Attorneys for Karen Read followed up a relatively subdued motions hearing with filings demanding their client’s indictment be dismissed and that the Norfolk District Attorney be disqualified and sanctioned.

The motions also indicate, as has been previously reported but not substantiated, that the Norfolk DA’s office was under federal investigation for its handling of the Read case.

The first motion filed late Friday afternoon and signed by attorney David Yannetti asks that Judge Beverly Cannone of Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham “sanction the prosecution for constitutional due process violations, and for violations of ethical requirements imposed by the Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct, and for egregious misrepresentations to the tribunal and opposing counsel.

“Additionally, the defendant moves to disqualify the Norfolk County District Attorney because of his clear interest, other than pursuit of justice, in the outcome of this prosecution,” the motion continues.

Read is a Mansfield woman indicted for the murder of Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe — her boyfriend of two years at the time — in late January 2022.

A court clerk told the Herald that a second defense motion was impounded and could not be released.

The motion also states that on Dec. 4, prosecutors provided the defense for the first time letters between the Norfolk DA’s office and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston sent between May and November “regarding the existence of a federal investigation of the Karen Read investigation/prosecution.”

The Herald reached out to the Norfolk DA’s office for response and was told by a spokesman that “The office is reviewing the defense filings but has no comment at this time.”

Included among the letters is one dated May 18, 2023, from Norfolk DA Michael Morrissey to the Office of Professional Responsibility at the U.S. Department of Justice requesting “that an ongoing investigation being conducted be transferred to another office without history of conflict, bias, and abuse of prosecutorial discretion.”

The letter allegedly also states that multiple witnesses in the Read case had “received subpoenas to appear before a Federal Grand Jury.”

The U.S. Attorney’s office declined a Herald request for comment.

The motion also demands that Morrissey be sanctioned for posting a video statement last August that calls the defense theories “conspiracy theories,” and, Yannetti summarizes, “personally vouched for numerous, named Commonwealth witnesses, explicitly stating … (they) did not commit … any crime that night’ … that they ‘have not engaged in any cover up,’” and more.

Yannetti says that such a statement goes against the DA’s legally required responsibilities including one that the DA “refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.”

Yannetti argues that a dismissal of the indictments against Read “is the appropriate sanction,” arguing that “the defendant’s opportunity to obtain a fair trial has been irremediably harmed by District Attorney Morrissey’s extensive vouching for Commonwealth witnesses and his denigration of defense theories in advance of the test of trial.”

On Friday, the last day evidentiary motions could be filed in the case, Judge Cannone heard two motions arguments: one on the sharing of DNA swabs of MSP troopers assigned to investigate the case so the defense could use them in their own investigation and another on whether the defense could compel copies of communications between Jennifer McCabe — who the defense has fingered along with others as being culpable in O’Keefe’s death — and an investigating trooper and his wife.

A third motion on a proposed protective order of the Norfolk District Attorney’s office communications with federal authorities was not argued because Cannone said that the defense had served only the DA’s office with papers and not the U.S. Attorney’s office “and they have a right to be heard.” A virtual hearing on that matter was scheduled for Jan. 23 at 3 p.m.