#grand-jury-materials

#grand-jury-materials

The Justice Department engaged in a "disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps" in the process of securing an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, a federal judge ruled Monday in directing prosecutors to provide defense lawyers with all grand jury materials from the case. Those problems, wrote Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick, include "fundamental misstatements of the law" by a prosecutor to the grand jury

A magistrate judge in the United States has issued a stern rebuke to the administration of President Donald Trump, criticising its handling of the indictment against a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), James Comey. On Monday, Judge William Fitzpatrick of Alexandria, Virginia, made the unusual decision to order the release of all grand jury materials related to the indictment.

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.

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.