(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan released documents directly undercutting claims by disgraced former FBI Director James Comey that his criminal indictment is part of President Donald Trump’s political vendetta.
The documents, filed on Monday by Halligan and her top deputy, Tyler Lemmons, revealed that Comey knew one of his top aides was leaking information to the legacy media in 2016, bolstering the legitimacy of the charges against him.
Comey allegedly wrote “pretty good” after Dan Richman, an FBI special government employee and close friend, texted him a link to a New York Times story about Comey’s handling of the Clinton investigation.
In Exhibit 7, in response to planting a New York Times election-eve hit piece against Trump, then-FBI Director James Comey tells FBI special government employee Daniel Richman:
"Well done my friend. Who knew this would. E so uh fun." pic.twitter.com/brdgQEyywf
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) November 3, 2025
Subsequent texts show Comey and Richman discussing how Richman could talk to the media to help shape the narrative in Comey’s favor.
In one message, Richman said he had been approached to write a New York Times op-ed and would do so if it helped make Comey look credible.
Comey replied that there was no need, saying he expected to work for “president elect Clinton” after the election. He specifically wrote, “At this point it would [be] shouting into the wind. 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).”
At the time, Comey was first under fire from the left for scrutinizing Clinton’s mishandling of classified emails, and later from the right for refusing to recommend criminal charges.
In 2019, the DOJ Inspector General reportedly found that Comey asked his friend to share the contents of a memo with the New York Times to pressure the DOJ to investigate his conversations with President Donald Trump.
The DOJ declined to prosecute Comey over the leak in 2019, but his alleged 2020 perjury opened him up to new legal liability.
Halligan and Lemmons filed the documents in response to Comey’s attempt to have the grand jury indictment dismissed as a vindictive and selective prosecution.
Comey’s defense cited social media posts from President Donald Trump criticizing him, claiming they showed bias. Halligan and Lemmons rejected that argument.
“The defendant spins a tale that requires leaps of logic and a big dose of cynicism, then he calls the President’s post a direct admission,” they wrote. “There is no direct admission of discriminatory purpose. To the contrary, the only direct admission from the President is that DOJ officials decided whether to prosecute, not him.”
Just the News was first to report on the documents.
