A federal grand jury has issued a subpoena to Daniel Richman, the longtime friend, legal adviser, and former attorney of ex-FBI Director James Comey, as the Department of Justice presses forward with a fresh investigation into whether Comey leaked classified information to the New York Times. The move marks a sharp escalation in a case that has trailed Comey for years, and one that the Biden administration quietly let die.
Multiple law enforcement sources confirmed the subpoena to Fox News Digital, which first reported the development. Richman, a Columbia Law School professor in New York who once held the title of “special FBI employee,” received the subpoena on Monday. The investigation is separate from the existing federal case against Comey over his “86 47” Instagram post, which prosecutors say constituted a threat against President Donald Trump.
The new subpoena signals that the DOJ under Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is not content to let the leak matter rest. Investigators originally pursued the classified leak allegations during Trump’s first term, but the probe was cut off when Joe Biden entered office in January 2021, Just The News reported. Now, with Trump back in the White House, the investigation has resumed, and it appears to be picking up where it left off.
Richman is no peripheral figure. He played what Fox News described as a “central role” in the initial leak investigation back in 2018. The indictment in Comey’s separate case accused Richman of communicating with reporters about FBI investigations into 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her election loss to Trump.
Prosecutors seized material from Richman’s electronic devices during investigations in both 2019 and 2020. Richman fought back, filing a lawsuit that argued prosecutors violated his Fourth Amendment rights. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled in his favor in December of last year.
That legal fight over seized records has created real headwinds for the DOJ. A Clinton-appointed judge, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, issued a temporary restraining order blocking prosecutors from accessing the digital records taken from Richman, citing likely Fourth Amendment violations, the Washington Examiner reported. A source familiar with DOJ thinking called the ruling “judicial activism,” insisting the underlying legal issues favor the government’s position and describing the development as a “minor setback.”
Neither Richman nor his legal representatives have made any public statement about the new subpoena. Comey, too, has been silent on the renewed leak investigation.
The new subpoena arrives against a backdrop of serious trouble for the DOJ’s broader Comey prosecution. In the separate “86 47” case, Comey faces two federal charges, threatening the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce, and up to ten years in prison. Acting AG Blanche announced the two-count indictment on April 28.
Blanche framed the case in stark terms:
“Threatening the life of the President of the United States is a grave violation of our nation’s laws. The grand jury returned an indictment alleging James Comey did just that, at a time when this country has witnessed violent incitement followed by deadly actions against President Trump and other elected officials. The temperature needs to be turned down, and anyone who dials it up and threatens the life of the President will be held accountable.”
But the prosecution has stumbled badly since then. The original prosecutor in the “86 47” case resigned in early June. And a federal magistrate judge delivered a stinging rebuke of the DOJ’s conduct.
Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick ordered prosecutors to turn over all grand jury materials to Comey’s defense team, citing nearly a dozen irregularities. AP News reported that Fitzpatrick described “a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps”, missteps he said “led an FBI agent and a prosecutor to potentially undermine the integrity of the grand jury proceeding.”
Among the problems Fitzpatrick identified: prosecutor Lindsey Halligan, who had no prior prosecutorial experience, allegedly made “fundamental misstatements of the law” to the grand jury, including improperly suggesting jurors could draw negative inferences from Comey’s refusal to testify. An FBI agent who had been exposed to potentially privileged attorney-client communications between Comey and his lawyer then appeared before the grand jury, a step the judge called “a radical departure from past DOJ practice.”
The DOJ’s handling of its case against Comey has drawn scrutiny not unlike the questions raised when the department subpoenaed New York Times reporters over Air Force One security coverage, another instance where the government’s use of grand jury power prompted immediate legal pushback.
Comey now faces legal pressure on two distinct fronts. The “86 47” case centers on his Instagram post, which featured seashells and prosecutors allege constituted a coded threat against Trump. The new leak investigation targets what law enforcement sources describe as the transmission of classified information to the New York Times, a matter that dates to Comey’s tenure as FBI director and the politically charged investigations of the 2016 election cycle.
In 2020, Comey testified before Congress. The indictment in the separate case accused him of making false statements and obstructing Congress in connection with that testimony, specifically regarding FBI officials anonymously giving information to news outlets.
The question of whether senior FBI officials used back channels to feed information to favored reporters has dogged the bureau for years. Comey’s relationship with Richman, a trusted confidant who served simultaneously as a Columbia professor, a legal adviser, and a conduit to the press, sits at the center of that question. Richman’s role as a “special FBI employee” while also communicating with reporters about sensitive investigations raises obvious concerns about the boundaries between government service and media influence.
The broader pattern of accountability for former senior officials remains uneven. The Supreme Court recently let a Carter Page lawsuit die, shielding Comey from personal liability over FBI surveillance abuses, a decision that left many wondering whether the legal system can hold former officials accountable at all.
Key questions hang over both cases. What specific classified information does the DOJ allege Comey leaked to the Times? Has Richman complied with the subpoena, or will he challenge it? Will the Fourth Amendment ruling that previously blocked access to Richman’s seized devices hamper the new investigation?
And perhaps most pressing: can the DOJ prosecute these cases competently? The “86 47” prosecution has already lost its lead prosecutor and drawn a judicial rebuke that questioned the very integrity of the grand jury proceedings. If the new leak investigation follows the same pattern, aggressive in its ambitions but sloppy in its execution, it risks undermining a legitimate accountability effort.
The Washington Examiner noted that the DOJ’s parallel attempt to revive an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James also collapsed when a Norfolk, Virginia, grand jury refused to indict her on bank-fraud and false-statement charges. Both the Comey and James original indictments fell apart after a judge ruled that acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully installed.
That track record matters. The DOJ cannot afford to keep bringing high-profile cases that collapse under their own procedural weight. The underlying questions, did Comey leak classified material, and did he use Richman as a cutout to do it, deserve serious answers. But those answers will only stick if the government builds its cases on solid legal ground.
One detail deserves particular attention. The original investigation into Comey’s alleged leaks was pursued during Trump’s first term, and then simply stopped when Biden took office. No public explanation was given for why the probe was shelved. No determination of innocence was announced. The investigation just went away.
That gap speaks to a two-tiered approach to accountability that has corroded public trust in federal law enforcement. When a former FBI director is accused of leaking classified information and the incoming administration simply drops the matter without resolution, it sends a clear message about whose conduct gets scrutinized and whose gets a pass.
The revival of the investigation under Trump’s second term will inevitably be cast by Comey’s defenders as politically motivated. But the question they should be pressed to answer is simpler: if the allegations lack merit, why not let investigators run them to ground? And if the Biden DOJ believed Comey did nothing wrong, why didn’t it say so?
Accountability delayed is not accountability denied, but it is accountability made harder. The DOJ now has to rebuild a case that sat dormant for years, against a target who has had time to prepare, with a judiciary already skeptical of the government’s methods. That is the price of a four-year gap that no one in the Biden administration has ever been asked to justify.
If Comey leaked classified information, the public deserves to know. If he didn’t, he deserves a clean resolution. What no one deserves is a system where investigations start and stop depending on which party controls the White House.
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