Judge deals setback to Justice Department effort to seek new indictment
against Comey
[December 08, 2025]
By ERIC TUCKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has dealt a setback to Justice
Department efforts to seek a new indictment against former FBI Director
James Comey, temporarily barring prosecutors from using evidence they
had relied on when they initially secured criminal charges.
The ruling Saturday night from U.S. District Judge Colleen
Kollar-Kotelly does not preclude the department from trying again soon
to indict Comey, but it does suggest prosecutors may have to do so
without citing communications between Comey and a close friend, Columbia
University law professor Daniel Richman.
Comey was charged in September with lying to Congress when he denied
having authorized an associate to serve as an anonymous source for media
coverage about the FBI. In pursuing the case, prosecutors cited messages
between Comey and Richman that they said showed Comey approving of
Richman interacting with journalists for certain FBI-related coverage.
The case was dismissed last month after a different federal judge ruled
that the prosecutor who filed the charges, Lindsey Halligan, was
unlawfully appointed by the Trump administration. But that ruling left
open the possibility that the government could try again to seek charges
against Comey, a longtime foe of President Donald Trump. Comey has
pleaded not guilty, denied having made a false statement and accused the
Justice Department of a vindictive prosecution.
After the case was thrown out, lawyers for Richman sought a court order
to bar prosecutors from continued access to his computer files, which
the Justice Department obtained through search warrants in 2019 and 2020
as part of a media leak investigation that was later closed without
charges.
Officials searched the files for communications between Comey and
Richman they could use to build the case against Comey. But Richman and
his lawyers say prosecutors exceeded the scope of the warrants,
illegally held onto communications they should have destroyed or
returned, and conducted new, warrantless searches of the data.
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Kollar-Kotelly on Saturday night granted Richman's request for a
temporary restraining order, instructing the department “not to
access the covered materials once they are identified, segregated,
and secured, or to share, disseminate, or disclose the covered
materials to any person, without first seeking and obtaining leave
of this Court.”
She gave the Justice Department until Monday afternoon to certify
that it is in compliance with the order. She said her order would
remain in effect through this coming Friday, “or until dissolved by
further order of this Court, whichever comes first.”
“Petitioner Richman has also shown that, absent an injunction, he
will be irreparably harmed by the ongoing violation of his Fourth
Amendment right against unreasonable seizures arising from the
Government’s continuing retention of the image of his computer and
related materials,” she wrote in granting Richman's request.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment Sunday on the
ruling and what it meant for revived charges against Comey.
It is not clear that the Justice Department could secure new charges
against Comey even if it could rely on Richman's communications.
Comey's lawyers have said the statute of limitations on such a case
— the congressional testimony at issue was given on Sept. 30, 2020,
or more than five years ago — has expired.
A separate attempt by the Justice Department to a file a new
indictment against New York Letitia James, another perceived Trump
adversary who was also charged by Halligan, failed last week when a
grand jury refused to sign off on charges.
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