The Department of Justice has been ordered by a federal judge to return everything that it seized and obtained between 2017 to 2020 from a longtime confidant of former FBI Director James Comey, siding with the friend and plaintiff who said his constitutional rights had been violated when the materials in his possession were misused to investigate Comey.
In a decision on Dec. 12, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly for the District of Columbia ruled that the DOJ had violated law professor Daniel Richman’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures when it retained certain files copied from the plaintiff’s personal computer and online accounts between 2017 to 2020 when it was investigating whether Comey had leaked classified material after being fired as FBI director, and used those files for further investigations not covered by the original warrant.
