At a Nov. 5 hearing in Alexandria, Va., a federal magistrate judge criticized prosecutors in the criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey and ordered the Justice Department to swiftly turn over investigative and grand-jury materials, as disputes over evidence handling and privilege intensified.
A federal magistrate judge on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025, sharply criticized the Justice Department’s approach to its case against former FBI Director James Comey, calling the posture "highly unusual" and likening it to an "indict first and investigate second" strategy. Presiding at a procedural hearing in Alexandria, U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick directed prosecutors to provide Comey’s defense with grand-jury materials and evidence previously seized from Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman, a longtime Comey confidant whose communications factor into the charges. Prosecutors acknowledged concerns about potentially privileged materials and said review had been halted pending court guidance.
Comey was indicted on Sept. 25, 2025, in the Eastern District of Virginia on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding, tied to his Sept. 30, 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee testimony. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the case centers on whether Comey falsely denied authorizing anyone to serve as an anonymous source in media reporting related to FBI matters. Comey has pleaded not guilty.
The indictment followed a Sept. 20, 2025 Truth Social post in which President Donald Trump publicly urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to bring charges against several perceived adversaries, including Comey. Within days, Trump replaced the district’s top prosecutor, Erik Siebert, with Lindsey Halligan, a former Trump attorney serving as interim U.S. attorney; Halligan signed the Comey indictment. Her appointment has since been challenged by Comey’s team.
In a separate development, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie—assigned to review the dispute over Halligan’s authority—ordered prosecutors to submit, for in camera review, a complete transcript or recording of Halligan’s grand-jury presentation, after finding an earlier submission incomplete. Currie’s order seeks the prosecutor’s remarks before and after witness testimony, an unusually granular look at how the case was presented.
Comey’s lawyers have moved to dismiss the case, arguing it is a vindictive and selective prosecution driven by Trump’s "personal spite" and arising from "multiple glaring constitutional violations and an egregious abuse of power." The Justice Department has urged the court to reject those claims, saying the president’s public comments do not prove a retaliatory motive and that charging decisions rest with prosecutors, not the White House.
The case unfolds against a fraught backdrop. In late October 2016, after James Comey informed Congress the FBI was reviewing newly discovered emails in the Clinton inquiry, Trump praised the move as taking "a lot of guts." When Comey later told lawmakers on Nov. 6, 2016 that the FBI’s prior conclusion stood, Trump responded at rallies that "Hillary Clinton is guilty. She knows it, the FBI knows it, the people know it." In 2017, Comey publicly confirmed an FBI investigation into Russian election interference and described a private dinner at which Trump asked for his "loyalty." Trump fired Comey on May 9, 2017. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn—whose case figured in those interactions—pleaded guilty that year to lying to the FBI and was later pardoned in 2020.
Comey has been a frequent critic of Trump, calling him "morally unfit" to be president in a 2018 television interview. Prosecutors deny that political animus drives the current case. Additional hearings on the appointment dispute and discovery issues are scheduled this month, and the criminal case remains in pretrial stages.
