A federal judge on Friday ordered the Justice Department to return files that had been illegally seized from former FBI Director James Comey's ex-legal adviser Daniel Richman, All Rise News' Adam Klasfeld reported.
The files were taken as part of the criminal indictment against Comey for false statements and obstruction, which has now been dismissed.
"When the Government violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures by sweeping up a broad swath of a person's electronic files, retaining those files long after the relevant investigation has ended, and later sifting through those files without a warrant to obtain evidence against someone else, what remedy is available to the victim of the Government's unlawful intrusion?" said the court's order. "Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41(g) provides one such remedy: a court may order the Government to return the files to their rightful owner. This case calls for that remedy."
Comey was indicted by Lindsey Halligan, a prosecutor whom Trump's administration installed in the Eastern District of Virginia after the prior acting U.S. attorney failed to find the evidence to move forward. The case alleges that Comey lied during Senate testimony about the source of FBI leaks in a hearing years ago, but experts have noted his testimony doesn't appear to be false.
After Halligan made a series of blunders in the case, it was finally tossed as a judge ruled Halligan was not appointed lawfully as a prosecutor in the first place, which rendered the indictment null and void, as she was the only official who had signed it.
The Trump administration is currently attempting to retry the other Halligan case that was tossed on identical grounds, that being the mortgage fraud case against New York Attorney General Letitia James; however, the Comey case may not even be retriable because the statute of limitations has expired.