Welcome to a special edition. You demanded it. So we're doing regular crossover episodes of all rise news with Adam Klossfeldt and Legal AF here on Legal AF YouTube channel. And we got a lot to talk about with Adam.
We got about four new filings or so, three, four new filings by James Comey. Prosecutorial misconduct, grand jury misconduct, inexperience of the prosecutor, violation of attorney-client privilege potentially, and just sloppy, sloppy questions that were asked
by Ted Cruz that formed the basis of the perjury charge and sloppy, sloppy indictment. And they're going after Lindsay Halligan hard. I need to double team this. Let's bring in Adam Klossfeld of All Rise News. Hi, Adam, welcome to Friday.
Welcome to Friday.
Thanks, Michael. Great to see you again.
Yeah, we got to double, we got to tag team this. Last week, you and I talked about other motions that were filed, because I don't want people to think, is this an old episode? No, it's not. Last week was vindictive prosecution motions and motions to get rid of Lindsey Halligan
as an illegally appointed prosecutor. Now we're rolling out this, this is the barrage now, right? This is the indictment sucks, grand jury process sucks, and the whole thing should be,
and we need access to information in order to pursue our motion practice. Why don't you kick it off with whichever of the new motions that just got filed the last 24 hours you wanna pick up with. And eventually we will weave them all together
here on a Friday weave session.
It sounds good. The one that really caught my eye was motion to dismiss because Ted Cruz's questions are fundamentally ambiguous in the words was the motion to dismiss because Ted Cruz's questions are fundamentally ambiguous in the words of the motion to dismiss and that the essentially that James Comey's answers to Ted Cruz's questions are incapable of being perjury.
Because I think when we talk about James Comey's case, forgetting about everything that preceded it, we say as a shorthand, he's accused of lying to Congress over not leaking information, but the actual details of what the government alleges to be perjury has fallen by the wayside. And the actual clip of the exchange with Ted Cruz,
Ted Cruz asks him again and again about dealings with Andy McCabe, but the government's case isn't about Andy McCabe, it's about James Comey's interactions with a different person, Daniel Richman. And then we get to his answers, Comey's answers to Ted Cruz's questions about an entirely different person.
Well, well, well, just stop. Let's stop right there. Let's unpack that before we go to the clip because we have the clip.
Right.
Because I haven't done a perjury, I've defended a perjury 1001 charge against a defendant, but where I've been the litigator in a very similar context, it's where you're trying to get what's called impeachment, where somebody said something different now than they've said in the past under oath.
But there, it's the same thing. The question has to be so methodically pristine and perfect. And the answer has to be so, it has to be the exact same question as you asked before. And then you got an entirely new answer. And there's so many things that could happen
in terms of ambiguity that make it almost impossible to get impeachment, it's very difficult. Same with perjury here. And what we're trying to say is that this has to do, this is like a Russian nesting doll, right? Just like a show on television, Russian doll, right?
This is about a 2018 or 2017 statement by James Comey in an entirely different Senate hearing in response to questions by Senator Grassley about did he leak? No. Did you authorize a leak about a Clinton investigation
or Trump investigation? No. Okay, fast forward, September 2020. You get Ted Cruz, who seems to be genetically incapable of asking a clear question. I mean, he fumbles, he fumbles,
like he calls it the Clinton administration instead of the Clinton investigation. It's so convoluted. It's so, the question is so convoluted.
An imprecise compound question in the words of the-
And it's use with ambiguity because it's also nestled into this earlier testimony where he says, do you stand by your testimony? I stand by my testimony. So how the argument goes, how could that possibly be the basis of perjury? Let's play the clip.
On May 3rd, 2017. In this committee, Chairman Grassley asked you point-blank, quote, have you ever been an anonymous source in news reports about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation? You responded under oath, quote, never. He then asked you, quote, have you ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton administration? You responded again under oath, no.
Now as you know, Mr. McCabe, who works for you, has publicly and repeatedly stated that he leaked information to the Wall Street Journal and that you were directly aware of it and that you directly authorized it. Now what Mr. McCabe is saying and what you testified to this committee cannot both be true. One or the other is false. Who's telling the truth? I can only speak to my testimony. I stand by what the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of 2017. So your testimony is you've never authorized anyone to leak.
And Mr. McCabe, if he says contrary, is not telling the truth. Is that correct?
Again, I'm not going to characterize Andy's testimony, but mine is the same today.
Okay. I mean, if you're confused in the audience, this is also the reason that you should dismiss the indictment if that's the basis for it. Who is he talking about? Are you talking about Daniel Richman, the Columbia law professor,
former special FBI employee, friend of Comey, who the prosecutors have said, oh, that's who we meant. First of all, let's be clear here. It is not, you correct me from your reporting if I'm wrong. It is not the leak of Daniel
Richman, which has been admitted and confessed of several memos to the New York Times after James Comey got fired. It is the leak that Andy McCabe, the number two in the FBI made to the FBI. I mean, to the Washington Post about an FBI investigation that is allegedly the foundation
of the indictment. Oh no, no, it's actually the opposite. All right, go ahead. So this is the interesting thing. The thing that makes this so ambiguous is that the government is claiming that Comey's answers to Ted Cruz are wrong, that they were lying, that because he in fact was leaking through Daniel Richman. All of Ted Cruz's questions were about Andy McCabe, but there's another even more fundamental problem here.
And that if you go to what James Comey actually said, he said, I stand by my testimony from 2017. Now the government's alleging that, and I'm gonna give the exact words in the indictment, quote, the statement was false because as James B. Comey Jr. then and there knew,
he had in fact authorized person three to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning person one. Person three, we now know the government has disclosed was Daniel Richman.
And person one-
Right, enough of New York Times. And so Ted Cruz is asking him about an entirely different person. And all that he says is, I stand by my testimony in 2017. So here's what he, I just want to finish. The motion says that no, even if he was lying in 2017 and he denies that he was lying, saying I stand by my 2017 testimony, legally cannot be perjury. Here's what it says, quote,
likewise, Mr. Comey's statement that he stood by his prior testimony was truthful regardless of whether that prior testimony was itself truthful. Goes to a footnote, Mr. Comey firmly maintains that his prior testimony was truthful but for the purpose of a literal truth defense, the truthfulness of the prior testimony is irrelevant. Mr. Comey can truthfully stand by his prior testimony,
even if the government were correct, and it is not that the prior testimony was false. Accordingly, the statement that Mr. Comey stands by the prior testimony cannot serve as a basis
of a false statement.
So let me translate that as we often do here on Legal AF. The statement that he made cannot be the basis of a perjury charge because it is literally true. And if what they're really trying to do is get him for perjury back with the Grassley question, which is three years earlier, then they're out of time on the statute of limitations argument. I would have dropped that as a footnote as well if I were drafting for James Comey. Easy for me as an armchair lawyer to make comments about. I would
have made this further argument. But you know, that's honest commentary that we do here. So we got that going on. And you've all seen it now now and they filed motions yesterday along with a barrage of motions. One of them is to get the video clip, the actual video clip, not the Q and A on a hard piece of paper, but the video clipped into the court record.
And I'm sure that's gonna happen, that video clip, because it's so important. It's the basis of the entire indictment. Let's switch gears and go to the other motions that were filed. I'll lead on one like you did, and then you can kibitz about that one. This is about grand jury misconduct, the allegation that there may have been grand jury misconduct. And they're getting that from the reporting in and around
what happened and all the irregularities that happened. First, you start with the main one. Let's just call out the elephant in the room. Several hours after being made into a federal prosecutor, it's like Halloween. Like here's your federal prosecutor costume, put it on. I've never been a federal prosecutor.
Well, you are today. Now go in there and get that indictment by yourself apparently. Does any, I said in an earlier, I don't know, on another video about this issue, I said, this would be the equivalent
of you entering the surgical theater, having never been a brain surgeon before, but having read about it on YouTube, having DIY, and then you go, okay, where do I start? Okay, she goes in by herself with brain surgery, highest level of indictment possible, right?
We're talking about, she's indicting the former FBI director with brain surgery, highest level of indictment possible. Right? We're talking about she's indicting the former FBI director having never done an indictment in her life. That's not where you start. Cara Free Magniflo, who's on there on the podcast with me on Legal AF,
who's a 30 year former state prosecutor. She said, you start doing like jaywalking. You start doing like public urination. You don't start with, right when you're a young prosecutor, you don't start with, here you go, go indict the FBI director. So they're saying in their motion, there were lots of irregularities. Did she hold the grand jury hostage when it went beyond five o'clock? Did the grand jury believe they had to return an indictment
in order to get out of that room after she failed to get the indictment the first time? Why were there two pieces of paper called the indictment that she both signed? Well, why did one have two counts and one have three counts?
What did she say? Wait, wait, PS, what did she say.S. what lies did she tell the grand jury in order on facts and law in order to get that true bill returned? These are all questions they want answered so we want the grand jury transcripts and the reason some people at home might be thinking don't you just get the grand jury transcripts? No, no, no. There's secrecy that shrouds the grand jury process.
And even the indicted party has to make a motion to get a judge to release, at least to them, you know, secretly, at least for now, the grand jury transcripts in order for them to look and go, aha, we found it. Go ahead.
It's remarkable that we know so much about the grand jury and everything that we know about what the grand jury did in this case, it just shows how out of the ordinary this is. One, the grand jury torpedoed the main charge. James Comey was supposed to have a main charge that would go toward discrediting
the Russia investigation. This doesn't. The grand jury said no. The two charges that the grand jury said yes on, they said it by a very, very slim majority. And why are they thinking that there might be misconduct involved? We already know from public reporting in the Letitia James case that Lindsay Halligan was aware
that there was a witness who undercut the premise of their case, that's Letitia James' niece, and who went before another grand jury. Right. And see, Halligan did not present that witness to the grand jury that indicted James. So yes, everything that we know about the grand jury process in the Comey case doesn't pass the smell test, and that we know the kind of extraordinary circumstance of the grand
jury no billing a charge happened on the first try was going to be the top count. We know that Lindsey Halligan apparently didn't know not to sign the no bill charge on one of them. And so I think James Comey's lawyers reasonably are saying, what other mess ups are in here? Yeah, let me stitch it. Let me stitch it together with, they're not the only party or entity that's looking for the grand jury transcripts. We have Judge Curry in South Carolina, who's presiding over the consolidated motions
of Letitia James and James Comey to bounce Lindsay Halligan as an illegally appointed U.S. attorney. And she has demanded that it get delivered to her chambers, Judge Curry, on Monday, the entirety of the grand jury process proceedings, the audio, we know there's audio, there's the transcript, the documents, what was said. She wants to know what was said in that room. She doesn't really need that in order to decide whether under section 546 there's been a proper appointment of Lindsey Halligan or not. The facts are not in dispute. There was a US attorney who resigned on the day of the inauguration.
They appointed another one. Donald Trump didn't like that one, Eric Siebert, because he wouldn't prosecute Letitia James and James Comey. So they fired it. They try to appoint a second US attorney, but under 546, it's a single-use US attorney, at least from the president's standpoint or the Department of Justice standpoint. And then you have to just let it ride with the judges of the particular district until you get a permanently appointed confirmed US attorney. Those facts are not in dispute,
yet she wants to see the, everybody wants to see the grand jury transcript. Let me read from just two pages from the motion related to the grand jury. I think it sums the entire thing up that we're talking about.
This is on page 16. The highly irregular procedures that led to the indictment increased the risk that the government about. This is on page 16. The highly irregular procedures that led to the indictment increased the risk that the government misstated key legal and factual issues to the grand jury. As a general matter, the departure of a career prosecutor who reportedly determined there was
no probable cause to charge Mr. Comey, the subsequent installation of a White House official with no prosecutorial experience, and the resulting return of an error-ridden indictment by themselves support a finding that inherently suspect procedures were used before the grand jury. Here's my favorite.
All available information regarding Ms. Halligan's first ever grand jury presentation smacks of irregularity. It is virtually unheard of for a brand new prosecutor to make her first grand jury presentation alone without the supervision and guidance of an experienced prosecutor
to ensure the absence of factual and legal errors. Nevertheless, she entered the grand jury room alone to present a proposed indictment charging Mr. Comey on three counts. That first attempt failed, resulting in a no true bill.
Then they go on and describe that that didn't deter her and that she may have held the grand jury hostage. Another issue that came up which I thought I'm gonna get your view on that I had never heard of before has to do with this Daniel Richman professor at Columbia, a QAOA FBI special employee. He had worked in the US Attorney's Office under Comey when he was the US Attorney in New York but became an advisor to Comey in his position as director. Apparently an FBI agent who testified before the grand jury
had also interviewed Richmond. And there are these attorney-client privilege communications potentially that Richmond may have disclosed to the FBI agent, which became the basis for the FBI agent's testimony. If that's the case, there's a violation
of James Comey's attorney-client privilege that happened, which is a big no-no in the grand jury room. They don't know exactly because they need to see the transcript. What do you think about that?
I'm losing count of the potentially viable grounds by which James Comey is going to challenge this thing. Just talking about, to dial back a little bit, the challenge of Lindsey Halligan's appointment. Just this week, we have the disqualification of a third Trump-appointed US attorney, Bilal Asaeli, back in the Central District of California. That's three in a row.
Will Lindsey Halligan make it four in a row? I think- There hasn't been one. Well, to your point, there hasn't been one improperly
appointed US attorney by the Trump administration that has survived motion practice so far.
Absolutely. It's been three zero. And there are probably more to come because Trump keeps insisting on stacking unqualified loyalists who cannot pass Senate confirmation, cannot get judicial approval, and demanding they stay in there to do his bidding. And this is exactly why. So cases like this can come forward.
But what you just pointed out about attorney-client privilege, absolutely. This is a serious concern that, again, I am losing count of the potentially viable grounds to challenge this thing. And what I wonder when I listen to that
is whether that was part of this memo as to the many, I think in the memo that was reported about career prosecutors saying, don't pursue this case, there are various different grounds that this can blow up, including in terms of our ethical obligations. I wonder whether in this memo,
they discuss the attorney client issues involving the evidence, whether Lindsey Halligan herself was aware of those issues. So that's some of the questions that are in my head. And I am looking forward to seeing whether that memo becomes public either
through a leak to the press or through just the general discovery practice
as this proceeds. There's, and this is all gonna be in a very fast track, that's why you need to follow all rise news on Substack and Legal AF on Substack for independent reporting and when we come together because just to remind everybody this trial is scheduled for the first week in January. I mean 2026 coming up. Letitia James is the third or fourth week of January. So things that normally would be like well this motion will be decided sometime in the second quarter of, forget second quarter,
this is happening right after the holidays. And things like whether Lindsay Halligan is properly, has been properly appointed or not, it looks like she hasn't been based on every court or appellate court that has looked at it, including the third circuit on Alina Haba, which come in any day now, but based on that oral argument, I'd be shocked if Alina Haba survived. That's going to happen soon. Judge Curry's going to get this grand jury transcript in South Carolina.
She's going to have, you know, the briefing on it, and she's going to have to make a decision sometime in November. And Judge Nachmanoff, who sits over Comey, is going to have to make the decisions about the motions in front of him. Judge Walker over Letitia James's case is going to have to make decisions. November is going to be supremely active, right? Adam, people got to sign up to follow you in Legal AF as well, right? Absolutely, absolutely. Yes,
it's going to be a very active November. This month itself is closing out with a bang. December isn't going to relent. I'm about to fly over to Nashville very soon to see whether Todd Blanch, Trump's former lawyer, the second in command of the Justice Department, will be forced to testify in Kilmar Brigo Garcia's vindictive prosecution motion. So there's a lot coming to a head right now
and folks should follow us.
Well, let's tease that a little more. Look what's going on with Legal Laugh and Subs and All Rise News. Adam Klasfeld is going to Tennessee in order to do reporting in real time, in real life about this two-day hearing
about whether the indictment against Abrego Garcia was vindictively prosecuted or not and to get it kicked. And while that's going on, you know, you and I will cover what Judge Zinus is doing by the middle of November on a writ of habeas corpus about whether his civil rights and due process rights were violated. All coming together now with Abrago Garcia. But look, that's the competitive advantage that Adam Klassenfeld brings
to his reporting. He gets into the courtrooms, he gets on the ground, and in order to support what we do, people are like, how do we support what you do? This is how you support what we do. You hit the free subscribe button here on Legal AF YouTube. Adam's joining has been a big boost for the channel.
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That's what, let's be frank, let's be crass for a minute. That's what pays for the reporting. You becoming a paid member at a very reasonably priced monthly number for Adam Klossfeld's All Rise News and for Legal AF. And that's how we do it here, right, Adam? Absolutely. Thank you. And when I fly down
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Absolutely. And therefore, you'll get this amazing, honest commentary and reporting back. So until our next time together or apart, we got all rise news with Adam Classfeld and Michael Popock on behalf of Legal AF. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack, you'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it,
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