The Detail That Could Undermine DOJ’s Main Argument in Comey Case

It appears there is yet another problem with the Department of Justice’s so-far-disastrous case against former FBI Director James Comey.

Prosecutors allege that Comey lied during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020, when he denied that he had authorized someone “at the FBI” to serve as an anonymous source to news outlets about the bureau’s probe into Hillary Clinton.  

That someone has been identified as attorney Dan Richman. But a closer look at a set of documents detailing Richman’s stint at the FBI showed that he wasn’t actually working there during any of the communications the government cited as leaks.

Lawfare reviewed a set of documents procured via a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the right-wing rag the Daily Caller, which sought “all records, documents, and communications pertaining to Daniel Richman, a Special Government Employee hired by former FBI Director James Comey.” The documents produced by the government—though likely incomplete—paint a stunning alibi for Richman, the man at the center of one of the government’s flimsiest claims. 

According to the documents, Richman’s first term working for the FBI was between June 30, 2015, and June 30, 2016. He served unpaid on a part-time to intermittent basis advising senior FBI leadership about a range of different issues, but specifically the use of encryption to evade law enforcement.

A request to reappoint Richman was not approved until December 2016. Government records indicate that he neglected to sign his reappointment papers. Included with the FOIA materials was one FBI official’s handwritten note stating: “Doc drawn up + sent to OGC for Richman signature. Never signed. Never officially reappointed after June 2016.”

However, internal FBI emails indicated that Richman may have served a second term anyway—but only for a short period of time, resigning on February 7, 2017.

All of the evidence prosecutors have cited to demonstrate that Comey instructed an FBI lackey—in this case Richman—to speak anonymously to the press took place outside of the periods when Richman was actually employed by the bureau. 

In one filing, the DOJ referred to an email chain between Comey and Richman spanning from October 29 to November 2, 2016, after Richman’s first term had ended. The government also cited emails sent on February 11 and April 23, 2017, and text exchanges between May 11 and 17, 2017, both of which took place after Richman had resigned.

Lawfare noted that it was possible that Richman’s formal employment status may not matter so much to a jury, though in one of Comey’s pretrial motions to dismiss, lawyers for the former FBI chief said that senators had been vague in their original questions and that “at the FBI” could reasonably not include part-time contractors. 

Not including this latest hiccup, the DOJ’s case against Comey has already started to unravel. One magistrate judge has demanded prosecutors stop pawing through Comey and Richman’s communications, concerned that some of the material interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey  Halligan used to personally secure Comey’s two-count criminal indictment may have potentially been subject to attorney-client privilege. 

Meanwhile, a federal judge is seeking a complete account of Halligan’s grand jury proceedings, after she only deigned to submit a partial one—indicating that the government’s case may be on even shakier footing than previously thought.

The Department of Homeland Security won’t say how much money it has paid undocumented immigrants to self-deport—though the price tag is likely tens of millions of dollars.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted a cringey AI-generated video on X Thursday celebrating the claim that 1.6 million immigrants have self-deported. In the post, she plugged the $1,000 exit bonus the Trump administration is offering to any undocumented immigrant who chooses to leave the country.

The Trump administration had previously announced in March that it planned to bribe any undocumented immigrant who used the CBP Home app to self-deport with a free plane ticket and a “stipend of $1,000 dollars, paid after their return to their home country has been confirmed through the app.” The Trump administration has reportedly moved State Department funds earmarked for helping refugees resettle in the United States to help fund flights and stipends.

So how much money has the Trump administration spent on immigrants self-deporting? The Department of Homeland Security wouldn’t say.

In a statement Friday to The New Republic, the DHS declined to say how many immigrants had used the CBP Home to self-deport, or how much money it had distributed in stipends.

Instead, DHS claimed that “tens of thousands” of undocumented immigrants had used the CBP Home app to relocate to their home countries. “So far, tens of thousands of illegal aliens have utilized the CBP Home app, and overall 2 million illegal immigrants have left the United States since January 2025,” the department said in a statement.

When pressed for an exact number, DHS sent that portion of the statement again.

If “tens of thousands”—referring to anywhere from 20,ooo to 99,000—undocumented immigrants had actually used CBP Home to self-deport, however, the Trump administration has spent anywhere from $20 million to $99 million on stipends.

None of this includes the price of airfare, which the Trump administration has also offered to cover. The average cost of an international plane ticket is $1,217, according to FCM and Corporate Traveler, meaning that an additional $24 million to $120 million could be added to the DHS price tag.

As a result, the total estimated cost for self-deportations could be anywhere from $44 million to $219 million. These numbers are particularly distressing amid the ongoing government shutdown, as the Trump administration continues to carry out its expensive and unpopular deportation efforts while claiming it doesn’t have enough cash to feed our nation’s most vulnerable.

But crucially, the non-numbers provided by DHS don’t quite seem to add up. Customs and Border Protection reported in September that more than 5,000 immigrants had used the CBP Home app to self deport. If the DHS’s “tens of thousands” claim were possibly true, that would mean at least 15,000 additional immigrants had self-deported using the app in the last month alone.

That would be pretty incredible, considering that the CBP Home app doesn’t seem to work all that well. ProPublica reported in October that more than a dozen Venezuelans who attempted to use the program to return to Venezuela found themselves stranded in the United States.

On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump pardoned a man convicted of working as an agent for the Chinese government to intimidate a New Jersey family. 

Michael McMahon, a former New York police officer, was sentenced to 18 months in prison in April after being convicted in 2023 for acting as an unregistered agent of China, interstate stalking, and conspiracy. Federal prosecutors said that McMahon and his Chinese associates were trying to get a Chinese couple living in New Jersey to go back to China where they would be tried for corruption. 

The Justice Department said the plot was part of China’s Operation Fox Hunt, which aims to return Chinese fugitives back to their native country and helps the Chinese Communist Party control citizens living outside of the country. McMahon, however, claimed he was duped into working for China as a private investigator, and successfully lobbied several Trump associates to push his case.  

McMahon’s influence campaign included attending the president’s inauguration in January and getting the support of Republican Representative Mike Lawler and Trump associate Roger Stone, himself a recipient of a Trump pardon in 2020. 

An anonymous White House official claimed to The New York Times that McMahon was the victim of a flawed trial and tricked into participating by a person who told him it was an investigation into embezzlement from a construction company. The official said that, unbeknownst to McMahon, he was actually hired by Chinese spies. 

Trump’s pardons seem to either be based on political loyalty, like his pardon of January 6 rioters on his first day in office, or raise questions of corruption and influence peddling. Last month, he pardoned Changpeng Zhao, a crypto billionaire, and soon afterwards Zhao cut a business deal with the Trump family. It seems that there is no crime too big for the supposed law-and-order president. 

Alexander Smirnov, the ex–FBI informant who admitted to lying about the Biden-Burisma connection, has been released from prison just months into his six-year prison sentence.

In a plea deal in December 2024, Smirnov admitted to completely fabricating the conspiracy that became central to a Republican effort to impeach then-President Joe Biden. Days later, the Russian asset pleaded guilty to four felony charges, including one count of obstruction, and was sentenced to six years in prison.

But the U.S.-Israeli citizen has been missing for at least four months from the low-security Los Angeles prison he was relegated to, according to investigative reporter Jacqueline Sweet.

Smirnov is still listed as a prisoner at FCI Terminal Island in Los Angeles, where his anticipated release date is February 2029, according to the Bureau of Prisons. But a process server responsible for handing off details of a civil lawsuit to Smirnov was unable to find him at the facility.

An employee at the prison confirmed to the process server that while “Smirnov is affiliated with the facility,” he was “not currently housed there,” reported Sweet on Friday.

“I was advised to call back in approximately 15 days, as [Smirnov] may or may not return to the facility by that time. The representative was notably guarded and provided minimal information beyond that,” read an email from the server, obtained by Sweet.

After months of failed attempts to find and locate Smirnov, the local Sheriff’s Department managed to receive a clearer response from the facility.

“They’ve confirmed that Mr. Smirnov has been furloughed, but no forwarding or new address has been provided,” the message read.

In June 2020, Smirnov falsely reported to the FBI that Burisma executives had paid Biden and his son Hunter millions of dollars. The fake claim was part of a larger series of unfounded allegations that accused Biden of improperly leveraging his position as vice president (at the time) to prevent a corruption investigation into Burisma, on whose board Hunter sat.

The fraudulent tale also sparked an October surprise in the 2020 election about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon insisted contained evidence that Biden and a Burisma adviser had held a “meeting.” (The New York Post, which ran the original story on its front page, later said that the contents of the laptop were mixed with fake material and that most of the data could not be verified.)

The Justice Department revealed in February 2024 that Smirnov admitted to prosecutors that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved” in developing the Hunter Biden narrative.

In the ensuing fallout over the DOJ indictment, Smirnov told investigators he was in contact with “four different [top] Russian officials,” two of whom were the “heads of the entities they represent.”

Smirnov’s smattering of international affiliations makes the convicted felon a significant flight risk—but another possibility of freedom may await the foreign asset. Earlier this year, the DOJ filed a joint motion alongside Smirnov’s attorneys to release him pending appeal. U.S. District Judge Otis Wright tossed that effort in April, but legal experts stress that the effort could be an early sign that the Trump administration is considering pardoning Smirnov, as “it is almost unheard of for the DOJ to argue for someone’s release pending appeal.”

“I can’t say for sure based on the information I have that a pardon deal is in the works,” Oregon criminal defense attorney Bear Wilner-Nugent told Sweet. “But if one were, this is what it could look like. I can say that this is an extraordinarily concerning way for the government to be treating someone when they’re already accused of improper connections with him.”

President Trump is rejecting visas for fat people.

The Trump administration has ordered visa officers to deny immigrants who are obese or have certain health issues, in yet another instance of the president’s strange obsession with fat people.

A Thursday directive from the State Department, sent to embassies and consulates around the world, indicates that people applying for visas to the United States may be rejected if they have certain medical conditions, on the grounds that they could take up domestic health care resources.

“You must consider an applicant’s health,” the cable read. “Certain medical conditions—including, but not limited to, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, cancers, diabetes, metabolic diseases, neurological diseases, and mental health conditions—can require hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of care.”

The announcement then goes on to mention obesity, stating that it can be connected to asthma, sleep apnea, and high blood pressure.

“All of these can require expensive, long-term care,” the cable continues. “Does the applicant have adequate financial resources to cover the costs of such care over his entire expected lifespan without seeking public cash assistance or long-term institutionalization at government expense?”

Denying fat people from the U.S. because they might end up having health issues is incredibly broad, cruel, and unusual. Visa applicants are already subjected to health screenings for infectious diseases like tuberculosis and are required to have various vaccinations.

“Taking into consideration one’s diabetic history or heart health history—that’s quite expansive,” immigration lawyer Sophia Genovese told the Los Angeles Times. “There is a degree of this assessment already, just not quite expansive as opining over, ‘What if someone goes into diabetic shock?’ If this change is going to happen immediately, that’s obviously going to cause a myriad of issues when people are going into their consular interviews.”

This announcement comes just one day after Trump announced his “fat shot” deal with two pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of popular weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Zepbound to around $350 per month (exact costs will vary).*

Trump also took time out of Thursday’s announcement to reveal exactly who was taking the weight-loss drug, outing longtime comms staffer and attack dog Steven Cheung.

“Where’s Steve? Is he here? Head of public relations for the White House? He’s taking it.”

* This piece has been updated with new projected prices of Ozempic and Zepbound.