The Justice Department will have to preserve some of former FBI Director James Comey’s personal emails and make them available to two organizations.
U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, sitting in Washington, ordered the department preserve those government documents Monday following revelations in the DOJ inspector general’s report in June that Comey used private correspondence to conduct some FBI business.
The Justice Department now has until Sept. 28 to review, release, and preserve any “responsive, non-exempt records” in Comey’s private email to Judicial Watch and the Daily Caller News Foundation, under the order.
The conservative advocacy groups had put forward the motion as part of ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation launched in April. That lawsuit seeks all DOJ documents identifying and describing meetings between Comey and former President Barack Obama, as well as records summarizing his discussions with Obama; former Vice President Joe Biden; ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. These are the materials that cannot be deleted from Comey’s email.
The Justice Department had previously sent a letter to Comey asking him to store the documents, but had opposed a preservation order.
Kollar-Kotelly added the order does not mean the court believes Comey had government materials or that those materials could be lost or destroyed.
“The FBI has been playing shell games with Comey’s records and other records, so we’re pleased the court issued this preservation order,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “This preservation order helps to ensures no Comey records are going to be lost or destroyed. We expect the DOJ to take immediate steps to make sure the records are preserved, as the court ordered.”
According to the Justice Departments IG’s report examining the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server, Comey used a Gmail account in “numerous instances,” even though the DOJ issued a policy in 2016 preventing that practice.
