Russiagate subpoenas sent out by grand jury as Comey prosecution unearths new revelations

More than two dozen Russiagate-related subpoenas are being sent out, Just the News has learned, coming at the same time that the Justice Department’s prosecution of James Comey has resulted in the release of a host of new information about the fired FBI director as well as about the bureau’s secret stashing away of details on its investigations into Donald Trump.

A federal grand jury is in the process of issuing more than 30 subpoenas tied to the false claims of Trump-Russia collusion that were propagated by the U.S. intelligence community and federal law enforcement in 2016 and beyond, a source directly familiar with the matter who declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the investigations told Just the News on Thursday. Some of the subpoenas were sent out Thursday and more are likely to be sent Friday.

Expectations, leaks and "Burn Bags"

The subpoenas are being sent out as new revelations indicate that Comey, who was indicted earlier this year in Virginia, expected former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to emerge victorious in 2016, that the ex-FBI director was aware of the so-called Clinton Plan intelligence wrongly linking Trump to Russia in that election, that key information on Crossfire Hurricane and other FBI investigations was hidden in burn bags at FBI headquarters, and that his friend and lawyer Daniel Richman allegedly leaked to the media despite FBI guidelines warning him not to.

Comey is charged with making false statements and obstructing Congress concerning testimony in 2020 in which he stood by earlier 2017 testimony saying he did not approve of anonymous leaks to the news media on high-profile cases involving Clinton's emails and Donald Trump's now-debunked ties to a Russian plot to influence the election. He has pleaded not guilty.

Comey, fired as FBI director in 2017 by President Trump, oversaw both the politicized investigation into Clinton's illicit use of a private email server to send classified information and the baseless Trump-Russia collusion inquiry.

Comey expected Clinton to win in 2016, according to newly-unearthed emails he sent to Richman.

Then-DOJ watchdog Michael Horowitz’s 2018 report criticized the FBI’s Midyear Exam investigation into Clinton’s illicit use of a private email server to send classified information while she was Secretary of State, concluding Comey’s actions were “extraordinary and insubordinate” when he announced Clinton wouldn’t be charged in a speech on July 5, 2016. 

Comey had said in the speech that Clinton’s email practices were “extremely careless” but that he also allegedly believed “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges against her. Comey alerted Congress in October 2016 that further Clinton emails had been found on a laptop belonging to disgraced former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, then the husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The files were on Weiner's laptop in a folder labeled "Life Insurance."

“Make sure you keep your eyes shut. The country can’t seem to handle your finding stuff,” Richman wrote to Comey on Oct. 29, 2016. Comey replied: “Thanks for the battling you have done against unreason. This is a strange time. B[u]t we press on.”

Comey: "A president-elect Clinton will be very grateful"

The next day, Richman sent Comey an email about an opinion piece he had been asked to write for The New York Times about Comey’s letter to Congress. Richman stated that he was “not inclined” to “write something” but that he would “do it” if Comey thought it would “help things to explain that [Comey] owed [C]ong[ress] absolute candor” and that Comey’s “credibility w[ith] [C]ong[ress] w[ould] be particularly important in the coming years of threatened [C]ong[ress] investigations.”

“No need. At this point it would [be] shouting into the wind,” Comey said in his Oct. 30, 2016 response back. "Some day they will figure it out. And as [Individual 1 and Individual 2] point out, my decision will be one a president-elect Clinton will be very grateful for (although that wasn’t why I did it).”

The 2018 report by the DOJ watchdog uncovered evidence that the FBI had delayed following up on information about Clinton emails found on the Weiner laptop and that the delay may have come from the FBI’s desire to emphasize the baseless Trump-Russia collusion investigation over the Clinton emails scandal.

In 2016, since-fired FBI special agent Peter Strzok had exchanged a host of anti-Trump texts with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, with whom he was having an affair. Horowitz wrote, “We did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the Midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias.”

Despite going after Clinton for her improper use of a private email server, Comey himself was using a personal and anonymous Gmail account to discuss FBI matters with Richman.

Comey’s own notes indicate he knew about Clinton Plan Intelligence

The DOJ also showed on Monday that, despite Comey telling Congress he didn’t recall this, he had taken handwritten notes in September 2016 indicating he had indeed been briefed on the Clinton Plan Intelligence indicating Clinton’s 2016 campaign planned to tie Trump to Russia.

Special Counsel John Durham’s 2023 public report revealed that “the Intelligence Community received the Clinton Plan intelligence in late July 2016.” The Durham report showed that Comey was briefed on the Clinton Plan intelligence by then-CIA Director John Brennan in early August 2016 and was also sent a CIA referral memo about the Clinton Plan intelligence in early September 2016.

This intelligence related to an alleged plan by the Clinton campaign to link Trump to Russia and Vladimir Putin in an effort to distract from her private email server scandal. 

Nevertheless, Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee in late September 2020 that he did not recall this bombshell referral memo from the CIA. The Trump DOJ’s efforts to indict Comey over that piece of his testimony failed.

“An additional record discovered as part of this management review process was an original referral by the Central Intelligence Agency to former FBI Director James Comey,” the FBI’s newly-unearthed launch document said.

The counterintelligence operational lead was dated Sept. 7, 2016 and was “believed to have been missing for years,” the FBI said, with agents writing that it was found “in a storage closet adjacent to the Director’s office.”

The DOJ wrote that “inside a locked safe within Room 9582, investigators located copies of handwritten notes of the defendant when he was the Director of the FBI.”

The prosecutors added that Comey’s handwritten notes “were not known to any prior investigative teams.”

Key documents about Crossfire Hurricane, John Durham, J6, all hidden in "Burn Bags"

Patel told Just the News on Tuesday that “we have found several bags containing critical evidence on Russiagate and the Durham annex, and declassified them to show the truth about James Comey and other senior leaders' actions during the disgraceful Crossfire Hurricane scandal.”

The FBI’s launch document for investigating the burn bag saga, originating with the FBI Criminal Investigative Division’s Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section, is dated July 21, 2025.

FBI agents said they had made a “request to open and assign a Preliminary Investigation to investigate the activities or involvement of current and/or former FBI employees for potential violations of Title 18 U.S.C. 2071, Concealment, Removal, or Mutilation Generally, and/or other related offenses, between July 1, 2016 and the present day.”

The FBI document states that, in mid-April, “the Director’s Advisory Team was informed of the unusual discovery of highly classified and sensitive documents found inside five ‘burn bags’ located in Room 9582, a certified Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) at the FB Headquarters building in Washington, DC.”

The FBI said the documents that were unearthed included classified documents inside burn bags “which appeared to have been placed in the SCIF around the timeframe of the 2025 presidential inauguration — Friday, January 17, 2025, through Wednesday, January 22, 2025.” The bureau agents wrote that the documents were “presumably intended for destruction”

The discovery led to an “internal management review” to determine if there was a “legitimate purpose” for the documents being there and to figure out the “underlying motivation” for it, the FBI launch document said.

“Among the records found were many related to the FBI’s raid on Trump's Palm Beach residence, Mar-a-Lago, the January 6 Capitol breach, the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, as well as a copy of the Classified Appendix to the John Durham Special Counsel investigation,” the FBI said.

Comey authorized Richman to leak in 2016 to "correct" stories critical of him

Richman, a former DOJ official and current Professor of Law at Columbia University Law School, was assisting the FBI during the 2016 election. It is already public knowledge that Richman later assisted Comey by leaking the so-called “Comey Memos” to The New York Times in 2017 after Comey's firing by President Trump. 

Richman previously admitted to agents in interviews that he routinely communicated on behalf of Comey, his longtime friend, with New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt, whose work was among the newspaper's 2018 Pulitzer-winning stories on alleged Russian election interference. The goal, Richman told the FBI, was "to correct stories critical of Comey, the FBI and to shape future press coverage" outside the bureau's official press office, according to internal FBI memos.

"Richman was pretty sure he did not confirm the Classified Information. However, Richman told the interviewing agents he was sure 'with a discount' that he did not tell Schmidt about the Classified Information," one FBI memo recounted.

The DOJ’s Monday filing said the emails showed Comey was aware of and was encouraging Richman's contacts with the media, contrary to his claims to Congress.

"Consistent with the above-described correspondence, Richman corresponded extensively with members of the media regarding or on behalf of the defendant, including in an anonymous capacity," the DOJ court filing argued.

“When I read the times [New York Times] coverage involving [Reporter 1], I am left with the sense that they don’t understand the significance of my having spoke about the case in July [2016]. It changes the entire analysis. Perhaps you can make him smarter,” Comey told Richman on Nov. 1, 2016.

Richman responded the next day, saying: “This is precisely the case I made to them and thought they understood. I was quite wrong. Indeed I went further and said mindless allegiance to the policy (and recognition that more evidence could come in) would have counseled silence in july to let hrc [Hillary Clinton] twist in the wind.”

Richman soon added, “Just got the point home to [Reporter 1]. Probably was rougher than u would have been.”

Comey then emailed Richman shortly thereafter, saying “pretty good” and sending a link to a New York Times piece about Comey’s alleged options in late October 2016 concerning the Clinton email investigation. Comey told Richman, “Someone showed some logic. I would paint the cons more darkly but not bad.” Richman then responded: “See I *can* teach.”

Richman knew not to leak — but allegedly did anyway

Just the News reported that Richman initially signed paperwork in 2015 acknowledging ethics guidelines which would have barred him from misusing government information and from making non-public information public to further anyone’s private interests.

Richman signed an SGE appointment document on June 30, 2015. It included the acknowledgment of ethics guidelines. The Office of Government Ethics guideline document referenced in the document signed by Richman was titled, “To Serve With Honor. A Guide on the Ethics Rules That Apply to Advisory Committee Members Serving as Special Government Employees" (SGE's). 

At Comey’s direction, records previously showed Richman allegedly spoke with the press to help shape news stories in Comey’s favor, although Richman has claimed 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.

Richman's record not the clearest in government employment 

Internal FBI emails released through the Freedom of Information Act show that, while Richman signed a June 2015 acknowledgment related to his appointment to be an SGE, his first term appeared to have officially lapsed at the end of June 2016. The paperwork for Richman to re-sign to have him continue as an SGE does not appear to have been sent to Richman again until December 2016, and FBI emails indicate that Richman never actually signed it despite having been reappointed as an SGE in 2016. 

During this timeframe, Richman continued meeting with Comey and communicating with FBI officials. Comey’s friend resigned as an SGE in early February 2017.

The ethics guidelines included the following admonishment: “Don’t misuse Government information. If you get information that has not been made available to the general public, don’t use (or allow the improper use of) that nonpublic information to further any private interest, either your own or another’s.”

Richman was also reportedly sent guidelines in January 2017 which said SGE's could not improperly leak government information for anyone’s private gain.