Judge Limits DOJ Access to Evidence in Comey-Linked Case: What This Really Signals About Power, Privacy, and Politicized Justice

The fight over whether the Justice Department can use digital evidence tied to Daniel Richman — a law professor, former FBI special employee, and close ally of ex-FBI Director James Comey — is not just a procedural skirmish. It is a collision point between constitutional privacy protections, the politicization of law enforcement, and the government’s increasingly expansive use of digital searches in high-profile political investigations.

By temporarily blocking the DOJ from using Richman-related material while the court examines whether his Fourth Amendment rights were violated, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has done more than pause one case. She has put a spotlight on a much larger question: how far can the government go in using broadly seized digital data to revive politically loaded prosecutions, years after the fact?

The bigger picture: A political and legal saga years in the making

To understand why this ruling matters, it has to be placed inside the multi-year, deeply politicized saga surrounding James Comey.

2016–2017: The Comey crucible. As FBI director, Comey oversaw both the Hillary Clinton email investigation and early stages of the Trump-Russia probe. His decisions during the 2016 campaign — first announcing and then publicly closing the Clinton email investigation, then announcing its re-opening days before the election — made him a target from both major parties at different moments.
2017: Firing and fallout. President Donald Trump fired Comey in May 2017. Comey later testified that he had kept contemporaneous memos of interactions with Trump and that he had asked Daniel Richman to share at least one of those memo contents with the press to prompt the appointment of a special counsel. That disclosure decision has been politically radioactive ever since.
2017–2020: Leak wars and investigations. Richman, a Columbia law professor and former federal prosecutor, emerged as a central figure because of his role as Comey’s friend, counsel, and a conduit to the media. The Justice Department and its political overseers increasingly framed leaks by senior law enforcement figures — particularly around Clinton, Trump, and the Russia probe — as a core abuse needing criminal accountability.
2019–2020: Digital seizures. According to Richman’s lawsuit, prosecutors seized data from his electronic devices during investigations in 2019 and 2020. Those images, the court now suggests, may have been stored and searched for years beyond the scope of any valid warrant.
2025: Indictment, dismissal, and attempted reset. Comey was indicted on charges of making false statements and obstructing Congress related to his 2020 testimony about FBI officials anonymously providing information to the press. The case was dismissed when another judge ruled the lead prosecutor had been unlawfully appointed. Now the DOJ is weighing fresh indictments — but the ruling limiting access to Richman-linked evidence complicates those plans.

Layered on top of this is a broader pattern: both parties increasingly accuse federal law enforcement of being weaponized against their political opponents. Every major move around Comey is therefore interpreted not just as a legal decision, but as a signal about who controls the machinery of justice.

What this really means: The constitutional fight beneath the political drama

The immediate ruling is narrow — a temporary restraining order (TRO) to prevent the DOJ from accessing, using, or further mining Richman’s digital files until the court fully considers his motion for return of property. But the language Judge Kollar-Kotelly uses goes much further than a routine procedural pause.

She writes that Richman is “likely to succeed on the merits” of his claim that the government violated his Fourth Amendment rights by retaining a complete copy of all files on his personal computer and searching that image without a warrant. That is a strong signal of judicial skepticism about what has become a common investigative practice: seize everything, copy everything, and hold everything — then search later for whatever might be useful.

Three deeper implications stand out:

Judicial pushback against ‘seize now, search later’ digital practices.
Search warrants are supposed to be specific. But digital forensics often operate as de facto general warrants: investigators image entire devices, then conduct broad searches long after the original investigative purpose has faded. If courts start viewing multi-year retention and later searches as new, warrantless intrusions, that could force major reforms in how the DOJ handles electronic evidence.
Blowback risk for high-profile political cases.
The more politically sensitive a prosecution, the more courts scrutinize investigative tactics. Here, the DOJ used Richman’s files to support charges that Comey lied and obstructed Congress regarding leaks and media contacts. If key evidence is found tainted by constitutional violations, it doesn’t just undermine a single indictment; it feeds a narrative that the government is stretching the rules in politically charged cases.
A potential chilling effect on journalists’ sources and legal counsel.
Richman wasn’t just a friend; he was a legal adviser and sometimes intermediary between a senior official and the press. Aggressively mining his devices — and then using that against his client and ally years later — sends a message to lawyers and sources embedded in sensitive national security or political cases: your phones and laptops may be fair game for long-term investigative fishing. The judge’s order implicitly cautions that such strategies carry constitutional limits.

Data, precedent, and the digital Fourth Amendment problem

American courts have been slowly catching up to the realities of digital evidence. In Riley v. California (2014), the Supreme Court unanimously held that police generally need a warrant to search a cell phone seized during an arrest because of the immense volume and intimacy of data stored on modern devices. Later, in Carpenter v. United States (2018), the Court required warrants for access to historical cell-site location data, recognizing the privacy implications of long-term digital tracking.

The unresolved frontier is what happens after a warrant-authorized seizure and imaging of a device. Key questions include:

How long can the government retain a complete digital copy?
Does each new search years later count as a new “search” requiring fresh judicial authorization?
What happens when investigators use a lawfully seized image for an entirely new investigative purpose?

Lower courts have been split on how aggressively to police these issues. Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s language that Richman is likely to prove his rights were violated suggests a willingness to treat prolonged retention and later searches as constitutionally suspect. If that view spreads, it could force DOJ policy changes — especially in Washington, where politically sensitive cases often involve sprawling digital evidence collections.

Why this matters for the DOJ’s broader credibility

Beyond the legal technicalities lies a crucial perception battle: whether the DOJ is seen as neutral, professional, and bound by constitutional constraints, or as a political weapon.

In this case:

The original Comey case collapsed not on the merits of the evidence but because the lead prosecutor was found to have been unlawfully appointed — a procedural failure that reflects internal governance and oversight problems within the department.
The DOJ is now weighing another indictment in an environment where any action involving Comey will be interpreted through polarized lenses: either as overdue accountability for a former FBI director accused of leaking and lying, or as continued political retribution for his role in investigations that damaged Trump.
This new ruling forces the DOJ to fight on two fronts: one legal, over whether its evidence collection practices complied with the Fourth Amendment; and one political, over whether its pursuit of Comey is motivated by law or by score-settling.

Even if prosecutors ultimately win some of these battles, the process itself can be corrosive. Each judicial finding of overreach — whether an unlawful appointment or a probable Fourth Amendment violation — chips away at institutional credibility.

Expert perspectives: A clash of security, accountability, and privacy

Digital surveillance and high-profile leak investigations sit at the intersection of law, politics, and technology. Several expert viewpoints illuminate what’s at stake.

National security and criminal law scholars have long warned that the government’s digital evidence practices risk reviving the kind of “general warrants” the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent. The Founders were reacting to British practices that allowed broad rummaging through colonists’ homes and papers. Today, the equivalent is a bit-for-bit copy of your entire digital life.

Press-freedom and civil-liberties advocates, meanwhile, worry that aggressive leak prosecutions — especially those reaching into lawyers’ and confidants’ devices — blur the line between legitimate accountability and intimidation of sources and intermediaries. The Richman case sits uncomfortably in that space: he is both a legal adviser, a former special employee of the FBI, and a node in media communications around some of the most politically sensitive investigations in modern history.

Looking ahead: What to watch next

The TRO issued by Judge Kollar-Kotelly is temporary, in effect through Dec. 12 or until further court action. But the next steps could have outsized consequences.

Key developments to watch:

The court’s final ruling on Richman’s Fourth Amendment claim. If the court finds that the DOJ’s retention and search of Richman’s digital image were unconstitutional, it could suppress some or all of that evidence. That would immediately complicate — and possibly cripple — any attempt to re-indict Comey if the case relies heavily on that material.
Whether the DOJ narrows or revises its digital evidence policies. In anticipation of more legal challenges, the department could choose to adopt stricter internal limits on how long it retains full device images and when it can conduct new searches. Past major rulings (like Riley and Carpenter) have triggered internal policy reviews; this case could accelerate another.
The political reaction if new charges are filed. A fresh Comey indictment, particularly if built on contested digital evidence, will be seized upon by political actors as proof either of courage or vendetta. The DOJ will need to demonstrate procedural scrupulousness to avoid further eroding public trust.
Appeals and precedent-building. If the DOJ loses on the Fourth Amendment question, it may appeal. Any appellate decision could shape how digital evidence is treated in future federal cases far beyond this political context.

The bottom line

This ruling is not just about whether prosecutors can use certain files from a law professor’s devices to go after a former FBI director. It is a test of how the justice system will handle the collision between sprawling digital searches and the constitutional limits meant to prevent government overreach — especially when the target sits at the epicenter of America’s partisan battles over law enforcement.

How the courts resolve that tension will echo in every politically sensitive digital investigation that follows.

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Beyond Comey: How a Judge’s Digital Evidence Ruling Challenges DOJ Power and Politicized Justice