DOJ Believes Comey’s Attorney has a Conflict of Interest
The prosecutors allege that the attorney helped Comey leak confidential information to the press
The DOJ cited a possible conflict of interest with former FBI Director James Comey’s defense attorney because he’s allegedly a possible witness.
The federal prosecutors in the U.S. District Court for Virginia’s Eastern District told Judge Michael Nachmanoff that Patrick Fitzgerald, Comey’s lead attorney, might have a connection to the case.
On September 25, a federal grand jury indicted Comey “on charges believed to stem from Comey’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020 about the FBI’s investigation into links between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.”
- 18 U.S.C. § 1001 – making a false statement
- 18 U.S.C. § 1505 – obstruction of justice
Comey pleaded not guilty.
The prosecutors told Nachmanoff that the “evidence for filter review could contain exculpatory or inculpatory evidence,” which they believe could reveal a conflict of interest:
Evidence in the government’s custody includes potentially protected material because the evidence was obtained from an attorney. Relevant to this motion, the attorney has informed the government that the quarantined evidence contains communications between the defendant and several attorneys. The current lead defense counsel appears to be a party to some of these communications.
Seems that Comey and his attorney go back. The prosecutors allege that Fitzgerald helped Comey leak confidential information to the press:
Additionally, based on publicly disclosed information, the defendant used current lead defense counsel to improperly disclose classified information. The DOJ OIG’s final description of Defendant’s conduct is worth consideration:
The responsibility to protect sensitive law enforcement information falls in large part to the employees of the FBI who have access to it through their daily duties. On occasion, some of these employees may disagree with decisions by prosecutors, judges, or higher ranking FBI and Department officials about the actions to take or not take in criminal and counterintelligence matters. They may even, in some situations, distrust the legitimacy of those supervisory, prosecutorial, or judicial decisions. But even when these employees believe that their most strongly-held personal convictions might be served by an unauthorized disclosure, the FBI depends on them not to disclose sensitive information.
Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility. By not safeguarding sensitive information obtained during the course of his FBI employment, and by using it to create public pressure for official action, Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 current FBI employees—and the many thousands more former FBI employees—who similarly have access to or knowledge of non-public information.
The prosecutors requested that the judge grant all parties access to all relevant information.
They hope the judge approves a neutral team to review the communications to determine if the material is privileged pr evidence of misconduct.
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Comments
The Trump president….
Nuke them from orbit!
It’s the only way to be sure.
No nuke required, just enough steerable mass. Better than a nuke.
It looks like the march toward a conspiracy indictment continues. It seems Fitzgerald could either be a cooperating witness or a indicted co-conspirator.
The latter would be fun to watch. Ultimately I can’t imagine any of these clowns getting convicted, but the process itself is at least some punishment.
Could be interesting if Fitzgerald representing Comey would be an overt act in furtherance of conspiracy to obstruct.
Good one!!!
Nice try. No. The act of representation as an attorney is a privileged matter unless it is countermanded by some other violation of the Professional Rules of Conduct (which the Attorney should KNOW better). It in-and-of-itself would be immune to RICO attachment, because the remedy would be for the Court, in camera, to review and decide IF there was a crime therein, at the PREPONDERANCE standard (bc the Attorney’s rights are NOT YET threatened) on the privilege issue, or for the Court to appoint a Special Master to review and advise in order to give the Court a “step of separation” from the review itself, or to nominally and selectively give all parties access to the evidence claimed to be privileged and deem the privilege waived as to that matter by the selection of THAT attorney by Comey.
If it turns out to be a fishing expedition, the Judge, upon motion of the Defendant, Attorney, or even Sua Sponte, can declare that information, even if shared with ALL parties, is back in the privilege box, and anything from it or mention of it at any point becomes fruit of the poisonous tree.
Wouldn’t it be grand to watch Fitzgerald flip on Comey to become a cooperating witness only to save his own worthless self!
This is the danger to the people of a politized gov’t bureaucracy. Present and erstwhile employees become the “Resistance” to the people’s choice as represented by the elected POTUS.
Yeah, they think he has a conflict of interest because he does.
The obvious test is telling Fitzgerald that he will be called as a witness and will be required to answer. Giving him immunity gets around the Fifth amendment self-incrimination problem. So if he plans to continue being the defense council and stand behind attorney-client privilege, he could very well find himself spending a lot of time as a guest of the government for contempt of court. These guys aren’t doing a very good job of reading the room.
I am pretty sure that even Comeys case is corrupted one way or another.. its how they all rule to protect him and his croneys
It sounds like they’re calling the lawyer an unindicted co-conspirator. How long before he is indicted too?
Comey appointed Fitzgerald as ‘special prosecutor’ to save the repuatation of Valerie Plame. There is a reasonable inference that those two have been in cahoots for a long time.