Left: Daniel Richman at Columbia Law School on Feb. 5, 2020 (Columbia Law School/YouTube). Right: Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during a news conference with President Donald Trump in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi”s deputy and the “unlawfully appointed” top prosecutor who doomed the DOJ’s first attempt against James Comey accused a federal judge on Tuesday of essentially blocking the government from seeking a new indictment by preliminarily siding with the ex-FBI director’s law professor friend and former attorney.
The 20-page DOJ opposition filing headlined by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Lindsey Halligan cuts right to the chase, asserting Senior U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has in effect “impermissibl[y]” purported to block the government from trying to indict Comey again by walling off needed evidence seized from Daniel Richman in 2017.
Richman convinced the judge to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) over the weekend after arguing his seized property — “a significant quantum of privileged information involving multiple clients,” “communication with federal judges, family medical records,” and “comprehensive financial records” — was searched without a new warrant and used to prosecute Comey on obstruction and false statement charges in late September plus the whirlwind month and a half that followed.
While Kollar-Kotelly found Saturday that Richman “made each of the necessary showings to obtain a narrow temporary restraining order” and that he is “likely to succeed” in getting his property back, the DOJ argues what Richman actually seeks is not the return of his property but the “destruction” of copies of it in DOJ’s possession — and all to provide cover for his friend as the Trump administration pursues another indictment.
“Petitioner Daniel Richman’s motion for a return of property is actually a collateral motion to suppress aimed at hindering the government from using that property as evidence in a separate criminal proceeding in another district, and his request for preliminary relief is in effect a request that the Court enjoin the Government from conducting an ongoing criminal investigation and a potential prosecution,” the filing said. “Neither request is legally appropriate.”
Calling Richman’s motion a “strategic tool to obstruct the investigation and potential prosecution” of Comey, and claiming the judge has “effectively enjoined the government from investigating and potentially prosecuting” the former FBI director, the DOJ said it was no accident that Richman swiftly filed a lawsuit after the dismissal of the criminal case against his pal.
“The close connection to the Comey prosecution is also demonstrated by the timing of Richman’s motion,” the DOJ said, noting that the suit was filed roughly a week after the dismissal of the case.
“Approximately a week later, Richman sought a temporary restraining order enjoining the Government from ‘searching, using, or relying in any way’ on the materials that were seized pursuant to the warrants, ‘as well as any copies thereof or any materials obtained, extracted, or derived therefrom,'” the filing said, describing the suit as a “collateral (and premature) motion to suppress evidence in another criminal proceeding, masquerading as a motion for return of property[.]”
For that reason, and because the DOJ claimed that Kollar-Kotelly’s TRO amounts to an “impermissible” block on a “criminal investigation and potential prosecution in another district,” the government demanded that Richman’s motion be denied and the TRO dissolved.
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“Given that Richman has all but conceded that he seeks a suppression remedy directed at a future prosecution (if Comey is reindicted), it would be unreasonable for the Court to allow Richman to collaterally secure that result,” the filing went on, denying that Richman’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated.
As Law&Crime reported last week, Richman asked Kollar-Kotelly to block the government from indefinitely searching his files, which were seized in 2017 as part of the Arctic Haze FBI media leaks probe that led to no charges against him. Despite that outcome, Richman said in his demand for the return of his property, the Trump administration, eight years later, went on to haphazardly use these personal computer files in the since-dismissed prosecution of Comey.
Recall the DOJ alleged that Comey lied to Sen. Ted Cruz on Sept. 30, 2020, when he denied under questioning that he had “‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation concerning Person 1,” namely Hillary Clinton, because he “knew, he in fact had authorized Person 3” — that would be Richman — “to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning [Clinton].”
Before the Comey case was tossed, a U.S. magistrate judge said the DOJ displayed a “cavalier attitude towards a basic tenet of the Fourth Amendment” by searching Richman’s files without a new warrant, in the apparent hope the findings would make the Comey case stick.
“The Arctic Haze investigation was closed in September 2021, with no charges filed. The Richman materials sat dormant with the FBI until the summer of 2025, when the Bureau chose to rummage through them again,” Magistrate William Fitzpatrick wrote, noting that the government “[i]nexplicably […] elected not to seek a new warrant for the 2025 search, even though the 2025 investigation was focused on a different person” — namely, Comey.
The magistrate said this while issuing a rare order for the government to hand over all grand jury materials to Comey’s defense.
Once the Richman lawsuit was before Kollar-Kotelly, the judge found he was “likely to succeed on the merits of his claim that the Government has violated his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures by retaining a complete copy of all files on his personal computer (an ‘image’ of the computer) and searching that image without a warrant.”
As a result, Bondi and the DOJ were ordered to “identify, segregate, and secure the image” of Richman’s computer, his “Columbia University email accounts, and his iCloud account,” and any copies. Additionally, the judge said, the DOJ and Bondi could not “access the covered materials” or share them “without first seeking and obtaining leave of this Court.”
When Kollar-Kotelly’s TRO was issued, she said the property return issue would be resolved on an “expedited” basis, and that her order would “remain in effect until 11:59 p.m. ET on Friday, December 12, 2025, or until dissolved by further order of this Court, whichever comes first.”
