New Development In Comey Criminal Case Casts Bad Light On Former FBI Boss
Newly unsealed court filings reveal that months before his firing, former FBI Director James Comey privately admitted deep discomfort over his explosive decision to alert Congress in the final days of the 2016 election that agents had uncovered additional Hillary Clinton emails on a laptop belonging to disgraced former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner.
According to a newly released message, Comey confessed to a close friend, “I hate having to do it,” exposing the internal conflict he claims to have felt as he revived the Clinton investigation at one of the most politically sensitive moments in modern history.
Comey now faces federal charges alleging he misled and obstructed Congress by denying that he personally authorized media leaks tied to the bureau’s probe of Clinton’s secret email server. As he fights to dismiss those charges, the Justice Department has released a new trove of communications between Comey and longtime confidant Daniel Richman — messages that offer fresh insight into the mindset of an FBI director who fully expected Hillary Clinton to defeat then-GOP nominee Donald Trump.
The documents reinforce what conservatives have argued for years: that the so-called “October Surprise” — Clinton emails surfacing on Weiner’s computer — was not a shocking discovery at all, but something FBI leadership had been aware of well before Comey’s announcement. Former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, for example, had known since September 2016 that Clinton-related messages were on the Weiner laptop — long before Comey emailed Richman about the issue.
The Justice Department’s release shows Comey explicitly anticipated the emergence of “president-elect Clinton” after Election Day and viewed his congressional notification as an unhappy obligation, even as he privately worked through backchannels to shape press coverage.
Richman — a former DOJ official who later became known for leaking Comey’s memos to the New York Times in 2017 after Comey was dismissed by President Donald Trump — was already deeply embedded with the FBI during the 2016 race. Prosecutors now say the newly revealed exchanges contradict Comey’s later statements to Congress, providing evidence that he encouraged Richman’s media outreach while still FBI director.
Adding another layer of irony to a case built on Clinton’s improper use of private email, the filings reveal that Comey himself was using an anonymous personal Gmail account to discuss FBI matters with Richman, as highlighted by Just the News.
Comey’s attorney, Jessica Carmichael, recently pressed the court to require federal prosecutors to provide more detail about the allegations against her client, writing that Comey “moves this Court to order the government to provide a bill of particulars as described below” because “Mr. Comey seeks specificity with respect to Counts One and Two of the indictment to apprise him of the offenses with which he is charged and to allow him to prepare a defense at trial. The indictment in its current form does neither.”
But Acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan pushed back in a new filing, arguing that “contrary to defendant’s request, a bill of particulars is not to be utilized as a discovery device” and stressing that “given that the indictment provides defendant with the essential facts constituting the offenses with which he is charged, the Court should not require the Government to disclose the manner in which it will attempt to prove the charges, the precise manner in which the Government intends to prove that the crimes charged were committed, or to provide the defendant a preview of the Government’s evidence or legal theories.”
The DOJ’s latest documents further detail Comey’s actions in late October 2016, including what prosecutors describe as a rapid escalation in coordination with Richman immediately after the FBI’s congressional notification about the newly discovered Clinton emails on Weiner’s laptop.
The filing states: “Almost immediately after sending the above-described letter, the defendant appears to have begun coordinating with Daniel Richman … to respond to resulting media coverage.” The DOJ added: “On the same day that defendant sent his letter to Congress, he was already coordinating with Richman on the coverage.”
With Comey now under indictment and President Donald J. Trump’s Justice Department bringing long-delayed transparency to the Clinton-era scandals, these new disclosures again place the former FBI director at the center of the political firestorm he once insisted he merely stumbled into.