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Kash Patel’s Taint

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

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

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

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

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

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

[snip]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Classic taint.

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

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

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

[snip]

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

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

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

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

A classic fishing expedition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cast of characters

Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer

Tyler Lemons: On loan from EDNC

Gabriel Diaz: On loan from EDNC

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

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

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

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

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

lheim: Metadata lists as author of:

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

The Rolling Corruption behind the Letitia James Prosecution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why yes Lindsey Halligan did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And they want to stall for time?

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

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

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

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

THE COURT: So you —

THE FOREPERSON: So they separated it.

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

THE FOREPERSON: Yes.

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

THE FOREPERSON: That we could not agree on.

THE COURT: Okay. But just for one count?

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

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

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

Bill Barr Helped Lindsey Halligan Fuck Up the Comey Prosecution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But even that can’t be all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[snip]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Might Pam Bondi’s Latest Prosecutorial Abuse Give Us Ponies and Puppies?

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The media’s response to this exchange (remember, timezone reflects Irish time) between Donald Trump and Pam Bondi has been procedural.

At the NYT yesterday, for example, first Erica Green, Glenn Thrush, and Alan Feuer described it (competently) in procedural terms. It was a tired Trump strategy of projection, it might stall release of files to Congress, gosh it’ll make things hard for Jay Clayton. 30-some ¶¶ in, it briefly turned to politics, in the form of quotes from Robert Garcia (Ranking Member of Oversight) and Don Bacon. Tom Massie, Ro Khanna, and Marjorie Taylor Greene are not quoted, to say nothing of Epstein’s victims.

Then the NYT today turned to its SDNY reporters — Jonah Bromwich, Benjamin Weiser and William Rashbaum — to focus more closely on just how much trouble this could cause SDNY US Attorney Jay Clayton. That story mentions Maurene Comey’s firing in passing twice, but days ago, Bromwich and Rashbaum described how everyone in the New York Metro area dodged defending Ms. Comey’s wrongful termination lawsuit which, after some delay, NDNY, led by a corrupt Trump flunkie, will now take on.

Both stories make Trump the agent of the narrative. He made an order and as Bondi executes it, this is what will happen.

As I suggested in this video, I look at Bondi’s public haste to bow to Trump’s demands differently.

Pam Bondi doubled down on ratifying Lindsey Halligan’s indictment of Jim Comey, after having been caught in failing to exercise the least due diligence the last time she tried to do so. One reason she did so, no doubt, is that DOJ literally told Judge Currie that the unlawful means Bondi used to turn Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer into US Attorney was a mere “paperwork error,” Pam Bondi’s fuck-up. And so, in an attempt to salvage the fuck-up DOJ is attributing to the Attorney General, she may have inserted herself into what appear to be serious Fourth Amendment violations, among other things.

And, that very same day, she publicly bowed to the President’s demand that she pursue clearly political prosecutions just months after DOJ had publicly issued an (unsigned) declination decision in the same investigation (after reportedly having shut down an ongoing investigation into Epstein co-conspirators, presumably led by Jim Comey’s daughter, months earlier).

Even in July, it was crystal clear that Pam Bondi kept making things worse.

Then Bondi made things worse when she told Fox News that Epstein’s client file was on her desk for review. She made things worse when she orchestrated the re-release of the already-released files to a select group of right wing propagandists, all packaged up to look special, a spectacle that stoked divisions among MAGAts but also raised concerns that she was covering stuff up. She made things still worse when — responding to James Comer’s role in making things worse, when he claimed the Epstein files had been disappeared — she said there were tens of thousands of videos involving Epstein.

By the end of that week, Todd Blanche would announce he’d spend some quiet time with Ghislaine Maxwell, which I imagine he thought was clever but has resulted in further questions, starting with why he’s not charging Maxwell for the lies she told to his face and why the sexual predator got a puppy.

Pam Bondi has been trying to make the Epstein problem she made worse go away. It hasn’t worked. Nothing has worked. All the pressure she and Blanche and Kash Patel could apply failed to force Lauren Boebert to make it go away. And having failed so far, she very publicly and very quickly agreed to do something stupid, reopen an investigation that she already said could not be pursued.

She did so the week before Judge Michael Nachmanoff (on Wednesday) will preside over Jim Comey’s vindictive and selective prosecution claim, which will be followed by Letitia James’ motion in a few weeks, assuming one or both of those prosecutions are not preempted by some other dismissal before then. (Comey Motion; DOJ Response; Comey Reply; James Motion; there are a slew of Amici filing in both)

In Comey’s reply, he responded to Lindsey Halligan and her Loaner AUSAs’ attempt to claim only Halligan’s motive can be scrutinized in this prosecutorial decision by citing one of the most troubling passages in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. USA:

Imputation of President Trump’s vindictive motive to Ms. Halligan is particularly warranted because the President has “exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the Justice Department and its officials.” Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593, 621 (2024). As the government itself describes, U.S. Attorneys are subordinate aides to the President, “help[ing the President] discharge” his “responsibility” to prosecute crimes. ECF No. 138 at 17. And President Trump’s authority is not merely formal or abstract: he has exercised an unprecedented and extraordinary degree of control over the DOJ, installing his personal allies to key positions and inserting himself into prosecutorial decisions that, in previous Administrations, would have been left to the DOJ’s independent judgment. See ECF No. 59 at 8-11. [my emphasis]

That’s the language John Roberts used to excuse Trump’s efforts, via Jeffrey Clark, to use DOJ to steal the election.

The Government does not dispute that the indictment’s allegations regarding the Justice Department involve Trump’s use of official power. The allegations in fact plainly implicate Trump’s “conclusive and preclusive” authority. The Executive Branch has “exclusive authority and absolute discretion” to decide which crimes to investigate and prosecute, including with respect to allegations of election crime. Nixon, 418 U. S., at 693. And the President’s “management of the Executive Branch” requires him to have “unrestricted power to remove the most important of his subordinates”—such as the Attorney General—“in their most important duties.” Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 750. The indictment’s allegations that the requested investigations were shams or proposed for an improper purpose do not divest the President of exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial functions of the Justice Department and its officials. Because the President cannot be prosecuted for conduct within his exclusive constitutional authority, Trump is absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials. Pp. 19–21.

Trump seemed to echo this license when asked about ordering Bondi to investigate Democrats on Friday.

Reporter: Do you believe a President should be able to order investigations?

Trump: Sure. I’m the chief law enforcement officer of the country. Not that I want to use that. But I am considered the chief law enforcement agent in the country. And I’m allowed to do it.

Effectively, Comey argued that because of the monstrosity Roberts created, his vindictive prosecution claim must be judged according to different rules. And then Trump just reaffirmed his responsiblity.

If these things happened in a vacuum, I’d say that Bondi’s quick and public acquiescence to Trump’s demand that she investigate his enemies as a way to avoid scrutiny himself would be nothing more than a truly epic Constitutional confrontation.

A display of what happens when, as John Roberts did, you give the President literal immunity to hunt down his enemies for unrelated reasons, such as that the President’s one-time best friend “stole” his former spa girl and turned her into a sex slave a quarter century ago.

But it’s not happening in a vacuum.

The week before Trump’s defense attorney will sit mutely in a court room as Loaner AUSAs try to put lipstick on the pig of this prosecution, Trump made his abuse even more plain than he did when he accidentally ordered up this very investigation (and that of James) in September, a tweet prosecutors have already had to invent bullshit excuses for.

How interesting, Judge Nachmanoff might think, that Pam Bondi just performed her utter obeisance to Trump, just the thing prosecutors insist didn’t happen with Comey. How interesting, that the lady who claimed to ratify this prosecution did that.

As I said in the video, there are up to ten ways that the Comey prosecution might go away, and I’m already greedily hoping that those ten things things not just fall into place, but fall into place in an order that will result in far more trouble for DOJ.

Certainly, the fact that Judge Cameron Currie started her hearing last week on the most obvious thing that might make this prosecution go away, Halligan’s unlawful appointment, by raising another, the declination memos reported in the press, makes me hope I might get a pony.

THE COURT: Mr. [Ephraim] McDowell, are you aware of any evidence of whether there was a declination memo prepared in the Comey matter?

MR. MCDOWELL: We are not aware of that at the moment. I think, you know, that would be something that could potentially come out in discovery, but we don’t have that as of yet.

Another thing we’ve been promised this week is Jim Comey’s explanation of the multiple ways Kash Patel’s FBI violated his Fourth Amendment rights by sniffing through everything Bill Barr’s hyper-aggressive DOJ seized four years ago. Then there are the parallel requests Comey has made for grand jury transcripts that Judge Currie certainly seems to think are improper — but Pam Bondi claimed, both the first time, and the second time — are not.

Bondi demonstrated her willingness to conduct political prosecutions the week before the wheels may start to come off the Comey prosecution.

And if they don’t, Maurene Comey may get to force the issue. Attorney General James may get to force the issue.

That’s all legal though, and the law never works as quickly or decisively as you’d like, particularly not with Donald Trump.

But it happens in the very same week that — reportedly — up to a hundred Republicans are prepared to vote to release the Epstein files to stave off lasting damage from Trump’s sex trafficker scandal, something that — if it happens — will make this referral to Jay Clayton a problem, not a solution.

One reason Pam Bondi was so quick to bow to Trump’s demands, sacrificing her very last shreds of credibility with courts, was because she’s in real political trouble, and has been since she thought she’d get cute by handing out binders of already-released Epstein files.

Trump’s effort, Bondi’s effort, to make all this go away by handing it to Jay Clayton on a steaming-shit platter reflect desperation, not the agency NYT portrays it as.

Sure, it’s certainly possible all this will go away, as it always does for Trump. Maybe the dog that didn’t bark can wag one in Venezuela to make his troubles go away.

It’s still a good bet that Ghislaine will be the only one who gets a puppy.

But both Trump and Bondi are operating reactively. And in a desperate attempt to reclaim agency over the Epstein scandal — something Trump has been struggling to do since July — he may well have handed Jim Comey a gift pony.

Update: After I wrote this Todd Blanche made an appearance on Fox to lie about both these issues and Trump claimed that he had encouraged “House Republicans” (but not Republicans generally) to vote to release the files. There are a number of caveats built into that — the focus on the House (when Bondi could release these files herself), the attendant call to investigate Democrats, and the focus on giving “the House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to,” which they’ve already gotten. Whether this works depends both on the willful stupidity of the GOP (Tom Massie has already pointed out holes in this proposal) and Bondi’s ability to sustain the illusion of an investigation. In his comment, Trump explicitly spoke, as he has from the start, in terms of attention, and his demand that he control it. But the last time he tried this, it turned into a welcome-watch for Adelita Grijalva.

Pam Bondi Replaces Her Embarrassing Reading Comprehension Failure with a 4A Violation

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When Judge Cameron Currie surprised Pam Bondi’s Counselor, Henry Whitaker, on Thursday with a question about whether DOJ believes Aileen Cannon wrongly dismissed Trump’s stolen documents case, Whitaker claimed what distinguished Jack Smith from Lindsey Halligan is that Halligan is closely supervised.

I do think that mostly what was driving Judge Cannon’s decision in that case was sort of the unique and broad authority that the special counsel possessed sort of free of supervision, which, of course, is an element that we do not have here.

He said that, mind you, even while conceding that Pam Bondi had claimed to ratify the Comey indictment even though the transcripts didn’t show how Halligan instructed the grand jury, yet.

MR. WHITAKER: Well, it’s true that — it is true, Your Honor, you’re right, that we didn’t have the intro and back end of the grand jury transcripts when we presented that.

Between that day, on October 31, when Pam Bondi claimed to ratify Lindsey’s work without noticing she couldn’t see that work, and yesterday, several things have happened.

We’ve gotten a lot more details about the suspected Fourth Amendment and Attorney-Client privilege violations Jim Comey’s investigators committed. First, Rebekah Donaleski told Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick that Jim Comey’s team believed investigators had worked off material seized from Dan Richman that was not responsive to the four warrants used to investigate him. Effectively, a general warrant.

[D]id the agents preserve nonresponsive copies or nonresponsive materials for five years? Because the Fourth Circuit has said that’s not reasonable. Did that happen? Because the prolonged retention of nonresponsive electronic data can render an initially lawful search unconstitutional. The Fourth Circuit has said that. That’s what appears to have happened here.

[snip]

We need to know was this a narrowly tailored responsive set or did they just mark the entire iCloud responsive, thus rendering it a general warrant. We don’t know the answers to those questions.

Then, the FBI agent who realized he was reading privileged material described that he had been given the “full Cellebrite extraction” of Dan Richman’s phone to review, precisely that general warrant Donaleski feared. His supervisor said that the original agent had prepped the grand jury team with “a two-page document containing limited text message content only from May 11, 2017,” designed to avoid any taint. But Miles Starr appears to have presented eight pages of those texts to the grand jury; the Bates stamp for those texts include only a number, nothing to indicate they post-dated a privilege review by Richman.

After that, the Loaner AUSAs confessed that they had no fucking clue whether the material used to investigate Jim Comey had been scoped for responsiveness (though Comey’s team described that it looked like these were “raw returns for the search warrants at issue, unscoped for responsiveness and filtered for Mr. Richman’s privileges”).

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.”

Then, in one of their response briefs, the government effectively threw out half their evidence, including all the texts from Richman’s phone.

At the earlier hearing, Fitzpatrick warned the government not to use any violative material.

THE COURT: The Court authorized you to search and to seize, or to seize primarily, a very specific subset of information; that’s it. It’s the government’s burden to comply with that court order. You need to confidently explain to me how you have done that. You need to confidently explain how you have complied strictly with the Court’s order. If you can do that, then I suspect that that narrow window of time, you probably still can review, at least pending the outcome of the other motions.

He even ordered them not to review any materials seized from those search warrants until further order of the Court.

ORDERED that the Government, including any of its agents or employees, shall not review any of the materials seized pursuant to the four 2019 and 2020 search warrants at issue until further order of the Court;

In the middle of this, Comey argued that if Halligan presented unlawfully seized material to the grand jury, then Pam Bondi’s review of the grand jury materials — the first one, on October 31 — might also constitute a violation of Comey’s Fourth Amendment.

2 Concerns about taint arising from the improper use of potentially privileged and unconstitutionally-obtained materials are heightened because of the government’s continued use of the materials obtained pursuant to the warrants and grand jury transcripts. On October 31, 2025, the Attorney General purported to ratify the indictment based on her review of the grand jury proceedings. ECF No. 137-1 at 2-3. If that review entailed further improper use of privileged or unconstitutionally-obtained materials insofar as they were presented to the grand jury, it casts further doubt on the propriety of the government’s conduct of this case. The government produced the grand jury materials on November 5, 2025 to Judge Currie for in camera review, and thus could quickly produce the same materials to the defense. See ECF No. 158.

So to sum up so far: Jim Comey said, you violated my Attorney-Client privilege and my Fourth Amendment rights. And it’s likely that when Pam Bondi reviewed that transcript where unlawfully seized materials were presented, she did too.

And then Pam Bondi — after her Counselor assured Judge Currie that Halligan is closely supervised — reviewed the grand jury transcripts again.

The ones that likely rely on unlawfully seized materials.

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).

Update: Here’s the specific exchange about the missing stuff.

THE COURT: Let me ask you this. I was involved in receiving in camera provisions of the grand jury transcripts and tapes, and it became obvious to me that the attorney general could not have reviewed those portions of the transcript of the Comey presentation by Ms. Halligan which preceded and came after her presentation of the witness testimony in the case. There also is a missing section of what occurred between 4:28 and the return of the grand jury indictment, and it appears to me that there was no court reporter present, or if he or she was present, did not take down what happened during that time period.

So how does the attorney general ratify and say that she has reviewed the grand jury transcripts when they did not exist in the records of the Justice Department at that time?

MR. WHITAKER: Well, it’s true that — it is true, Your Honor, you’re right, that we didn’t have the intro and back end of the grand jury transcripts when we presented that.

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.”

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.