Prosecutors may move to oust James Comey's defense lawyer

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Politico

10/19/2025 11:45 PM EDT


Federal prosecutors signaled Sunday that they may seek to boot Patrick Fitzgerald, James Comey’s lead defense attorney, because of Fitzgerald’s alleged involvement in disclosures to the media shortly after President Donald Trump fired Comey as FBI director in 2017. In a submission Sunday evening, prosecutors suggested to U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff that Fitzgerald, Comey’s lawyer and close friend, could have an insurmountable conflict of interest as a result of the disclosures.

Fitzgerald is representing Comey in a criminal case ordered up by Trump and brought last month in Virginia, where Comey faces two felony charges for making a false statement and obstructing a federal proceeding. The prosecutors asked the judge to quickly approve a proposal for a “filter team” of lawyers to sift through evidence in Comey’s criminal case that could clarify Fitzgerald’s role in the eight-year-old disclosures — without breaching Comey’s attorney-client privilege.

Prosecutors proposed the “filter team” to the court last week, but in the new filing they said the request has particular urgency because Fitzgerald played a role in Comey’s release of information that officials later deemed classified. “Based on publicly disclosed information, the defendant used current lead defense counsel to improperly disclose classified information,” prosecutors Tyler Lemons and Gabriel Diaz wrote. “This fact raises a question of conflict and disqualification for current lead defense counsel.”

The new filing is short on details, but references a Justice Department Office of Inspector General report from 2019 that found Fitzgerald acted as a middleman when Comey sought to get information to the media about what he viewed as improper efforts by Trump to get him to pledge loyalty in the days before his firing.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/19/james-comey-lawyer-criminal-case-00615102

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Link to FILING (PDF viewer) - https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26190529-comeyfiltermot101925/

Link to FILING (PDF) - https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26190529/comeyfiltermot101925.pdf

[turbinetree]

1. The US Supreme Court 6 will be the "filter team"............just a guess..............

[SSJVegeta]

2. Theyre reaching.

These people are terrified and just acting on marching orders.

They are, as the kids say: Cooked.

[MarineCombatEngineer]

3. Just another brazen attempt to delay the trial and distract from the Epstein files,

I've got a feeling that this no nonsense judge will see right through the prosecutor's blatant bullshit and not let them derail the start of trial.

[elleng]

4. Scared of Fitz,

the first of many.

[Whyisthisstillclose]

5. If they are looking to remove anyone who has expressed a dislike for Trump

from Comey's defense team, this will be a long process LOL.

[Bayard]

6. They don't get to choose the defense attorney

I can't believe there would be any legal basis for that.

[creeksneakers2]

7. Whether the memos were classified or not

should not be an issue since that is not what Comey is charged with. Therefore, there should be no conflict.

[Buddyzbuddy]

8. Isn't Comey's defense team trying to remove, I think her name is "Halligan"?

So this would be the prosecution's "rubber strategy". "Whatever you say bounces off us and lands on you". As opposed to the Pee Wee Herman strategy of, "I know you are but what am I?"

[BaronChocula]

12. Well you stole my comment

I hope you're happy.

[Buddyzbuddy]

15. Great minds think alike, Baron.

[BaronChocula]

16. ...

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

9. Meaning they're scared shitless of him

[maxsolomon]

10. Let the delays begin

A 2019 IG report came out during which Administration?

[LetMyPeopleVote]

11. Comey has responded and it is clear that Halligan and company are scared of Patrick Fitzgerald

This response made me smile

Link to tweet

[FakeNoose]

13. As I recall back to 2017, everything about Comey's firing was posted by Chump himself

Chump had a Facebook account at the time, and he also posted everything on Xwitter (pre-Musk).
I don't know how he can blame "leaks" on anyone else.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

14. Comey lawyer Pat Fitzgerald fires back at prosecutors, accusing them of seeking to "defame" him

Halligan's motion is very weak

Link to tweet

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/19/james-comey-lawyer-criminal-case-00615102

Fitzgerald fired back at prosecutors Monday morning, accusing them of attempting to “defame” him with demonstrably false allegations.

“There was no ‘leaking’ of classified information to the press by either Mr. Comey or his counsel. Full stop,” Fitzgerald and other defense attorneys wrote.

The prosecution’s filing is short on details, but references a Justice Department Office of Inspector General report from 2019 that found Fitzgerald had a role in Comey’s effort to get information to the media about what he viewed as improper efforts by Trump to get him to pledge loyalty in the days before his firing.....

The inspector general report found that some of the information Comey shared with his attorneys was classified and faulted 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.”

Fitzgerald argued in the filing Monday that he and Comey acted appropriately in that episode and that Comey shared information with him as he mulled his legal options related to the firing.

“After Mr. Comey was fired on May 9, 2017, he sought legal advice with respect to his termination and with regard to having witnessed behavior by the President that he considered unlawful,” Fitzgerald wrote. He said Comey attempted to segregate some memos with classified information from others he deemed unclassified, but that others came to different judgments after the fact and deemed a portion of one memo he’d shared with his lawyers to be classified at the lowest level used by the government.

The last paragraph in this article amused me. trump had the Inspector General report deleted because it has material adverse to trump. Because of the deletion by trump, Halligan had to file an unofficial copy using a "wayback" website

Prosecutors did not provide the judge with a copy of the Inspector General report, but offered a link to a version of it provided on the non-profit Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. The DOJ Inspector General’s office reported earlier this month that its website was frozen and then taken offline due to the Trump administration’s effort to shutter an umbrella group, the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency.

The DOJ is trying to use a report that the trump DOJ had deleted.