A federal judge has been assigned to preside over fired FBI Director James Comey\u2019s case after the Justice Department issued new charges against him late last month. U.S. District Judge Louise W. Flanagan of the Eastern District of North Carolina was appointed by George W. Bush and is considered to be right-leaning, according to Ballotpedia.<\/p>\n
Flanagan received a random case assignment on Tuesday after a grand jury indicted Comey on charges alleging that he threatened Trump by posting a photo on Instagram that featured seashells arranged in an \u201c86 47\u201d pattern in May 2025.<\/p>\n
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She has presided over thousands of cases throughout her tenure as an Article III judge. The U.S. Senate confirmed her as a federal district court judge in July 2003. Prior to this, she served as a federal magistrate judge and worked at the law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal in Washington, D.C., before it merged with Dentons, the ABA Journal reports.<\/p>\n
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\nIn an interview last weekend, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made it clear that Comey\u2019s indictment was the result of a year-long investigation and had much more to it than his seashells photo posted to Instagram.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery case requires an investigation, and what you just showed is one part of that investigation. What you just showed is the Instagram post,\u201d he told Fox News.<\/p>\n
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\u201cRest assured that the career Assistant United States Attorneys in North Carolina, the career FBI agents, the career Secret Service agents that investigated this case didn\u2019t just look at the Instagram post and walk away,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why you saw an indictment last week, notwithstanding the fact that it was last May that the post was made. So I am not permitted to get into details of what the grand jury heard or found, as you know, but rest assured that it\u2019s not just the Instagram post that leads somebody to get indicted,\u201d Blanche added.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia have revived a dormant investigation into whether Comey illegally leaked classified information to a trusted media cutout, two people familiar with the matter said, creating a third active criminal front against the longtime Trump antagonist.<\/p>\n
The case centers on Comey\u2019s decision to hand over sensitive memos documenting his private conversations with then-President Donald Trump to Columbia University Law Professor Daniel Richman, who then fed the material to The New York Times. The disclosures formed the basis of a May 2017 front-page story that fueled the Russia collusion narrative early in Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n
The probe, if it results in charges, would mark the Trump Justice Department\u2019s third indictment of Comey since last fall \u2014 on top of a Florida review of a broader conspiracy case and a fresh North Carolina grand-jury indictment returned April 28 for an alleged social-media threat against the president.<\/p>\n
Sources described active meetings in recent weeks between Blanche\u2019s deputy office and a small team of EDVA prosecutors. The department has not yet decided whether to seek an indictment in Virginia, where Comey lives, or shift the case to New York, where Richman resides.<\/p>\n
Timing remains unclear, but the renewed push reflects heightened pressure inside the Trump DOJ to reopen matters the president has repeatedly called out as examples of a politicized \u201cdeep state.\u201d<\/p>\n
The development carries particular irony. In the earlier Mar-a-Lago documents case brought by special counsel Jack Smith, the Justice Department and FBI insisted that any document they labeled \u201cclassified\u201d was off-limits to judicial review or disclosure to the defendant. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, ruling that classification status is whatever the executive branch\u2019s national-security apparatus says it is.<\/p>\n
That precedent now applies with full force to Comey\u2019s memos. If the current DOJ and intelligence community deem the documents classified \u2014 because they memorialize the president\u2019s discussions on ongoing national-security matters \u2014 Comey\u2019s defense that the memos were never classified collapses under the same legal standard his allies once championed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal judge has been assigned to preside over fired FBI Director James Comey\u2019s case after the Justice Department issued new charges against him late last month…. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n