Grand Jury Subpoenas Comey Adviser Daniel Richman in Leak Inquiry, Fox News and CNN Report

A Subpoena, No Charges, and a Clock That's Already Running Out

On Monday, Aug. 31, 2026, a federal grand jury issued a subpoena to Daniel Richman, a Columbia Law School professor and longtime friend of former FBI Director James Comey^[2]. Fox News broke the story, citing multiple law enforcement sources. CNN reported the same subpoena the same day, also citing unnamed sources^[1]. As of Sept. 1, the Justice Department has not confirmed anything on the record, and nobody has been charged.

A grand jury is a closed panel of citizens that hears evidence in secret. It can compel testimony or documents, but a subpoena only means prosecutors are gathering evidence — not that anyone did anything wrong. That distinction matters here, because the underlying facts are nearly a decade old and already picked apart by the government's own investigators.

Here's the collision at the center of it: the Justice Department's inspector general found in 2019 that Comey broke FBI policy by handling memos the way he did^[4]. The same report found no evidence that classified information ever reached the press^[4]. Both of those things are true at once, and they cut in opposite directions depending on which one a reader hears first.

What Comey and Richman Actually Did, According to the People Paid to Check

In May 2017, days after President Trump fired him, Comey gave Richman information from memos Comey had written about his private conversations with Trump^[1]. Richman passed the substance of those memos to The New York Times^[1][4]. Comey had kept four of the memos in a home safe.

The DOJ inspector general examined this in a 2019 report and concluded Comey violated FBI policy and his employment agreement^[4][14]. But the report also said, specifically, that investigators found no evidence Comey or his attorneys released classified information to reporters^[4]. Career prosecutors reviewed the case that same year and declined to bring charges^[5] — a decision made under Trump's own Justice Department, not Biden's.

That last point gets lost in some of this week's coverage. Fox News reported that the leak inquiry was "cut off when former President Joe Biden entered office" in 2021^[2]. That's true as far as it goes, but it skips over the fact that DOJ had already passed on the case in 2019, two years before Biden took office^[5].

Two Failed Cases Already, and This Would Be the Third

This subpoena doesn't arrive in isolation. It's the third attempt at Comey in roughly a year^[1][3][6]. A federal judge threw out DOJ's 2025 indictment of Comey in November, ruling that the prosecutor who obtained it, Lindsey Halligan, had been unlawfully appointed^[3][9]. The dismissal was without prejudice, meaning DOJ could try again — and it did, filing an appeal in December^[9].

Then, in late April 2026, a separate grand jury indicted Comey again, this time over a social media post^[6]. That case is still active. The Richman subpoena would open a third track, this one reaching back to the 2017 memos rather than anything Comey has done recently.

Each collapsed case raises the cost of the next one. If a third effort also falls apart, it strengthens the argument — made by Comey's defenders — that these prosecutions are being driven by something other than the strength of the evidence.

The Evidence Prosecutors Already Lost

There's a concrete reason a new case might need Richman's own testimony rather than his old files: a judge already threw out the files. In 2017, Richman gave the FBI limited consent to search his computer for the four Comey memos, and nothing more^[7]. Prosecutors kept a full copy of his hard drive anyway and searched it again in September 2025, without getting a new warrant.

On Dec. 12, 2025, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that second search violated Richman's Fourth Amendment rights — the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches — and ordered the government to return the data^[7][8]. That ruling narrows what prosecutors can use going forward. It's also one likely reason a live person, rather than a hard drive, is now sitting in front of a grand jury.

There's a second obstacle working against any new case: time. Most federal crimes have to be charged within five years, and the disclosure at issue happened in May 2017^[4][9]. Unless prosecutors can point to conduct that continued more recently, or a legal theory that paused the clock, a straightforward 2017 leak charge may simply be out of reach^[9]. On top of that, Richman was Comey's attorney at points during this period, which raises attorney-client privilege questions about what he can even be asked to disclose^[8].

Two Camps, Working From the Same Thin Sourcing

Supporters of the inquiry argue that a declined prosecution isn't the same as an acquittal. Career prosecutors passed in 2019, but that decision doesn't bind anyone forever, and the inspector general's criminal referral shows a watchdog thought the conduct was serious enough to weigh^[4][5]. Their underlying principle is that an FBI director who hands memo contents to a friend for the press to publish should face the same scrutiny as any other government employee accused of leaking.

Comey and Richman's side counters that the core question was settled years ago by the government's own investigators — no classified information reached reporters, and prosecutors chose not to charge^[4][5]. Their strongest point right now is procedural and recent: a federal judge has already found prosecutors searched Richman's computer unlawfully^[7][8]. They argue that repeatedly reopening the same 2017 facts, years after the fact, amounts to harassment rather than a legitimate second look.

A third group, press-freedom advocates, is watching a different risk. Their concern isn't the individuals — it's the precedent of investigators working backward from a published story to trace a reporter's source. If the government can revive a source hunt years later whenever institutional leadership changes, they argue, sources will stop talking, and there'll be less reporting like this to read in the first place.

How the Coverage Split, and What's Still Missing

Fox News's own headline called this a "classified leak probe," a characterization the 2019 IG report doesn't support^[2][4]. Smaller right-leaning outlets went further, with American Greatness calling Richman a "Comey pal" and treating the subpoena itself as vindication^[12]. CNN's headline described Richman as a "longtime friend to Trump foe James Comey," language that frames the subpoena as inherently political before any charge exists^[1]. Raw Story went furthest on the left, calling it a "Trump leak hunt" in a "major revenge case" — stating a motive as settled fact^[11].

Notably, The Washington Times, a right-leaning outlet, reported the December 2025 suppression ruling against prosecutors plainly, even though it cut against the case its own side's later coverage was building^[7]. And as of this writing, there's no non-U.S. reporting on any of this — no BBC, Guardian, Al Jazeera, or wire coverage has picked it up. The story so far is a purely domestic one, filtered entirely through American outlets citing anonymous sources on the same day.

What happens next depends on a case DOJ hasn't described and a witness who hasn't spoken. Whether a subpoena issued in secret becomes anything more than that is, for now, still an open question.