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Justice Department When he secured charges against the former he became involved in a “disturbing pattern of serious investigative missteps”. FBI Director James Comey, a federal judge, on Monday directed prosecutors to turn over all grand jury materials related to the case to defense attorneys.
Those problems, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick wrote, included “fundamental misrepresentation of the law” to the grand jury by a prosecutor who indicted Comey in September, the use of potentially privileged communications in the investigation and unexplained irregularities in the transcript of grand jury proceedings.
“The Court recognizes that the relief sought by the defendants is rarely granted,” Fitzpatrick wrote.
The 24-page opinion is the judge’s sharpest assessment yet of a criminal case against Comey, which is already subject to several other challenges, including calls to dismiss it on the grounds that Lindsay Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney who filed the charges, was illegally appointed and that the prosecution itself constitutes a vindictive prosecution.
Comey’s lawyers had sought the grand jury materials out of concern that irregularities in the process could taint the case. Defense attorneys say the only prosecutor to present the case to a grand jury was Halligan, a former white House An assistant with no prior prosecution experience, who had been appointed to the job only a few days earlier.