Comey Case Bombshell — Judge Drops Stunning Ruling
Federal prosecutors have reopened a long-running line of inquiry involving former FBI Director James Comey and his close friend Daniel Richman, issuing a new grand jury subpoena that requires the Columbia University law professor to provide testimony in an investigation examining whether sensitive government information was improperly shared with the news media.
The subpoena, issued Monday, is the latest legal development involving Comey, one of President Donald Trump's most prominent adversaries from his first term. It arrives while Comey is already defending himself in a separate federal criminal case over a 2025 Instagram post that prosecutors allege constituted a threat against Trump.
The precise scope of the new grand jury investigation is not yet fully public, and early reporting has described it in somewhat different terms. Fox News reported that the subpoena is part of a renewed investigation into an alleged leak of classified information to The New York Times. CNN described the matter more broadly as a probe into whether Comey improperly shared sensitive information with the media, including information tied to memoranda he wrote about meetings with Trump. The New York Times reported that prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida issued the subpoena and that it appears connected to a broader investigation examining whether former federal officials engaged in a conspiracy against Trump.
Those descriptions overlap, but they are not identical. No public filing accompanying the subpoena has established that Comey or Richman transmitted classified information to a reporter, and the issuance of a grand jury subpoena is not evidence of criminal guilt. It is a compulsory investigative tool that can be used to obtain testimony or records while prosecutors determine whether a crime occurred and, if so, who may be responsible.
Richman is a longtime friend of Comey, a Columbia Law School professor and a former adviser who worked with Comey at the FBI as a special government employee. He also served as one of Comey's attorneys after Comey was fired by Trump in May 2017.
His role became nationally significant almost immediately after that firing because Comey acknowledged that he used Richman as an intermediary to communicate the contents of one of his memoranda to a New York Times reporter. Comey had written the memos to memorialize private conversations with Trump while he was FBI director.
During testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June 2017, Comey said he hoped disclosure of the contents of one memo would encourage the appointment of a special counsel. Robert Mueller was named special counsel shortly afterward to oversee the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and related matters.
That admission has been central to years of political arguments over Comey's conduct, but the classification issue is more complicated than the shorthand claim that he leaked a classified memo.
A 2019 Justice Department inspector general report concluded that Comey violated FBI policies and his employment agreement by retaining and disseminating certain official memoranda after leaving the bureau. The watchdog determined that the memos were FBI records rather than Comey's personal property and faulted him for disclosing sensitive investigative information without authorization.
At the same time, the inspector general drew an important distinction: the memo whose contents Comey directed Richman to relay to The New York Times did not contain classified information. The report also said investigators found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released classified information contained in the other memos to members of the media. The Justice Department reviewed the inspector general's factual findings and declined prosecution at the time.
That prior finding does not automatically resolve the new investigation because the current subpoena may concern a broader set of communications or a different alleged disclosure. But it means any claim that Comey previously was found to have leaked classified information through Richman is inaccurate. The inspector general found policy violations, not evidence that classified information from the memos had been passed to reporters.
The legal record surrounding Richman's electronic files adds another layer to the renewed investigation.
After Comey's 2017 testimony, Richman permitted the FBI to copy the contents of his computer for a limited purpose connected to the Comey memoranda. The government later obtained search warrants in 2019 and 2020 that allowed investigators to examine portions of Richman's computer image, Columbia University email account and Apple iCloud account as part of investigations into suspected improper disclosures.
Those earlier investigations ended without charges. Yet the government retained broad collections of Richman's electronic data long after the original inquiries had concluded.
That retention became a major constitutional issue in 2025, when prosecutors searching for evidence in a separate case against Comey returned to Richman's archived files without first obtaining a new warrant.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled in December 2025 that the government violated Richman's Fourth Amendment rights. She found that prosecutors had retained sweeping copies of his data, including material outside the scope of the original warrants, and had later searched that unsegregated material without new judicial authorization.
The judge described the continued possession and warrantless review as an unreasonable seizure and ordered the Justice Department to return the covered materials to Richman. She allowed a single copy to be deposited with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia so prosecutors could seek lawful access in the future through a new search warrant.
The ruling was significant because it prevented the government from simply returning to the old files whenever a new Comey investigation emerged. If prosecutors want access to material preserved with the court, they must establish probable cause and obtain new judicial authorization.
The court also noted that, among the large volume of retained material, only one document had been identified on the record as purportedly classified. That document was a Comey memorandum Richman received in 2017 that, according to Richman's account in the litigation, was not classified when he received it and was later 'up-classified' to the Confidential level. The court allowed the government to delete that document from the materials returned to Richman but barred additional searches for classified information without a valid warrant.
The new subpoena therefore may give prosecutors a way to obtain fresh testimony independent of the old electronic archive. It does not, however, erase the restrictions imposed by the 2025 court rulings or establish that investigators have new evidence proving a classified leak.
CNN reported that the current matter is being pursued by prosecutors in Florida who have been examining what officials have described as a broader alleged conspiracy involving actions taken against Trump from the 2016 election through later investigations. The New York Times likewise reported that the Richman subpoena appears to sit inside that wider inquiry.
The broader investigation has generated intense political controversy because Trump has repeatedly accused Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan and other officials from the Obama and first Trump administrations of abusing federal law-enforcement and intelligence powers against him. Critics of the Justice Department's current approach argue that the investigations risk becoming political retaliation against officials who previously investigated Trump.
The Justice Department has rejected the idea that subjects should be insulated from investigation because of their political prominence or past government service. Prosecutors have emphasized that grand juries independently evaluate evidence and that defendants are presumed innocent unless proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Comey's history with the Justice Department since Trump's return to office has already included one failed prosecution and one active criminal case.
In September 2025, Comey was indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia on charges that he made a false statement to Congress and obstructed a congressional proceeding. Prosecutors alleged that his September 2020 testimony about whether he had authorized someone at the FBI to act as an anonymous source was false. Richman's communications and the government's handling of his electronic records became central issues in that case.
The prosecution did not reach trial. In November 2025, a federal judge dismissed the indictment after ruling that interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, who had obtained the charges, had been unlawfully appointed and therefore lacked authority to prosecute the case. The dismissal was without prejudice, but the ruling and related statute-of-limitations questions complicated any effort to bring the same charges again.
The Richman data litigation that followed created an additional obstacle. Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the government could not continue using years-old electronic material simply because it remained in federal possession. Her decision allowed future access only through a new warrant and judicial supervision.
Comey's current criminal exposure comes from a different episode entirely. On April 28, 2026, a federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted him on two counts arising from an Instagram photograph posted the previous year showing seashells arranged as '86 47.' Prosecutors allege the image was a threat against Trump, the 47th president, and charged Comey with threatening the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce.
Comey has denied intending violence. He said he encountered the shell arrangement during a beach walk and removed the post after learning that some people interpreted the number 86 as a reference to killing rather than its more common slang meaning of removing or getting rid of something.
The legal dispute in that case is expected to focus heavily on intent and the constitutional distinction between protected expression and a 'true threat.' The Justice Department says the context of the post permits the inference that it was threatening. Comey's lawyers have argued that the prosecution is politically motivated and that the post did not contain a serious expression of intent to harm the president.
The indictment carries a combined maximum statutory penalty of 10 years if Comey is convicted on both counts. As with every criminal prosecution, those charges are accusations only, and Comey remains presumed innocent.
The new Richman subpoena is separate from the threat case. It instead returns investigators to events from Comey's time as FBI director and the politically explosive months after Trump fired him in 2017.
That history makes the distinction between 'sensitive' and 'classified' information especially important. Government information can be sensitive, internal or related to an ongoing investigation without being formally classified under national-security rules. The 2019 inspector general report found that Comey violated FBI policy by sharing sensitive investigative information in Memo 4, even though the memo itself was not classified.
The report also criticized Comey for retaining copies of FBI records after his dismissal and for failing to notify the bureau immediately after realizing that some of the material he kept or distributed contained information later determined to be classified. But it stopped short of concluding that classified content had been given to the press through Richman.
Richman has long maintained that the substance he relayed to The New York Times was not marked classified and, to his knowledge, remained unclassified. That position is consistent with the inspector general's finding regarding the specific memo Comey directed him to discuss with the newspaper.
What the present grand jury is examining beyond that known disclosure remains unclear. Prosecutors could be looking at other communications, other media contacts, the accuracy of prior statements, the handling of government information, or evidence developed as part of the broader Florida investigation. Until more documents become public, the exact theory should not be treated as settled.
The subpoena is nevertheless consequential because grand jury testimony can create a new evidentiary record that is independent of material whose use was restricted by the 2025 Fourth Amendment litigation. Richman may be questioned about what Comey told him, what information he transmitted to reporters, whether any material came from active investigations and what he understood about its classification or sensitivity at the time.
Richman could also invoke legal privileges or other protections depending on the questions asked and the time period involved. His past roles as friend, adviser, attorney and special government employee make those issues potentially complex.
The renewed inquiry also shows how disputes from the earliest months of Trump's first presidency continue to shape federal law enforcement nearly a decade later. Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation, the Russia investigation, his private meetings with Trump and his post-firing disclosures became defining controversies of the 2016-2017 period. They have since been examined by congressional committees, inspectors general, prosecutors, civil litigants and multiple grand juries.
Supporters of the new investigation argue that unfinished questions about leaks and media contacts deserve answers regardless of how much time has passed. They contend that senior officials who handle sensitive government information should face the same scrutiny as other federal employees.
Critics counter that repeated efforts to prosecute Comey after earlier investigations ended without charges risk undermining confidence in the Justice Department's independence. They also point to Trump's public calls for action against political enemies and to the procedural problems that derailed the 2025 Comey prosecution.
Both arguments will follow the new subpoena, but neither determines the evidence. The central factual issue remains what information, if any, Comey authorized Richman to disclose beyond the already documented Memo 4 episode and whether any such information was protected by criminal law rather than merely internal FBI policy.
For now, the public record supports several conclusions. Comey did use Richman in 2017 to convey the contents of an FBI memorandum to The New York Times. The inspector general later found that Comey violated FBI rules in handling and disclosing official records. The same inspector general found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released classified information from the memos to the media. The Justice Department declined prosecution after that review. Years later, federal courts found that prosecutors had improperly retained and searched Richman's electronic records without new warrants.
The August 2026 subpoena means prosecutors are once again testing whether there is more to the story. It does not yet show that they have proved it.
That distinction is likely to define the next phase of the case. If investigators uncover evidence of a previously unknown classified disclosure or another prosecutable offense, the subpoena could become the first visible step in a consequential new case. If the inquiry returns to conduct already examined and previously declined, prosecutors will face difficult questions about what has materially changed.
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Either way, Comey's legal troubles now span both recent conduct and disputes rooted in the first months of the Trump presidency. The fresh subpoena to Richman ensures that one of Washington's longest-running battles over leaks, law enforcement and presidential power is not yet over.
