendant’s “credibility w cong w[ould] be particularly important in the coming years of threatened cong investigations.” See id. The defendant responded: “No need. At this point it would [be] shouting into the wind. Some day they will figure it out. And as [Individual 1 and Individual 2] point out, my decision will be one a president elect Clinton will be very grateful for (although that wasn’t why I did it).” See id. The defendant appears to have reconsidered that view shortly thereafter. On November 1, 2016, he emailed Mr. Richman, stating:

When I read the times coverage involving [Reporter 1], I am left with the sense that they don’t understand the significance of my having spoke about the case in July. It changes the entire analysis. Perhaps you can make him smarter.

Let’s imagine the Times had a policy against writing new articles close to elections if the articles might influence the election. Consistent with that policy they would avoid writing this week if sources told them that the FBI was looking at Huma Abedin’s emails.

But let’s imagine that they wrote a very high profile piece in July that sources lead them to now conclude was materially inaccurate. Would they correct it or stay silent because they have a policy to avoid action near elections?

I suspect they would quickly conclude that either course is an “action” and the choices are either reporting or concealing but there is no longer a “neutral” option because of the reporting in July. I also suspect they would resolve very quickly to choose the action of disclosing because to remain silent is to actively mislead, which has a wide range of very bad consequences.

Why is this so hard for them to grasp? All the stuff about how we were allegedly careful not to take actions on cases involving other allegations about which we have never spoken is irrelevant. I love our practice of being inactive near elections. But inactivity was not an option here. The choices were act to reveal or act to conceal.

See Gov. Ex. 6 (Nov. 1–2, 2016 emails) (emphases added).

Mr. Richman responded the next day, stating: “This is precisely the case I made to them and thought they understood. I was quite wrong. Indeed I went further and said mindless allegiance to the policy (and recognition that more evidence could come in) would have counseled silence in july to let hrc twist in the wind.” See id. Mr. Richman emailed the defendant shortly thereafter, writing, “Just got the point home to [Reporter 1]. Probably was rougher than u would have been.” See id.

The defendant emailed Mr. Richman shortly thereafter, entitling the message “Pretty good” and sending a link to a New York Times piece regarding the defendant’s purported options in late October 2016 concerning the Clinton email investigation (Midyear Exam). See Gov. Ex. 7 (Nov. 2, 2016 email chain); Matt Apuzzo and Sergio Peçanha, These Are the Bad (and Worse) Options James Comey Faced, N.Y. Times (Nov. 2, 2016). 4 The defendant wrote: “Someone showed some logic. I would paint the cons more darkly but not bad.” See Gov. Ex. 7 (emphasis added). Mr. Richman responded: “See I *can* teach.” See id. The defendant replied: “Well done my friend. Who knew this would. E so uh fun.”5 See id. (emphasis added).

But the conversation between Richman and Comey is about logistics, not Hillary. Moreover, since it’s a flowchart, it’s not like Richman could be an anonymous source (and the conversation took place in context of doing an overt op-ed).

Additionally, it’s not even clear whether Richman was formally at FBI on that date. His “reappointment,” which had expired in June 2016, was pending as of October 27.

The other examples regarding Hillary postdate the date — February 7, 2017 — Richman left FBI (in the first case, only by four days, but not in a way that reflected Comey’s foreknowledge).

The Loaner AUSAs obscure that this happened after Richman left by not mentioning the date.

For example, in February 2017, Richman emailed Individual 3, a then-government official who had served in high-ranking positions at the FBI and DOJ. Mr. Richman wrote: “Hi [Individual 3] – my pal at the NYT, [Reporter 1] is (along with [Reporter 2], [Reporter 3], and (gag me) [Reporter 4]) is doing a huge piece on the HRC emails. He’s had a ton of background conversations with players and non-players (like me). [Reporter 1] very much would like to talk to you exclusively on background as he tries to understand[] Jim’s decision making to the extent possible. [Reporter 1] asked me to reach out to you. Hence this email. Would you be willing to chat with him?” See Gov. Ex. 9 (Feb. 11, 2017 email chain) (emphasis added). Individual 3 replied in the affirmative and stated that he would “reach out” to the reporter. See id.

The memos’ attempt to prove Comey lied about having received this memo is even sillier.

It claims that an investigative team that included Jack Eckenrode found the memo that Jack Eckenrode could never prove that FBI received as part of the Durham investigation in the storage unit in WDVA FBI Headquarters.

Among the records found were many related to the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search, the January 06 capitol breach, the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, as well as a copy of the Classified Appendix to the John Durham Special Counsel investigation. Moreover, an additional record discovered as part of this management review process was an original referral by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to former FBI Director James Comey, known as a Counterintelligence Operational Lead (CIOL). This CIOL, believed to have been missing for several years, was dated September 07, 2016 and contained certain intelligence related to the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. The CIOL was found in a storage closet adjacent to the Director’s office and was subsequently transported to the 9582 SCIF. Former Director Comey previously testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was unfamiliar with this CIOL as well as its related intelligence.

On top of the wildly inappropriate notion of putting the guy who conducted a witch hunt in charge of validating when evidence supporting his witch hunt happened, this memo doesn’t describe when the memo was moved (and therefore whether it ended up in the FBI Director’s closet under Wray’s tenure), and it sounds like the original from the CIA, still doing nothing to prove it was ever sent to the FBI.

Crazier still, the filing presents Jim Comey’s notes recording (probably) John Brennan briefing Comey on something that might be the content of the CIOL or might be something else entirely … 19 days after FBI allegedly received the CIOL, on September 26, 2016.

In other words, they make a better affirmative case that Comey didn’t receive the CIOL on September 7 than that he did, because if the Brennan briefing on September 26 is about the same topic, why would Brennan have to brief Comey? And we know Brennan believed this was about hacking Hillary, not about a nefarious plot Hillary had.

The Loaner AUSAs obscure that Lindsey’s question was not about that information, but about the CIOL dated September 7, this way:

The discovery of the handwritten notes is relevant considering the defendant’s prior testimony on September 30, 2020. Of note, during that hearing, the defendant was questioned by Senator Graham of South Carolina and Senator Hawley of Missouri. See Gov. Ex. 14. The questions focused on whether the defendant remembered “being taught” of “U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” See id. The defendant responded by stating that “it doesn’t ring any bells with me” and “I don’t know what that refers to” and “I don’t remember receiving anything that is described in that letter.” See id. at 1 and 5. Despite this testimony, the defendant’s handwritten notes dated September 26, 2016, read: “HRC plan to tie Trump.” See Gov. Ex. 13 (Defendant’s handwritten notes).

The actual vindictive and selective prosecution language — the entire filing is attributed to a Loaner AUSA from South Carolina, Kathleen Stoughton, who I guess is on loan to the Loaner AUSAs who signed it — is fine.

If you ignore that the Attorney General of the United States believes she can salvage Lindsey’s appointment and this prosecution by making her into a pumpkin on Halloween Day.

Update: I’ve corrected where the burn bags were found. They were found in FBI HQ in DC, which makes the predication of an investigation in WDVA even weirder.

Links

Response unlawful appointment

Response vindictive and selective

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