The Justice Department has again charged James B. Comey, the third time the Trump administration has mounted a criminal case against the former FBI director — a prominent political foe of the president — since last year.
This time, federal prosecutors charged Comey with two counts alleging that he leaked sensitive government material to the media in 2016 when he was FBI director. Comey was fired by President Donald Trump the following year. He has since become a staunch critic of Trump and the Justice Department’s actions during his second term.
In court papers earlier this month, Justice Department officials said that Comey directed his staff to speak to a New York Times reporter about U.S. email surveillance in October 2016, “and thereby illegally transferred classified information.”
According to court documents, prosecutors allege that Comey wanted his staff to talk to the reporter to address what they viewed as misinformation in an article published by another news outlet the previous day.
The resulting Times article contained information that was “significantly similar” to details contained in an internal government email sent to about 30 people in the U.S. intelligence community hours before the story was published, prosecutors alleged. They said this information is what Comey directed his staff to leak to the reporter.
Comey has denied the allegations and vowed to fight the case, which has been playing out in secret for weeks under seal.
Prosecutors did not obtain an indictment through a grand jury to charge Comey, but rather charged him in D.C. with a criminal information. This means that the document charging Comey is solely based on allegations from a prosecutor rather than a grand jury.
Because prosecutors are charging Comey with two felonies, they will ultimately have to try to secure an indictment through a grand jury since Comey did not waive his grand jury rights.
The charges were originally filed under seal earlier this month, but a federal judge in D.C. sided with Comey’s request to unseal the allegations against him. The judge said federal prosecutors did not object to his request.
“Criminal charges against a former FBI director for his conduct while in office are of significant public interest,” U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, wrote in his order Monday. “That is because both Comey’s alleged conduct while director and the government’s prosecution of this case are properly subject to the public’s ‘watchful eye.‘”
The indictment and other government filings in the case were signed by a group of specially appointed assistant U.S. attorneys, rather than any of the hundreds of career attorneys hired in D.C.
The filings also bear the names of two of Attorney General Todd Blanche’s closest deputies: acting deputy attorney general R. Trent McCotter, the second-most powerful official in the agency, and Aakash Singh, a top aide to Blanche.
Comey’s lawyers, in court filings unsealed Monday, had described the decision not to take the case before a grand jury first as an improper way to get around the 10-year statute of limitations for the alleged crimes, which was set to expire the day prosecutors filed the case in early October.
They asked the federal judge overseeing the matter to dismiss the charges. McFadden has not ruled on that request yet.
Comey’s lawyers contend that the leak in question had twice been investigated by prosecutors during the first Trump administration and that they did not recommend charges.
The Justice Department said in a statement that it filed the criminal information due to the statute of limitations and defended that maneuver.
The agency filed “a criminal information to toll the statute of limitations as it relates to allegations concerning former FBI Director Comey,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement. “Filing a criminal information to toll the statute of limitations is a widely recognized practice in federal court and has been approved by multiple Circuit Courts of Appeals.”
Comey, who is also facing an unrelated criminal case in North Carolina, denied the latest allegations on Monday and said he would keep fighting in court.
“It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice — one that we cannot become numb to,” Comey said in a video statement posted online. “Nothing’s changed with me. I’m still innocent.”
During Trump’s second term, the Justice Department has frequently taken aim at his perceived adversaries, including bringing multiple cases against Comey.
In North Carolina, prosecutors indicted Comey in April on allegations that a photo he posted on social media in 2025 constituted a dangerous threat to the president.
Comey has urged the judge overseeing his case in North Carolina to dismiss the charges as an improper, vindictive attempt by the Justice Department to charge him with a federal crime. If the judge allows that case to move forward, Comey is expected to face trial sometime next year.
In a separate case, the Justice Department in September 2025 indicted Comey in the Eastern District of Virginia on two counts alleging that he lied to Congress during 2020 testimony about whether the former FBI director ever authorized leaks to the media. The grand jury in Virginia rejected a third count sought by government prosecutors involving another alleged false statement.
A federal judge dismissed that case after concluding that the prosecutor overseeing it, former interim U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan, had been illegally appointed. The Justice Department is seeking to revive that case. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit is expected to rule on the Justice Department’s appeal soon.
The latest case against Comey in D.C. was made public hours after a federal judge in New York ruled that the Justice Department had unlawfully fired his daughter, Maurene Comey, a former federal prosecutor.
After being fired, she sued the Justice Department, arguing that the Trump administration fired her because of her father and her perceived political beliefs.
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