A federal judge on Saturday temporarily locked down the Justice Department’s access to some evidence used in its criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey, just as the Trump administration prepares to seek a new indictment after the dismissal of previous charges early last week.
The judge’s order sets up a fast-moving emergency court proceeding over this week that could exclude key pieces of evidence from any future proceeding against Comey, potentially limiting what prosecutors may present to a grand jury after his previous case was dismissed for different reasons.
This is a different judge in a different district than the one who handled the Comey indictment.
The lawsuit was filed by Dan Richman, who wants his personal data returned to him. The data was seized in 2019-2020 under search warrants, but the public learned in Comey case filings that the FBI failed to exclude non pertinent data, violating the terms of the original warrants. Among other problems.
In the previous Comey case, nearly all of the evidence that the government presented against Comey came out of these warrants. And it’s not clear if they have any other sources of evidence.