A federal grand jury on Monday issued a subpoena to Daniel Richman, former FBI Director James Comey’s longtime friend and advisor, as part of a new investigation into Comey’s alleged leaks of classified information to the media, Fox News reported.
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The subpoena, issued by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, is distinct from the false-statements case against Comey that was dismissed November 2025, and the “86 47” case, which is ongoing.
Bloomberg Law first reported in late April that the Justice Department had revived this separate classified-leak case, and that it would be the third indictment attempt against Comey if successful.
The Department of Justice initially opened a leak investigation against Comey under President Trump in 2017 and it was closed in 2021 without charges when the Biden regime took over.
In August 2019, the inspector general for the Department of Justice (OIG) released a on Comey that concluded he had leaked “sensitive” government records and violated DOJ rules. The OIG stated that Comey had 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 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,” the found. “Former Director Comey failed to live up to this responsibility.”
Comey was fired by Trump on May 9, 2017, and shortly thereafter, he leaked several FBI records to Richman, with instructions to share the intel with a New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt.
The disgraced former director later testified to Congress under oath that the memos were his own personal property, even though he had prepared the records on government computers, on government time, as part of his formal governmental duties.
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The OIG determined that the records he leaked were indeed government property and that he violated multiple policies and potentially even federal law in leaking them.
“Comey’s characterization of the Memos as personal records finds no support in the law and is wholly incompatible with the plain language of the statutes, regulations, and policies defining Federal records, and the terms of Comey’s FBI Employment Agreement,” the OIG determined. “Comey’s actions with respect to the Memos violated Department and FBI policies concerning the retention, handling, and dissemination of FBI records and information, and violated the requirements of Comey’s FBI Employment Agreement.”
Comey at the time, viewed the report as exonerating because the OIG didn’t find that he had released classified information to members of the media.
The office said he “violated applicable policies and his FBI Employment Agreement by providing one of the unclassified memos that contained official FBI information, including sensitive investigative information, to his friend with instructions for the friend to share the contents of the memo with a reporter.”
In August 2025, FBI Director Kash Patel declassified FBI memos revealing how extensively former Comey used Richman as a secret media conduit to strategically leak potentially classified information to the media in 2016 and 2017 in an alleged effort to take down President Donald Trump.
The memos provided details on multiple classified leak investigations involving Comey, including: Arctic Haze, Tropic Vortex, Foggy Falls, Riding Hood, Sirens Lure, Echos Fate, and Genetic Christmas, Just the News reported at the time.
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