Justice Department issues subpoena to Comey ally in new leak investigation
Grand Jury Subpoena Targets Comey Confidant as Leak Probe Reopens
Qwenews.com – Federal prosecutors in southern Florida have served a grand jury subpoena on Daniel Richman, a close personal friend and longtime adviser to former FBI director James Comey, compelling him to appear and testify in a revived inquiry into whether Comey passed confidential government material to journalists. The move, confirmed by a person with direct knowledge of the investigation, signals that the Justice Department has circled back to its oldest and most persistent theory: that Comey funneled internal memoranda — documents describing sensitive probes and private conversations with President Donald Trump — through Richman to newsrooms.
The subpoena carries a second, arguably more consequential implication. It marks the first visible expansion of a sprawling federal inquiry, originally framed around a so-called "grand conspiracy" spanning 2016 through 2024, beyond the narrow question of whether former CIA director John Brennan should face charges. Career prosecutors assigned to the Florida-based probe had long resisted the sweeping conspiracy narrative championed by Trump allies, and the investigation had stalled for months without a clear path forward. The Richman subpoena suggests the team has now identified a discrete, prosecutable thread it believes it can pursue independently of the broader conspiracy question.
Who Is Leading the Probe and Why It Matters
Joe DiGenova, a veteran former U.S. attorney, assumed command of the investigation in recent months after publicly stating he believed the evidentiary record supported a broader case. His willingness to take the helm — and his subsequent decision to subpoena a figure tied directly to Comey's inner circle — indicates the office has moved past the internal skepticism that had paralyzed the effort. Whether the subpoena ultimately produces charges or simply gathers testimony for a larger narrative remains uncertain, but the act of compelling testimony under grand jury authority is itself a signal that prosecutors view the matter as viable enough to warrant formal compulsion.
The Original Leak Dispute
The controversy traces to the earliest weeks of Trump's first term. After Comey was dismissed as FBI director, he handed at least one internal memo — a document describing his private conversations with the president — to Richman. Richman then relayed its contents to a reporter at The New York Times. That single transmission became the nucleus of years of scrutiny, because the memo touched on matters the administration considered sensitive and because the timing raised questions about whether a sitting or recently removed official was coordinating with the press.
Richman has addressed the episode directly, pushing back on the characterization that he leaked classified material:
"The substance of the memo passed on to the Times was not marked classified and to my knowledge remains unclassified."
He has not otherwise commented publicly on the subpoena. The question of whether an unmarked, unclassified memo can nonetheless be protected by other legal doctrines — executive privilege, deliberative-process privilege, or the common-law duty of confidentiality owed by government employees — is precisely the legal terrain prosecutors now appear to be testing through compelled testimony.
Previous Investigations and Their Findings
Comme's conduct has already been examined under multiple institutional lenses. The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General reviewed the matter as part of a broader audit of the bureau's operations. Separately, Special Counsel John Durham, appointed to investigate the origins of the federal probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, scrutinized decisions made by Comey and other senior officials during that period. Durham ultimately brought criminal charges against three individuals connected to the investigation and publicly criticized certain choices made by Comey and his colleagues. Yet Durham stopped short of recommending criminal prosecution of Comey himself, concluding the record did not support such a step.
The new subpoena therefore represents a departure from the Durham conclusion. If prosecutors ultimately file charges against Comey based on testimony extracted from Richman, it would constitute the department's third distinct attempt to bring a criminal case against one of Trump's most prominent political adversaries.
Comme's Other Pending Cases
Comme is already navigating two separate criminal matters. One involves a social-media post in which he depicted sea shells arranged to spell the number "8647." The reference is layered: "86" is colloquial shorthand for eliminating or removing something, and 47 is the ordinal number of Trump's presidency. Prosecutors have treated the post as a threat. A second case, in which Comey was accused of making false statements before Congress, was dismissed by a federal judge last year. Both matters turned in part on the same communications between Comey and Richman — the very exchanges now under grand jury examination.
The convergence of these threads raises a practical question for any future trial: testimony given under subpoena in the leak probe could be introduced, or at least referenced, in the other two cases, potentially collapsing three separate proceedings into a single narrative about one man's relationship with one adviser and one president. For Richman, who has occupied the role of trusted confidant for decades, the subpoena places him at the center of that convergence — not as a defendant, but as the witness through whom prosecutors hope to rebuild a case that prior investigators declined to bring.
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