US judge finds evidence of ‘government misconduct’ in federal case against Comey

A US judge on Monday found evidence of “government misconduct” in how a prosecutor aligned with Donald Trump secured criminal charges against former FBI director James Comey and ordered that grand jury materials be turned over to Comey’s defense team.

Last week, prosecutors were ordered to produce a trove of materials from the investigation, with the court saying it was concerned that the US justice department’s position on Comey had been to “indict first and investigate later”.

Comey is charged with lying to Congress in 2020 in a case filed days after the US president appeared to urge his attorney general to prosecute the former FBI director and other perceived political enemies. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have argued that it is a vindictive prosecution brought at the direction of the Republican president and must be dismissed.

Magistrate judge William Fitzpatrick ruled on Monday that the justice department engaged in a “disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps” on its way to indicting Comey. The federal judge directed prosecutors to produce to defense lawyers all grand jury materials from the case.

Fitzpatrick wrote that problems include “fundamental misstatements of the law” by a prosecutor to a grand jury that indicted Comey in September, the use of potentially privileged communications in the investigation and unexplained irregularities in the transcript of the grand jury proceedings.

“The Court recognizes that the relief sought by the defense is rarely granted,” Fitzpatrick wrote, adding: “However, the record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps, missteps that led an FBI agent and a prosecutor to potentially undermine the integrity of the grand jury proceeding.”The 24-page opinion is the most blistering assessment yet by a judge of a criminal case against Comey that is already subject to multiple other challenges, including motions seeking its dismissal on the grounds that the interim US attorney who filed the charges, Lindsey Halligan in Virginia, was illegally appointed and that the prosecution itself constitutes a vindictive prosecution.

Her position is being challenged also in the criminal case against New York state’s attorney general Letitia James.

Comey’s lawyers had sought the grand jury materials out of concerns that irregularities in the process may have tainted the case. The sole prosecutor who defense lawyers say presented the case to the grand jury was Halligan, a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience who was appointed to the job just days earlier.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting