Comey Gets Grand Jury Transcripts & Texas Redistricting Blocked

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0:37Chase for Business. Make more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA. Member FDIC. Copyright 2026. JPMorgan Chase and Company. So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now, a global workforce of 300 ,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94 % of common questions. Not noise. proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business.

1:19Let's create smarter business. IBM. This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. According to a judge, the Justice Department's indictment of James Comey was riddled with problems that may give the former FBI director legal grounds to have it dismissed. And U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick has ordered an extraordinary remedy, the release of all grand jury materials to the defense, due to the prospect that government misconduct may have tainted the grand jury proceedings. In a blistering assessment of the Justice Department's actions leading up to the indictment, Fitzpatrick cited 11 potential missteps, including fundamental misstatements of the law to the grand jury by the prosecutor, Lindsay Halligan, the use of potentially privileged communications during the investigation, and unexplained irregularities in the transcript of the grand jury proceedings.

2:24My guest is former federal prosecutor Robert Mintz, a partner, McCarter & English. Bob, in some ways, the judge's opinion seems like a guideline for the defense to ask for a dismissal of the indictment. He outlined the procedural and substantive irregularities that occurred before the grand jury and said they may give Comey legal grounds to have one or more of the counts dismissed. Pretty harsh, a condemnation of the government's actions. It was extremely unusual because, as you say, it's extremely rare in the first place for a judge to be reviewing conduct in front of a grand jury. The grand jury process, even though it's a very important constitutional right and a prosecutor does not have a basis to charge an individual with a federal crime if it's a felony, it's something that has to go before a grand jury and there has to be a finding of probable cause.

3:21But the reality is, as a federal prosecutor, that is really most of the time just a formality. It's extremely rare, almost unheard of for grand jurors to refuse to return an indictment when a federal prosecutor presents a case in front of a grand jury. So when you're a federal prosecutor, the last thing in the world you want is for a judge to be probing what went on in that grand jury process. That means that as a prosecutor, you're on the defense. And instead of talking about the charges that you're bringing against the defendant, you are defending your own conduct. And that's exactly what's happened here.

4:00Judge Fitzpatrick cited 11 potential missteps in the process to obtain the indictment against Comey. So let's start with the defense is challenging whether there was privileged information used. And the judge said the facts established a reasonable basis for the defense to challenge whether privileged information was used directly or indirectly by the government to prepare and present its grand jury presentation. So you have to go back a little, I guess, to explain why there's privileged information here. So what the magistrate judge was tasked with in this circumstance was to decide whether Mr.

4:40Comey had met the very high bar for a defendant to be given full access to the transcripts and recordings of a grand jury proceeding. What ended up happening here was that in addition to the reasons that Comey's lawyers had argued for access to the grand jury material, the judge found from his own review of the materials a host of new problems, new issues that could ultimately lead to the dismissal of the case. The judge went through a series of potential issues that he decided the defense was entitled to probe and to raise before the court as a basis to possibly dismiss the indictment. One of the original issues that Comey's lawyers raised as a basis for accessing the grand jury material had to do with search warrants that were executed by the Department of Justice in 2019 and 2020.

5:32four search warrants were executed by the Department of Justice in connection with an entirely separate earlier investigation known as ARTICASE, which took place during President Trump's first presidency and had to do with the potential leaking of information to the media about ongoing investigations by the FBI. And the search warrants were focused on a Columbia University law professor, Daniel Richman, who was a friend of Mr. Comey's, but who would also end up representing him as his lawyer for some period of time, and that created the question of whether or not the information might have been covered by the attorney-client privilege.

6:12The judge here raised a number of issues as to whether or not there could have been a violation of Mr. Comey's rights and whether or not privileged information, in other words, communications between Mr. Comey and Mr. Richmond when Mr. Richmond was acting as his lawyer, might have seeped into the grand jury presentation, and that would have been entirely improper and would have tainted the presentation and could potentially be a basis to dismiss the indictment. Yeah, the judge said that the decision to allow an FBI agent, and there was only one witness in the grand jury, it was an FBI agent. So the decision to allow an agent who was exposed to potentially privileged information to testify before a grand jury is highly irregular and a radical departure from past DOJ practice.

7:01Yeah, and what the judge meant by that is there are circumstances when the issue of privilege does arise, and typically it will happen if there is a search warrant that takes place involving an attorney. You know by definition that there may be communications between an attorney and his client when you search an attorney's office. And so what prosecutors do on a routine basis is they set up a separate team of lawyers, lawyers who are not in any way involved in the prosecution, who will go through that material to remove what could be potentially privileged information so that the trial team, the prosecuting team, is not tainted by having access to information that they should not be given access to.

7:46What happened here was that one of the FBI agents, who by the government's own admission, had been given a briefing, at least, on some of the privileged information, that was the sole witness who appeared in front of the grand jury in order to return the indictment. In order to return indictments, prosecutors do not have to present witnesses who have firsthand knowledge about the alleged crime. They can and often do rely on one agent who is allowed to summarize and present hearsay evidence to the grand jury to summarize all of the government's case, including all the interviews that might have taken place, reviews of documents, basically sum up for the jury all of the government's case through the testimony of a single witness.

8:33Here, what the judge found potentially problematic was that that single witness was somebody who had access to privileged information. And the question is, did any of that information either directly or indirectly seep into the presentation before the grand jury? If that happened, it was improper and could be a serious problem for the government. I've been talking to former federal prosecutor Robert Mintz, a partner at McCarter in English. So, Bob, the prosecutor here, the interim U.S. attorney, Lindsay Halligan, was Trump's former personal lawyer, had never been a prosecutor before, and she was hastily installed in the position.

9:14She presented the case to the grand jury by herself. She was the only one in the room with the grand jurors because the experienced prosecutors in the office didn't want to have anything to do with this indictment. And Judge Fitzpatrick found that two different comments Halligan made to the grand jurors represented fundamental misstatements of the law. And her exact comments were redacted from the judge's order. But it appears that she suggested to the grand jury that the fact that Comey didn't testify in his defense should be interpreted as a sign of guilt. I find that stunning because any lawyer, even a first-year law student, should know that a defendant doesn't have to testify.

10:01It's a right guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, and no inference can be drawn from that. Well, that's exactly right. And the magistrate judge described these as, quote, fundamental misstatements of law by the prosecutor in front of the grand jury. And one of the issues that he identified was this Fifth Amendment right issue. Apparently, during the course of the grand jury and presentation, a grand juror raised questions, as grand jurors often do, to the prosecutor. And the prosecutor has to respond with the proper law in order to give the grand jurors the framework by which to consider whether or not to return an indictment.

10:40Here, apparently, a grand juror asked a question. And as you say, the exact response has been redacted. But according to the magistrate judge, it suggested that Mr. Comey may have had a burden to explain away the government's evidence. In other words, the inference was that the burden shifted to Mr. Comey to have to explain why he did what he did when, in fact, under the Fifth Amendment, a defendant has no obligation whatsoever to testify. And the fact that they choose not to testify cannot be used against him. And more fundamentally, in a criminal prosecution, the burden never shifts to the defense.

11:20It's always the prosecution's burden to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. So any suggestion that Mr. Comey's decision not to testify, not to explain away his conduct, could somehow be used by grand jurors to infer that he committed a crime would have been improper. The judge also noted that Ms. Halligan may have suggested to the grand jury that they did not have to rely only on the record that was presented to them during the grand jury presentation in order to reach a finding of whether or not there was probable cause, but that they could assume and they could be assured of the fact that the government had even more evidence, perhaps better evidence, than was presented to them during the presentation that could be used at trial.

12:07and therefore that the case was even stronger than the evidence presented to them during the grand jury proceeding. If that was done, that too would be entirely improper. The grand jury has to make a decision as to whether or not there is probable cause based solely on the evidence presented to them during the grand jury proceeding. It's really no different than a trial in which jurors have to make a determination as to whether or not the government has met its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, based solely on the evidence that's presented to them during the trial. They can't rely on anything outside of the record during the trial proceeding.

12:43The same holds true for grand jurors and for prosecutors to suggest that there is other more powerful evidence that they should consider but has not been presented to them would be entirely improper. I mean, her comments basically come down to a defendant has to testify before a grand jury. And trust me, grand jurors, we have a lot more evidence that will prove his guilt. But we're not showing it to you now. Well, I think that's why you saw the opinion written by the magistrate judge to be as strongly worded and as detailed as it was. It was a 24-page opinion that went through not only the issues that Mr.

13:24Comey's lawyers had raised in order to try to gain access to the grand jury transcripts, but also a litany of other issues that he discovered when he reviewed in camera those grand jury transcripts. And he raised serious questions in his mind, I believe, as to whether or not there were serious constitutional errors in the presentation. Not only the Fifth Amendment question, not only the question that there was evidence outside of the grand jury's purview that they should consider, even the way the grand jury returned the indictment. In this case, the original indictment presented to the grand jurors was a three-count indictment.

14:00When the grand jurors went back to deliberate, they chose not to return a true bill, which means they voted not in favor of one of the three counts. And now there's a question based on the transcript of the proceeding as to whether or not an entirely new indictment with only the two counts that the grand jurors voted in favor of was ever presented to them. If that did not happen, if the grand jurors did not deliberate on the exact indictment that was ultimately presented to the court, that is another issue that could be very problematic. I was impressed that the magistrate judge figured out by the timing of what happened that he thinks the grand jurors did not review the indictment that was finally presented in open court.

14:46No, that's exactly right. The judge wrote if the prosecutor is mistaken about the time she received notification of the grand jury's vote on the original indictment and this procedure did take place, then the transcript and audio recording provided to the court are incomplete. On the other hand, if this procedure did not take place, then the court is in what the judge described as uncharted legal territory in that the indictment returned in open court was not the same charging document presented to and deliberated upon by the grand jury. Either way, the judge was not satisfied with the explanation that prosecutors gave about that process.

15:24And that's why the magistrate judge, at least, has decided to open up all of this grand jury information to the defense, which is a huge benefit to the defense and will likely result in even more motions than the original motions filed by Mr. Comey's defense team. Bob, I was wondering, so the judge said that all the grand jury materials that the government filed under seal have to be made available to Comey's lawyers and also the audio recording of the grand jury proceedings. Could the audio recording reveal things that are not in the transcript? Yeah, that's certainly possible. I mean, the judge here decided to go full transparency in that he is giving everything that was presented to him by the government over to the defense.

16:12And that is something that you rarely see. As I said, this is something that is a prosecutor's nightmare. The case should not be about the prosecutor's conduct right out of the gate. It should be about the defendant's conduct and about whether or not the government can prove that the defendant committed a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. The probe into the conduct by the government is exactly where you want to be if you're on the defense side, but it's the worst place you can possibly be as a prosecutor. So federal prosecutors, within a few hours, filed an emergency request to the judge in the case.

16:48We're talking about the magistrate judge's order saying that the magistrate judge's new order is contrary to law and also that he may have misinterpreted some facts. Well, I think what's happened here is magistrate judges are appointed by the court that they serve in and their decisions generally can be appealed to the district court judge handling the case. And so the government, not surprisingly, immediately sought a stay, and the district court judge, I think, wisely granted it so that he can review everything that went on and review not only what went on in the grand jury, but carefully review the 24-page decision that was issued by the magistrate judge.

17:30And he will make his own decisions about whether or not this grand jury material should be turned over. It's so important and it's so unusual that it's not at all surprising to me that the district court judge wants to weigh in on this before a final decision is made. The magistrate judge works in tandem with the district court judge. So Judge McNamuff probably knows what the magistrate judge was doing. Sure. What happens is that magistrate judges are selected by the court as opposed to district court judges, which are nominated by the president and only appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate.

18:06Magistrate judges essentially work with specific district court judges, and generally on the civil side, they handle a lot of the discovery matters that lead up to trial. On the criminal side, they hear initial hearings with regard to bail and issues of that sort, but they do work hand in glove with the judges that they are assigned to. So typically you will see a district court judge agreeing with much of what their magistrate judge did. But in this case, I think there's no question that Judge Nakmanoff will take a separate look at what happened here because it is so unusual and make his own decision about whether the grand jury material should be turned over in total as was ordered by the magistrate judge.

18:52So Judge Nakmanoff put Fitzpatrick's order on hold. He gave the Justice Department until 5 p.m. tomorrow to file its full brief. And then Comey's side has until 5 p.m. Friday to respond. So now yet another judge is involved in this case, and that's the judge considering whether Lindsey Halligan was lawfully appointed. Let's once again explain what the defense's argument about Halligan's appointment. So in this case, the federal judge is actually a judge from South Carolina as opposed to the Eastern District of Virginia. Because the question before the court is whether or not the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia has been properly appointed.

19:36And the decision was made by the circuit court that it would be best to have a judge not in that judicial district making this decision. So the judge from South Carolina, Judge Curry, is looking at the convoluted process by which Lindsey Halligan was appointed as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. There had been a career prosecutor who was appointed by President Trump to serve on an interim basis. That interim basis lasts 120 days by appointment of the president. After that time period, the judges in the district can then extend that appointment. And that's exactly what happened here with that career prosecutor, Eric Siebert.

20:19The attorney general then fired Mr. Siebert and appointed a new prosecutor, Lindsay Halligan, for a new 120-day period. And the question is whether or not the executive branch can continue with these 120-day interim appointments sort of ad infinitum or whether they can do it only one time. And after that time, it's up to the district court judges to appoint the U.S. attorney. The statute is actually not clear on the process. It doesn't explicitly say that that 120-day appointment can happen only once. But the argument by the defense here is if the court were to accept the government's argument, then the president could really get around the advice and consent of the Senate, which is required for a U.S.

21:05attorney by simply doing a series of 120-day appointments over and over again, and that could not be what Congress intended. The Justice Department's response to the argument that Lindsey Halligan was not lawfully appointed dismissed any missteps here, saying the administration may have made, quote, at best a paperwork error, and also that afterwards the grand jury presentations have been reviewed and ratified by Attorney General Pam Bondi. The Justice Department is trying to say, even if we made a mistake, Pam Bondi looked at it later and approved it. But the judge did not seem too convinced by that.

21:47These are all very unusual questions and very unusual proceedings that there really is no prior precedent for. So it's going to be interesting to see how the courts treat not only her appointment, but the efforts by the Attorney General in an effort to prop up Halligan's position, Attorney General Bondi designated Halligan as a special attorney for the Justice Department assigned to oversee cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. So what you're seeing is the Department of Justice kind of struggling here to not only prop up the position of Lindsey Halligan, but also to try to convince the court that any errors that were made in connection with obtaining the indictment against James Comey was more of a paperwork issue and nothing that should result in dismissal of the indictment.

22:37If she decides that Lindsay Halligan was not qualified and there was no ratification, so to speak, by Attorney General Pam Bondi, does the case against Comey then go out the window because of the statute of limitations? One of the interesting questions that will arise in the event that the court were to determine that Lindsay Halligan's appointment was improper is whether or not the government will have the ability to re-indict the case. The case was indicted right at the very end of the five-year statute of limitations. That's why Lindsay Halligan rushed into the grand jury on very short notice and made this presentation literally days before the five-year statute of limitations was set to expire.

23:22If her appointment is deemed to be improper, that would mean that the indictment itself is procedurally flawed because somebody who was not properly appointed as a U.S. attorney was the only person who presented the case before the grand jury. The defense will no doubt argue that the government cannot seek to reindict the case because the statute of limitations will have since expired. But there is a statute that says if a case is dismissed on procedural grounds, which may include potentially a situation like this, where the attorney who presented the case in front of the grand jury was not appropriately appointed, that the government has a six-month grace period to refile that new indictment, even though the original five-year statute of limitations has passed.

24:09That will be something that will be front and center if Lindsey Halligan's appointment is ultimately ruled to be improper, and the government attempts to refile that indictment outside the five-year statute of limitations. This case raises so many novel questions. Thanks so much for exploring them with us, Bob. That's Robert Mintz of McCarter in English. So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now, a global workforce of 300 ,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94 % of common questions.

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27:22In a two-to-one vote, the panel blocked Texas from using a redrawn U.S. House map, saying that substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 map. A Trump appointee and a Biden appointee were in the majority and a Reagan appointee in the minority. This closes a path for Republicans to gain five House seats in next year's midterm elections unless the Supreme Court steps in and reverses the decision. But the timeline is tight. Joining me is Ryan Otulo, who covers Texas courts for Bloomberg Law. Ryan, tell us why the judges blocked the new map. The panel says that the maps that Texas drew this summer racially discriminated against minority groups.

28:11It was a decision that criticized heavily a letter from the Department of Justice that said that the existing maps that Texas had been using were racially discriminatory and therefore needed to be redrawn. The majority, in today's opinion, strongly disagreed with that letter and shot it down. And they said, Texas, for the upcoming congressional elections in 2026, you need to use the old maps, not the ones you just passed. Explain what happened at the two-week trial. Last month in El Paso, Texas, there was a trial challenging the maps that Texas used on racial gerrymandering grounds. Texas was in a tough spot because initially they said that we need to redraw these for racial reasons based on that Department of Justice letter.