WASHINGTON — Former FBI Director James Comey will appear in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday for his arraignment on charges brought after a public campaign by President Donald Trump to prosecute him.
A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia indicted Comey, whom Trump fired during his first term in office, on two charges last month: making a false statement and obstruction of a congressional proceeding.
Trump had posted just days earlier on his social media platform, calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi to charge Comey. “We can’t delay any longer,” he wrote.
Comey, who was a registered Republican and served in the Justice Department during the George W. Bush administration, became the subject of Trump’s ire after he helped spark special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The Trump administration accuses Comey of lying to Congress about having authorized a third party to speak anonymously to the media about an FBI investigation. Comey told Congress in 2017 he did not authorize any leaks related to an investigation, and he told the Senate again in 2020, “I stand by the testimony.”
Comey is expected to be presented with the charges and plead not guilty at Wednesday’s hearing, which begins at 10 a.m.
The charges were filed after Trump successfully pressured the acting head of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia to resign. Trump then named one of his former personal attorneys, Lindsey Halligan, to head the office, though she has no prosecutorial experience. And Halligan presented the case against Comey to a grand jury by herself, which is highly unusual and raised additional red flags about the merits of the case.
Halligan sought three charges, but 12 or more of the grand jurors found that there was not probable cause to indict him on one of the charges. Most of the grand jurors found there was probable cause to charge Comey with making false statements to Congress and obstruction of a congressional proceeding.
Comey is set to appear before U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff. In addition to Halligan, two prosecutors from a separate U.S. attorney’s office in North Carolina — Nathaniel Lemons and Gabriel J. Diaz — were added to the case.
No electronics are allowed in the Alexandria courthouse, meaning news about the arraignment may take a while to emerge.
Trump has called for charges to be filed against other political foes since he began his second term, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
A group of former federal judges warned last week that the case against Comey presented a “grave danger” to the rights and liberties of every American as “President Donald Trump continues to corruptly abuse the power of his office by directing the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to target his critics and his perceived political enemies for investigation and criminal prosecution.”
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