Former FBI Director James Comey got another assist from a Clinton-appointed judge Friday as the Justice Department looks to hold him accountable for his role in Russiagate.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, a Clinton appointee, ruled that Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan was incorrectly appointed and therefore, the charges brought by her office against Comey were “defective.”
“All actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment … constitute unlawful exercises of executive power and must be set aside,” the judge wrote.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced at the time that the Justice Department would be appealing the ruling.
However, on Friday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, also appointed by Clinton, ordered the DOJ to return data it obtained through a lawful search warrant in 2017 from Comey’s longtime friend, University of Columbia law professor Daniel Richman.
The judge also directed the agency to destroy any copies of emails or other correspondence it had in its possession between Richman and Comey, Politico reported.
This is information that the DOJ will likely need access to reindict Comey for allegedly making false statements to Congress.
The former FBI director, whom President Donald Trump fired in May 2017, denied during congressional testimony soon thereafter that he had leaked classified information to the media through a third-party intermediary, i.e., Richman.
With the newly declassified records via @FBIDirectorKash into media leaks and the role of third parties,
Director Comey’s 2017 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee about leaks appears problematic.@ChuckGrassley : Director Comey have you ever been an anonymous source in… pic.twitter.com/i2m6aRFCaj
— Catherine Herridge (@C__Herridge) August 14, 2025
But it was later revealed — and Comey ultimately admitted — that he had asked Richman to pass along classified information to the media to spur the DOJ to appoint a special counsel to investigate and potentially prosecute President Donald Trump and members of his campaign team for allegedly colluding with Russia during the 2016 presidential election.
This is James Comey in February 2020 talking to his friend Daniel Richman.
Comey said that Daniel Richman’s leaks (on Comey’s behalf) hastened the appointment of a special counsel.
Fast forward to today and a corrupt democrat operative in a robe ruled that evidence linked to… pic.twitter.com/iX0T1lPFvt
— The Researcher (@listen_2learn) December 12, 2025
The Trump DOJ is seeking to hold Comey accountable for lying to Congress.
The charges stemmed from Comey’s testimony before the Senate in September 2020, when he reiterated his claim from 2017 congressional testimony that he never authorized anyone to leak information about the President Donald Trump-Russia investigation and the Hillary Clinton email probe to the media in violation of FBI policy.
In her order directing the emails to be returned to Richman and copies destroyed at the DOJ, Kollar-Kotelly wrote, “This Court concludes that although Petitioner Richman is entitled to the return of the improperly seized and searched materials at issue here, he is not entitled to an order preventing the Government from ‘using or relying on’ those materials in a separate investigation or proceeding, as long as they are obtained through a valid warrant and judicial order.”
While that sounds reasonable enough, Mike Davis, with the Article III Foundation, highlighted how unusual it was for Richman to suddenly take an interest in his communications seized over eight years ago and seek out a separate friendly judge to block the DOJ’s access to them.
“But Democrat activist judges are doing what they do best: weaponization and sabotage,” Davis contended in a Sunday opinion piece for Fox News. He previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and was chief counsel for nominations for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley.
“Richman has run to a partisan Democrat judge not even involved in the criminal case — and not even in the same district — to procure the destruction of crucial evidence in that case in an obvious effort to assist his friend Comey,” Davis wrote. “Comey cannot challenge the warrant against Richman because he lacks standing to do so. Incredibly, Kollar-Kotelly suggested that Richman could move to quash this evidence in Virginia. She’s going way out of her way to help Comey.
“The government obtained the evidence it wishes to use against Comey pursuant to a lawful warrant, even one signed by a highly partisan Obama-appointed judge [in 2017]. Now, a Clinton-appointed judge who is not presiding over the case — and is not even in the same district — is blatantly trying to aid Comey by preventing the government from using that evidence either to re-indict Comey or try him if the original indictment is reinstated,” he wrote.
Kollar-Kotelly threw up this roadblock as the DOJ already faces a statute of limitations challenge in prosecuting Comey. The five years from Comey’s 2020 Senate testimony ran out shortly after Halligan’s office filed the charges in September.
But federal law does allow that if an indictment is thrown out “for any reason,” the DOJ has a six-month grace period to re-indict, despite the statute of limitations expiring.
Limiting access to communications between Comey and Richman during this short time window makes the DOJ’s job that much harder.
Davis concluded, “A system where the judiciary enables lawfare and then shields its perpetrators from legal consequences is unsustainable, and higher courts must put a stop to it.”
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