Loading summary
Transcript7 lines
- [00:01]
A
Coca Cola for the big, for the small, the short and the tall. Peacemakers, risk takers for the optimists, pessimists for long distance love for introverts and extroverts, the thinkers and the doers for old friends and new Coca Cola for everyone. Pick up some Coca Cola at a store near you guys. Thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree, Zoe. This thing weighs a ton. Drew Ski, live with your legs, man. Santa. Santa, did you get my letter? He's talking to you, Bridges. I'm not. Of course he did. Right, Santa, you know my elf Drew Ski here. He handles the nice list and elf. I'm six' three. What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and at T Mobile. You can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies. Right, Mrs. Claus? I'm Mrs. Claus's much younger. And AT T mobile, there's no trade in needed when you switch. So you can keep your old phone or give it as a gift. And the best part, you can make the switch to T mobile from your phone in just 15 minutes. Nice. My side of the tree is slipping, Kimber. The holidays are better. AT T Mobile switch in just 15 minutes and get iPhone 17 on us with no trade in needed. And now T mobile is available in US cellular stores with three full monthly bill credits for well qualified customers plus tax and $35 device connection charge credits and imbalance due if you pay off earlier. Cancel financing agreement 256 gigs, $830 eligible Ford in a new line, $100 plus a month plan with auto payments, taxes and fees required to count for 15 minutes. Visit keymobile.com in breaking news, we've got a federal court order over the weekend that will blow a hole into the James Comey continued prosecution by the Department of Justice. And there's links even to the pipe bomber. I'll talk about that here on Legal AF and on the Midas Touch Network. This all results from a order by Judge Kolar Catelli in favor of a lawyer for James Comey, Daniel Richmond, a professor at Columbia who wants his stuff back. And he wants his fourth amendment rights to illegal to not have illegal search and seizure. He wants it protected because he turned over documents back in 2017 and 2020 to the first administration to go after James Comey. The first Trump administration having failed to do that. Apparently they just kept all of his documents up on a shelf and then had a new FBI agent under Lindsey Halligan's direction, without a warrant, take the box down, start rummaging through it. Without regard to Fourth Amendment rights, without regard to whether there was attorney client privilege communication between James Comey and his lawyer, Daniel Richmond. They just ran roughshod over the box and. And lo and behold, got an indictment based on what was in the box. The problem with that is it's a Fourth Amendment illegal search and seizure violation. It was already noted by one judge, magistrate, Judge Fitzpatrick. It led to Daniel Richmond filing a motion for the, not only the return of his property from when they did an imaging and a scanning of his. His iPad and his email accounts, but to prevent the government from using anything that was obtained from Daniel Richmond in 2017 and 2020 for the 2025 indictment or attempted indictments at James Comey. And they have now been successful, at least based on this new emergency temporary restraining order, until this Friday at around the stroke of midnight. I'm Michael Popak. You're here on the Midas Touch network in Legal af. And yes, there is a pipe bomber connection here, and there's a lot of connection between the lawyers involved that I want to discuss with you because this was a coordinated effort by James Comey and Daniel Richmond's lawyers, I am sure. And then there is that connection we'll talk about related to other cases that the Department of Justice is currently investigating. All right, let's get down to it. Who's Daniel Richmond? He is a Columbia Law professor, but more importantly, very good friend of James Comey. Worked together in the U.S. attorney's office in New York when they were together and when James Comey was in a little bit of a pickle because he had the first iteration of a criminal president in Donald Trump in the first term, he turned regularly to Daniel Richmond for both advice and counsel and to frankly, as it has been admitted, to leak some documents to the New York Times that were memos of James Comey in order to try to get a special prosecutor appointed against Donald Trump in the first administration. So that's Daniel Richmond. Daniel Richmond's been very public about his role, his involvement. He's testified, he's given testimony to the FBI and all of that. The problem is back in 2017-2020, they were doing an entirely different investigation. It was called Arctic Haze. It had to do with Hillary Clinton' emails, and he. He allowed his computers and iPad email account at Columbia University to be looked at, imaged, and I guess retained by the Department of Justice, although I guess he expected to get it back. No, no charges were brought pursuant to his. His providing these documents against Richmond or anybody else. We know that Comey famously never got indicted for anything. And they, and there they sat, apparently on the shelf. Now we know that Lindsey Halligan, illegally appointed and fired recently as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia just to let the FBI agent in her case against James Comey for perjury in September of 2020, just let him go back and take a look at the box of documents that were marked Richmond without a warrant. And of course, the FBI agent, not aware of any segregation issues or what we call taint issues, just started going through the boxes and started testifying about what he saw. The problem is that's a violation of the Fourth Amendment for Daniel Richmond and by extension the attorney client privilege relationship he had with James Comey. And they get the indictment. Except the indictment got tossed along with Lindsey Halligan. Now the government has the right to try to re indict. We saw what just happened with Letitia James, that they tried and failed already in Norfolk, Virginia, at least one more time with the grand jury. And fearing that they were going to try to re indict James Comey again using the Richmond files, which were illegally retained and illegally searched, Richmond's lawyers, who are close to James Comey and James Comey's lawyers filed a motion to get his stuff back and to claim a Fourth Amendment violation. And so the first level of connection and that case gets assigned to Senior judge Kolar Catelli there the.
- [06:42]
The motion that's filed is filed by Nick Lewin. Nick Lewin is a well known white collar defense lawyer. He also worked with James Comey in the U.S. attorney's office in New York and also worked for James Comey and Robert Mueller at different times during the Mueller investigation. Close relationship with Lewin, Lewin's lawyers and James Comey's lawyers. Now let me get to the Kolar Catelli order and then I'll work backwards to tell you how we got here with the motion practice. The order, which just got issued in the last 24 hours or so.
- [07:18]
Basically says, I can't get a hold of the government. This is the judge. No one's picking up my phone. I know they know about this case, but nobody's appeared. So I'm going to issue a temporary restraining order at least until Friday to stop the use of the Richmond files for, for any new attempted indictment until I can have full briefing and a hearing about the Richmond files and the Fourth Amendment because that makes sense. It's called preserving the status quo. If she allows the government to do the very thing that Richmond's trying to stop, it's already done. You know, if they if he's trying to stop the use of his materials for next indictment. If she doesn't do the TRO and hold the ring, they're gonna use his documents for the indictment. So it kind of undermines the entire purpose of having filed the motion. Holiday headlines, family debates and group texts that won't quit. You deserve a ceasefire. Into Cloud is your online cannabis dispensary for quieting the noise. Gummies, curated flowers, pre rolls and now zero sugar, zero calorie THC sodas. All federally legal. THC DEA certified, lab tested, ship discreet. You may not be able to mute the world, but you can mute your stress one gummy or soda at a time. Policy debates, family debates, internal debates, all handled by one bipartisan solution. Into Cloud. Gummies, sodas and pre roll for the moments democracy wears you out. And $70 ounces. That's what we call economic relief. This is how adults log off, mindfully and maybe with a little Fizz. If you're 21 or older, visit IndeCloud Co and use code legal A for 25% off plus free shipping. That's IndeCloud code legal AF for 25% off free shipping and one less headline in your head. Enjoy responsibly and thanks to IndeCloud for sponsoring today's much needed quiet. She starts with these are the factors that weigh in favor of her temporary or temporary order. First, although the court has been in communication with attorneys from the U.S. attorney's Office for the District of Columbia and they haven't entered an appearance, so her office called them. They have not entered an appearance and they haven't entered an appearance at the time I'm doing this recording, the government has not indicated who has custody of the material at issue. The Richmond files and given the custody and control of the material is a central issue. I'm going to do a temporary restraining order. And she knows that the government got actual notice from Daniel Richmond's lawyers through an email exchange. And that's where the pipe bomber comes in. I'll talk about that in a minute. So here's what her ruling is. Page three. The court concludes that petitioner Richmond is 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 and searching that image without a warrant. A warrantless search. Petitioner has also shown that absent an injunction, he will be irreparably harmed by the ongoing violation of his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures arising from the government's retention of his computer. Therefore, she's going to enter the injunction grant. Here's how it's been granted. The United States and the Attorney General of the US Pam Bondi, are ordered to identify, segregate, and secure the image of his personal computer and his email accounts, his icloud accounts and any copies, and hold them. Don't look at them, don't use them, just segregate them. Let's call that the Richmond files.
- [11:05]
Then. They are not to access the Richmond files. Then they are ordered that by later today that they certify that they are in compliance with the order. So sometime on Monday, they're going to certify that they're in compliance with the order by noon. It is further ordered that petitioner Richmond's counsel shall serve an order of this on the Attorney General. She's going to keep her temporary restraining order in place until the stroke of midnight on Friday the 12th. Or, although she may dissolve it earlier, she's allowing time for the government to come in and move to dissolve the temporary restraining order. And then she wants, By Tuesday, the 9th, she wants the response by the government to all of the pending motions on the merits of the Fourth Amendment violation. And then later on the same day on Tuesday. So we'll have full briefing on Tuesday. She wants Richmond's response right now. Comey is sidelined. He hasn't moved to intervene. He's letting Richmond and his lawyers do the heavy lift. Now, here's the connection to the pipe bomber. I know you're waiting on that one. There's an email exchange, which I'll read to you in a minute, in which the Richmond's lawyers write to the government and say, look, we don't want to make. We don't need to make a motion for temporary restraining order. We see you're trying to re indict. Just agree with us that you're not going to use the Richmond files to re indict, and we will not have to file our motion for restraining order. So they send that to Jocelyn Ballantyne on December 3rd. Jocelyn Ballantyne is also the Assistant U.S. attorney who's prosecuting the pipe bomb.
- [12:47]
Case, which you'll see why that's relevant in a minute. So she writes back later on the third. This is all in an exhibit we'll put up on the screen. She says, thank you so much. I met with leadership today, and they have engaged the Department of Justice leadership. And I've also shared your pleadings and Requests with the prosecutors who handled the Comey prosecution out of the Eastern District. That's very interesting. Prosecutors. We know from Judge Curry, having reviewed the grand jury transcript that there was only one prosecutor, it was Lindsey Halligan that prosecuted the original case. I don't know if she's confused. I don't know if we have now something that has to be followed up by James Comey's lawyers what prosecutors were there. And in particular because they need to know from a document search standpoint as the defense lawyers and then if they're talking about new prosecutors while the new prosecutors are therefore working on the indictment. I mean, that it's either she's admitted that they're working on a new indictment or she's got her numbers wrong or she just told the truth, which is there was more than one prosecutor working with Lindsey Halligan. So that's the answer. She. They then write back in an email exchange. On Friday the 5th, Nick Lewin writes back. Hi, Jocelyn. Because they know each other from prior cases. Thank you for getting back to us. I am sympathetic to all you have going on. She's the pipe bomber prosecutor. And I'm sorry to add to that, but under the circumstances, I can't wait another week. We're going to make our motion for temporary restraining order because new violations of our clients rights may be imminent. If you're trying to indict a James Comey again, we got a lot to follow here on Legal af. Come over to Legal AF substack. Take a minute, hit the free subscribe button. Come over to legal AF YouTube and help us grow to 1 million before 2026. We're really close. So until my next report, I'm Michael Pop. Can't get your fill of Legal af. Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do called wait for it Morning af. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AO are there as well. We got some new reporting, we got interviews, we got ad free versions of the podcast and hot takes where Legal AF on subscribe stack. Come over now to free subscribe.
- [15:24]
Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu. Is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Us cut the camera they see us. Only pay for what you need at liberty mutual.com.
- [15:48]
Savings very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates excludes Massachusetts the holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info and more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed or your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply Today we'll attempt a feat once thought impossible, overcoming high interest credit card debt. It requires merely one thing a SOFI personal loan. With it, you could save big on interest charges by consolidating into one low fixed rate monthly payment. Defy high interest debt with a SOFI personal loan. Visit sofi.com stunt to learn more. Loans originated by Sofi Bank NA member FDIC terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891.