"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."
Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick ordered the government to provide Jim Comey with grand jury materials by 3PM and identified four legal bases supporting the order. Fitzpatrick found likely Fourth Amendment violations stemming from improperly scoped seizures of communications seized in 2019 and 2020 and from the government's decision not to obtain a new warrant before accessing those materials for a separate 2025 investigation. By summer 2025 the FBI and USAO-EDVA opened a criminal investigation into Mr. Comey; on September 12, 2025 an agent reviewed a Blu-ray containing a full Cellebrite extraction of Mr. Richman's iPhone and iPad backups.
Read at emptywheel
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]