Daniel Richman was, once upon a time, a federal prosecutor. The New York Times saw fit to point this out when he published an opinion piece by him on Monday, along with the fact that he is currently a Columbia University law professor.
Daniel Richman was also, once upon a time, a leaker for James Comey. In fact, he leaked notes that Comey took during his time as FBI director under Donald Trump’s first administration to The New York Times, effectively kickstarting the special counsel investigation into Russiagate that went nowhere.
The New York Times did not point this out. One can easily guess why: Not just because it’s a conflict of interest, but because he’s now arguing against putting government documents out into the public square for reasons one can easily guess at.
Richman’s piece is titled “The Epstein Files Should Never Have Been Released.” His argument is effectively in the title, noting that while vague talk about “accountability for people in power” may make it “hard to see a downside” to the Jeffrey Epstein document release, “the release of millions of pages of the Epstein files” are both “a sign of institutional failure and a cause for concern.”
However, the particulars of the argument are worth noting — especially these paragraphs:
Calls for the Epstein files’ release predate the Trump administration. But they are now online and searchable because too many Americans didn’t trust the Justice Department’s leadership with control of them. In the past, departmental leaders could limit suspicions about their motives by conspicuously leaving a matter such as this to career subordinates, rather than political appointees. Seen by so many as having fired or driven outprosecutors and agents who refused to become tools of President Trump’s will, Attorney General Pam Bondi lacked credibility. She couldn’t get away with asking the public to rely on the apolitical and independent judgment of those who remained. The eventual result was the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
The release of the files is also cause for concern because so much of the raw investigative material in them — untold layers of hearsay, unverified accusations and vague circumstantial connections — ought not be released for the public to pick over.
We don’t know the degree to which the Justice Department has appropriately or inappropriately withheld or redacted documents. We do know that any effort to protect victims was woefully inadequate, as explicit photos and identifying information of many women, and possibly girls, have been found in the files. The government’s obligation not to revictimize people ought to be one of its highest priorities. Here, it failed.
It’s worth pointing that we’re now under the third administration where the Epstein documents were available to the Department of Justice to release — Trump 45, Biden, and Trump 47 — but it’s a few paragraphs later that we (ever so briefly) touch upon the reason that Richman is so concerned about the Epstein document dumps.
You see, it seems Richman is concerned when it comes to “coercive investigative tools” that “can and have been misused, as when prosecutors and FBI agents illegally rummaged through my emails and computer files in an effort to come up with a case against James Comey, the former FBI director.”
Oh.
This links to a ruling, partially redacted, in which a U.S. district court found, in December, that using prior searches of Richman’s information to make a case against Comey for mishandling government information was a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Apparently “accountability for people in power” only goes so far, especially when he’s the one who wields the power. It’s not as if there wasn’t a good reason to go through these documents, mind you, because Richman was effectively the leaker that Comey used to push the Russiagate hoax.
First, ABC News, from June of 2017, reported the following after Comey testified before Congress:
Speaking before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8, Comey said he wanted to get a record of his meetings with President Donald Trump “out into the public square” so he decided to ask a friend to share the content of his memo with a reporter.
“Didn’t do it myself, for a variety of reasons. But I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. And so I asked a close friend of mine to do it,” Comey told Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Collins asked who that was, and he responded, without providing a name, “A good friend of mine who’s a professor at Columbia Law School.”
Richman, an adviser to Comey, confirmed to ABC News that he was the friend Comey was referring to during his testimony.
According to the December decision in his court case, the memo Richman leaked “stated that President Trump had asked Mr. Comey to drop a federal investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn.”
And here’s Comey talking with Richman in February of 2020 about how he “took some steps” that might hasten the appointment of a special counsel “that involved you.”
This is James Comey in February 2020 talking to his friend Daniel Richman.
Comey said that Daniel Richman’s leaks (on Comey’s behalf) hastened the appointment of a special counsel.
Fast forward to today and a corrupt democrat operative in a robe ruled that evidence linked to… pic.twitter.com/iX0T1lPFvt
— The Researcher (@listen_2learn) December 12, 2025
How ’bout that.
Now, is there a one-to-one analogue here? Not quite enough of one for this to come across as clearly hypocritical.
It’s only now that it’s clear the Epstein document drop not only won’t implicate Donald Trump, but has stuck Democrats and deep staters quite a bit deeper in the scandal than they were before, that Democrats are suddenly appalled at it. Yet they were effectively the force behind not only passing the legislation that required the document drop, but also requiring it in an accelerated timespan.
Who would have ever guessed that this would have led to under-redactions and innocent people getting smeared? (I mean, aside from us here at The Western Journal, along with every sane person who knew that three million documents could not be effectively redacted in such a short period.)
And yet, the impulse is not a bad one; contra Mr. Richman, the Epstein documents should have been released, albeit at a reasonable pace and with suitable redactions. This could have been done any time since Epstein’s death in 2019, and should have been accomplished at least some point in the Biden years. But that wasn’t what the Democrats were pushing for back then, because it wasn’t that important. Getting dirt on Trump was.
In fact, it’s difficult to see a limiting principle to Richman’s argument when you consider his selective leaks on behalf of a former FBI director who openly admits he wanted a special counsel, aside from this: Us knowing stuff that benefits his side is good. Us knowing stuff that benefits the other side is not.
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