Federal prosecutors indicated Sunday that they may seek to fire Patrick Fitzgerald, James Comey’s lead defense attorney, over Fitzgerald’s alleged involvement in media revelations shortly after President Donald Trump fired Comey as FBI director in 2017.
in Presented on Sunday eveningProsecutors suggested to U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff that Fitzgerald, Comey’s lawyer and close friend, may have an insurmountable conflict of interest as a result of the revelations.
Fitzgerald is representing Comey in a Trump-ordered criminal case filed last month in Virginia, where Comey faces two felony counts of making a false statement and obstructing a federal proceeding.
Prosecutors asked the judge to quickly approve a motion to form a “liquidation team” of lawyers to examine evidence in Comey’s criminal case that could clarify Fitzgerald’s role in the eight-year disclosures — without violating Comey’s attorney-client privilege.
Prosecutors The “liquidation team” was presented to the court last weekBut they said in the new filing that the request was particularly significant because Fitzgerald played a role in Comey’s release of information that officials later deemed classified.
“Based on publicly disclosed information, the defendant used his current lead defense counsel to improperly disclose confidential information,” prosecutors Tyler Lemons and Gabriel Diaz wrote. “This fact raises the issue of conflict and disqualification of the current lead defense counsel.”
The new recording is short on details, but references Report of the Office of the Inspector General of the Ministry of Justice From 2019 found that Fitzgerald acted as an intermediary when Comey sought information for the media about what he viewed as inappropriate efforts by Trump to get him to pledge loyalty in the days before his firing.
About a month after Comey was fired. He admitted during his Senate testimony He asked another lawyer and friend, Columbia Law professor Daniel Richman, to provide copies of his memos to The New York Times in an attempt to ensure the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Trump’s conduct.
Inspector General report It found that some of the information Comey shared with his lawyers was confidential It criticized him for sharing sensitive investigative information with outsiders and the media, but also found no evidence “that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.”
The report also noted that the FBI moved to delete material Fitzgerald received from his email accounts — and that Fitzgerald, a former U.S. attorney in Chicago, cooperated “voluntarily and promptly.”
During Trump’s first administration, the Justice Department declined to prosecute Comey or anyone else for handling or disclosing Comey’s memos about his conversations with Trump.
However, last month, Comey It has been shipped By making false statements and obstructing Congress. The charges appear to relate to Comey’s alleged denial of involvement in other leaks during his testimony before a Senate committee in 2020.
Fitzgerald declined to comment Sunday on the prosecution’s filing, which came one day before Comey’s lawyers were scheduled to file their first substantive motions in the case. Comey’s lawyers are set to seek dismissal of the case on the grounds of selective and retaliatory prosecution as well as on the grounds that the Trump-appointed prosecutor who prosecuted the case, Lindsey Halligan, was not lawfully appointed as interim US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Clearance panels are a relatively routine but controversial aspect of many high-profile criminal cases involving government officials and co-defendants who are lawyers or whose lawyers also end up under the scrutiny of investigators. The team’s mission is to review the content of phones or computers seized during a criminal investigation and examine any materials that could be subject to attorney-client privilege, executive privilege or other restrictions on prosecutors’ ability to access them.
The prosecution did not provide the judge with a copy of the Inspector General’s report a reportbut offered a link to a copy of it available on the Internet Archive’s non-profit Wayback Machine. The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General reported earlier this month that its website had been frozen and then taken offline due to the Trump administration’s efforts to shut down an umbrella group, the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Competence.
Source link
