The Department of Justice of the United States presented new criminal charges on Monday against former FBI director James Comey, becoming the third federal case he faces in just over a year since Donald Trump returned to the White House.
According to declassified court documents, the charges include two counts: willfully transmitting information related to national defense to an unauthorized person and conspiracy to transmit it.
Prosecutors assert that Comey, while leading the FBI in October 2016, instructed one or more associates to disclose national defense information to a journalist from a national media outlet.
The accusatory document was initially filed under seal on October 5th at the Washington District Court—exactly ten years after the alleged incident under investigation—and remained secret until this Monday, when Federal Judge Trevor McFadden ordered its declassification.
The defense links the case to an article published by The New York Times on October 5, 2016, about email surveillance by the U.S. government, and argues that Comey acted to correct information he deemed inaccurate, which was spread by Reuters the day before.
The lawyer for Comey, Patrick Fitzgerald, strongly criticized the procedure: he pointed out that the Department of Justice resorted to an accusatory mechanism that does not require the approval of a grand jury, and warned that "ten years after the publication, the Department of Justice has brought a charge against Comey that was neither approved by a judge nor issued by a grand jury."
Fitzgerald also recalled that two different teams of prosecutors investigated the same matter during Trump's first term, and on both occasions, they concluded that there were no grounds to bring charges against anyone.
Last week, Comey's lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the charges, arguing that the government waited too long to act.
This third process adds to a buildup of legal fronts. The first, filed in September 2025 for allegedly lying to Congress and obstructing an investigation, was dismissed in November of that year after a judge determined that the interim prosecutor had been appointed illegally. The second, filed in April 2026 in a federal court in North Carolina, accuses Comey of threatening the president over a post on Instagram featuring seashells arranged to form the sequence "86 47", interpreted by prosecutors as a threat against Trump; that case is still in litigation.
Comey, who led the FBI from 2013 to 2017 until Trump dismissed him amid the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, reacted to the new proceedings by calling it a "scandalous abuse of the Department of Justice" and reaffirmed his innocence in a video posted on Substack.
"This is the third time in just over a year that the Department of Justice has attempted to charge him with a federal crime," Fitzgerald pointed out, promising that his client would confront the charges openly: "Mr. Comey will vigorously and publicly fight these charges."
Related videos:
Filed under: