Comey lawyer Patrick Fitzgerald linked to Comey Memo leak saga that prompted Mueller appointment

Comey current defense lawyer Patrick Fitzgerald, along with longtime Comey friend Daniel Richman, both received copies of the so-called Comey Memos in May 2017 as Comey sought to prompt the appointment of a special counsel to go after Trump.

Published: October 15, 2025 11:00pm

Former FBI Director James Comey, who was recently indicted for allegedly lying to Congress when he denied authorizing bureau leaks to the media, is being represented by Patrick Fitzgerald – whose connection to the leak ordeal dates back to when Comey was fired from his post in 2017, then leaked his so-called Comey Memos to the press to prompt the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

Fitzgerald, also a former U.S. attorney, was one of Comey’s lawyers after President Donald Trump fired him in May 2017. Shortly after he was fired, Comey sent Fitzgerald copies of his memorializations of private conversations he had with Trump, then Fitzgerald forwarded copies of those memos to Daniel Richman, a longtime friend of Comey’s who was also serving as one of Comey’s lawyers at the time.

Comey also texted Richman a copy of one of his memos, and at Comey’s direction, Richman leaked the contents of one to the New York Times for the purpose of sparking the appointment of a Justice Department special counsel to carry on the Trump-Russia investigation. Then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein selected Mueller shortly thereafter.

Richman, also a former DOJ official and now a Columbia University law professor, was assisting Comey and the FBI during the 2016 election, and is believed to be the person whom the Trump Justice Department is alleging in its indictment that Comey authorized to leak to the press.

The indictment sought by the Trump Justice Department and approved by a grand jury last month stems from allegations that Comey misled the Senate during his testimony in late September 2020, when he reiterated his May 2017 denial that he had never authorized an FBI leak of information to the media about the Trump-Russia investigation or Hillary Clinton-related investigations. The indictment also alleged that Comey had obstructed Congress by lying to the Senate.

The indictment against Comey was brought last month by interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan. The former personal Trump lawyer and Trump White House aide replaced Erik S. Siebert, who resigned days before the indictments were announced, allegedly under pressure from the Trump administration to bring charges against Comey.

Fitzgerald, the lead defense attorney for Comey, now lectures at the University of Chicago School of Law. He signaled in court last week that he would be filing motions aimed at getting the case thrown out before it even goes to trial, with the first round including a motion to challenge the lawfulness of the appointment of Halligan.

“On or about September 30, 2020, in the Eastern District of Virginia, the defendant, JAMES B. COMEY JR., did willfully and knowingly make a materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statement in a matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the Government of the United States, by falsely stating to a U.S. Senator during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he, JAMES B. COMEY JR., had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1,” the indictment states.

Sources familiar with the matter confirmed that “Person 1” is Hillary Clinton. The sources declined to be named due to the sensitive nature of the investigation.

The indictment goes on to say that Comey’s leak authorization denial “was false, because, as JAMES B. COMEY JR. then and there knew, he in fact had authorized PERSON 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1.”

The allegation that “Person 3” is Richman comes after multiple news articles had apparently suggested that the person in question whom Comey had allegedly authorized to leak had been former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. The sources familiar with the matter stated that “Person 3” is in fact Richman.

At Comey’s direction, records show Richman allegedly spoke with the press to help shape news stories in Comey’s favor, although Richman has said Comey never asked him to talk to the press. FBI emails show that Richman was ostensibly working at the FBI for the Office of General Counsel under then-FBI general counsel James Baker and that Richman was coordinating with Baker and with then-Comey chief of staff James Rybicki.

Internal FBI emails also show that Richman, who was made a special government employee for the Comey FBI, was made aware of ethics guidelines that discouraged leaking.

Comey oversaw the 2016 investigation into whether then-Democratic presidential nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a private email server to send classified information, as well as the investigation into allegations the 2016 Trump campaign was colluding with Russia to influence the outcome of the race for the White House.

Comey has told the DOJ inspector general that the day after his firing (or else “very shortly thereafter”) he retained Fitzgerald and Richman to provide “advice and counsel in connection with [Comey's] termination.” The two men are likely to figure prominently in Comey’s current trial – one still as his defense lawyer, and one as a possible witness.

The former FBI director pleaded not guilty last week as Fitzgerald represented him in the courtroom, and his trial is slated to start in January.

Fitzgerald and Comey have long been close, and Comey had previously named Fitzgerald a special counsel back in 2003 during the Valerie Plame saga, when Fitzgerald was the U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois and Comey was the deputy attorney general at the Bush Justice Department.

Fitzgerald told the federal judge presiding over Comey’s case in a Tuesday court filing that Comey would soon “file his motion to dismiss challenging the lawfulness of the appointment of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia” and that he wanted to “formally alert the Court” that that move would be coming soon.

The Comey defense attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Just the News.

Fitzgerald and the Comey Memo leak saga

Then-DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz released an August 2019 report blasting Comey’s improper leaking of his memos of conversations with Trump to prompt a special counsel, and while Richman’s role in the Comey Memo saga is better known, the DOJ watchdog report also detailed Fitzgerald’s involvement too.

Comey was fired May 9, 2017. Just a few days later – on May 14 – Horowitz found that “Comey sends scanned copies of Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7 from his personal email account to the personal email account of one of his attorneys, Patrick Fitzgerald.” Three days later – on May 17 – the watchdog said that “Fitzgerald forwards these four Memos to Comey's other attorneys,” including Richman. 

“Richman told the OIG that, when he received the email and attachments from Fitzgerald, he accessed the files from his computer, read them, and downloaded a copy into a separate file on his computer,” Horowitz wrote. “Richman said he did not make any paper copies of the Memos.” 

The DOJ watchdog also said: "Fitzgerald also forwarded the email and attachments from his personal email account on May 17, 2017, at 4:47 p.m. to another email account belonging to Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald then saved the PDF attachment onto his computer, after which he said he placed the incoming email from his personal email account into the ‘deleted’ items folder. Comey told the OIG that he did not notify anyone at the FBI that he was going to share these Memos with anyone, and did not seek authorization from the FBI prior to emailing these four Memos to Fitzgerald.”

The fired FBI chief had also sent a digital photograph of “Memo 4” – which described a meeting in which Comey wrote that Trump talked about the FBI’s investigation into Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn – to Richman on May 16, 2017. Horowitz wrote that “Comey asks Richman to share the contents, but not the Memo itself, with a specific reporter for the New York Times” and that “Comey's stated purpose is to cause the appointment of a Special Counsel.”

The New York Times published an article entitled “Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation” on May 16, 2017 – and Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel the next day.

Horowitz wrote that a month later – on June 13 – the “FBI begins the process of recovering or deleting the Memos from the computer systems of Richman, Fitzgerald, and Kelley, a process that is completed in January 2018.”

The DOJ watchdog said that Comey was visited by an FBI supervisory special agent on June 7, 2017, and that it was at that time which “Comey provided the SSA who came to his home with Comey’s signed originals of Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7, which were the only Memos that Comey said he had retained at his residence.”

Comey told the watchdog that “he had no recollection of telling the agents at his home or anyone else in the FBI that he had shared Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7” with Fitzgerald and Richman. 

Horowitz concluded that “the FBI first learned that Comey had shared Memo 4 with Richman while watching Comey's public testimony before SSCI [the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence] on June 8, 2017” and that “Comey also never informed the FBI that he had shared Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7” with Fitzgerald and Richman, but “rather, the FBI first learned this information from Richman.”

Disgraced FBI special agent Peter Strzok told Horowitz that he was watching Comey's June 2017 testimony with several people, including Baker and Rybicki, and that when Comey stated he gave a memo to a friend “everybody [in the room] knew ... oh, that's Richman.”

Baker told the DOJ watchdog that he remembered “literally running down the hallway to [his] office” with Strzok, finding Richman's telephone number, and getting “Richman on the phone right away.” Baker said he introduced Strzok, then left the call to watch the remainder of Comey's testimony.

Strzok told the DOJ inspector general that he asked Richman to “please preserve” anything that Comey had given him, and that either during that call or a follow-up, he told Richman that what he received from Comey might contain classified information.

Strzok also told Horowitz that sometime after the first call with Richman, he learned that Fitzgerald “might also have copies of some of the Memos.” Horowitz said that “Strzok’s handwritten notes of his conversations with Richman establish that by no later than June 9, 2017, Strzok knew that all … of Comey’s attorneys had electronic copies of four Memos.”

Richman told the DOJ watchdog that, at some point during his conversations with the FBI, he also told the bureau that Fitzgerald “had copies of the same Memos.” Richman told the OIG that there was no indication on the Memos he received “that there was anything classified on them.” 

FBI counterintelligence official Bill Priestap was involved in the bureau’s response to the Comey Memos, as was an FBI unit chief who told Horowitz that, by mid-June 2017, the FBI leaders were “probably” thinking of the controversy as a “spill” of classified information, “but because of the sensitivity” of the Comey Memos, they did not involve the FBI's Security Division. The FBI unit chief also “said that she also learned from Richman during that call that Comey had shared four Memos with each” of his attorneys, including Richman and Fitzgerald.

The DOJ watchdog report said that FBI agents went to Richman’s home in New York to remove his desktop computer on June 13, 2017, for the purposes of permanently deleting the Comey Memos from it.

Horowitz wrote that it was not “until several months later” that “the FBI also took steps” to delete the Comey Memos from Fitzgerald’s computer accounts.

“In response to an October 31, 2017 request from the FBI, Fitzgerald voluntarily and promptly provided the FBI with addresses and identifying information for all of the email accounts … to which copies of Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7 had been sent,” Horowitz wrote. “Between November 20, 2017, and January 16, 2018, FBI Agents met with the individuals and IT professionals associated with these accounts, and confirmed that the emails and copies of the Memos were deleted from the computer systems that had received them.”

Horowitz also said that, as a result of a letter from the Senate Intelligence Committee in September 2018, his office learned that “the FBI had not yet taken the same actions to mitigate Comey’s transmittal of the Memos” to Fitzgerald “as it had taken with regard to the transmittal to Richman” and that the DOJ watchdog “promptly brought to the FBI’s attention the need to do so, resulting in the above described actions being taken.”

DOJ declines to prosecute Comey over leaking his memos — but DOJ watchdog blasts him for it

The DOJ watchdog said that “we provided our factual findings to the Department for a prosecutorial decision regarding Comey's conduct” but that “the Department declined prosecution.”

Nevertheless, Horowitz concluded that some of Comey’s conduct violated numerous rules, with the inspector general assessing that “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.”

“We conclude that the Memos were official FBI records, rather than Comey's personal documents,” the DOJ inspector general wrote. “Accordingly, after his removal as FBI Director, Comey violated applicable policies and his Employment Agreement by failing to either surrender his copies of Memos 2, 4, 6, and 7 to the FBI or seek authorization to retain them; by releasing official FBI information and records to third parties without authorization; and by failing to immediately alert the FBI about his disclosures to his personal attorneys once he became aware in June 2017 that Memo 2 contained six words (four of which were names of foreign countries mentioned by the President) that the FBI had determined were classified at the ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ level.”

Horowitz also said: “None of the members of Comey's senior leadership team agreed with or defended Comey's view that these Memos were personal in nature. Instead, McCabe, Baker, Priestap, and Rybicki each told the OIG that they considered the Memos to be records of official FBI business between the President and the FBI Director. … After Comey was removed, the Memos were uploaded to the FBI's case management system in connection with an ongoing FBI investigation and Rybicki took steps to ensure that the original Memos were inventoried and preserved with the rest of the Director's official records.”

The DOJ watchdog also harshly criticized Comey for leaking his memos to prompt a special counsel.

“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,” Horowitz wrote

“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.”

Horowitz also said: “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 DOJ watchdog said that “in a country built on the rule of law, it is of utmost importance that all FBI employees adhere to Department and FBI policies, particularly when confronted by what appear to be extraordinary circumstances or compelling personal convictions.” Horowitz noted that “Comey had several other lawful options available to him to advocate for the appointment of a Special Counsel, which he told us was his goal in making the disclosure” but that “what was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information, obtained during the course of FBI employment, in order to achieve a personally desired outcome.”

It remains to be seen whether Fitzgerald’s albeit limited role in this previous Comey leak saga will have any impact on the former Chicago prosecutor’s defense of his ally in court.

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