In a late Sunday filing, described by Politico as “light on details,” federal prosecutors pursuing former FBI Director James Comey are attempting to boot his lead lawyer off the case.

The two DOJ attorneys, brought into the Eastern District of Virginia U.S. attorney’s office by newly appointed former insurance lawyer Lindsey Halligan to make the case that Comey is guilty of making false statements and obstructing a federal proceeding, want the defendant’s lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, to be barred for alleged actions they believe represent a conflict of interest.

The filing makes the claim that Fitzgerald was involved “in disclosures to the media shortly after President Donald Trump fired Comey as FBI director in 2017,” which they believe presents an “insurmountable” issue.

Politico reported that government prosecutors Tyler Lemons and Gabriel Diaz are asking U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff to step in with great “urgency” to “approve a proposal for a ‘filter team’ of lawyers to sift through evidence in Comey’s criminal case that could clarify Fitzgerald’s role in the eight-year-old disclosures — without breaching Comey’s attorney-client privilege.”

The prosecutors wrote, “Based on publicly disclosed information, the defendant used current lead defense counsel to improperly disclose classified information. This fact raises a question of conflict and disqualification for current lead defense counsel.”

While not getting into details, the filing cites “a Justice Department Office of Inspector General report from 2019 that found Fitzgerald acted as a middleman when Comey sought to get information to the media about what he viewed as improper efforts by Trump to get him to pledge loyalty in the days before his firing.”

“The inspector general report found that some of the information Comey shared with his attorneys was classified and faulted him for sharing sensitive investigative information with outsiders and the media,” Politico reported. It "also found no evidence ‘that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.”

The report goes on to point out that during Trump’s first administration the DOJ “declined to prosecute Comey or anyone else over the handling or disclosure of Comey’s memos about his conversations with Trump.”