During President Donald Trump's first term, his government tried to go after an FBI leak and the investigation obtained documents that have ultimately been used to go after former FBI Director James Comey. Late Wednesday night, a judge ordered the Justice Department to either destroy the materials or return them.
Operation "Arctic Haze" was an investigation into a possible leak in 2019–2020. As legal podcaster P. Andrew Torrez noted, Dan Richman, one of Comey's longtime friends and a former lawyer, filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department in December claiming that documents taken from him five years ago included information from his office about Comey. He alleged those documents were then used to file charges against Comey in 2025 in the Eastern District of Virginia.
The first order came in December from the judge, but it was put on hold when Associate Attorney General Stan Woodward, who once served as one of Trump's lawyers, began filing motions to extend the deadline to eliminate the documents.
Former Deputy U.S. Attorney Robert K. McBride was the number two at the Eastern District under Lindsey Halligan. He was fired after refusing to file charges against Comey again after a judge ruled that Halligan's appointment was not legal. It happened the same day a grand jury in the Southern District of Florida was empaneled, wrote national security expert and journalist Marcy Wheeler.
She wondered whether something fishy was going on and whether Woodward's many motions were part of an effort to hold off on destroying the documents and to give them to another U.S. attorney, Jay Reding Quinones, who has a grand jury under the supervision of Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida.
This new demand to destroy materials stops that from happening.
Torrez commented, "As far as I can tell, this notice of compliance would seem to foreclose on Quinones being able to put Arctic Haze evidence in front of a Florida grand jury. The government can keep its notes from that investigation, but none of the files."