After two previous attempts to prosecute James Comey, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice is once again filing charges against the former FBI director.
Comey, who was appointed FBI director by then-President Barack Obama in 2013, served in that role until he was fired by President Trump in 2017.
New Charges Filed
NBC News reports that these new charges are for “transmission of national defense information and conspiracy to transmit national defense information,” with the case having been under seal since October 5.
The new charges — the third time the Trump administration has attempted to charge Comey — originated from a decade-old New York Times article by Charlie Savage, published on October 15, 2016 under the headline “Yahoo Said to Have Aided U.S. Email Surveillance by Adapting Spam Filter.”
“The United States’ investigation has uncovered evidence that former FBI Director, James B. Comey, sought to correct misinformation which had appeared in the press by way of Reuters the day before,” Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Farahnak wrote in court filing that was unsealed on Monday, October 26.
“The investigation has uncovered evidence that Mr. Comey directed staff to speak to Mr. Savage about specific accuracy concerns related to the Reuters article, and thereby illegally transferred classified information.”
Comey Responds
Comey responded to the new charges in a video that he shared via Substack.
“Well, they’re back again. 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 while addressing the camera.
“Nothing’s changed with me. I’m still innocent. I’m still not afraid of these people, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary,” he added.
Per NBC News, Comey’s attorneys have fired back, arguing that both counts “are based exclusively on the October 5, 2016, alleged disclosure exactly 10 years before the government’s filed criminal information,” contending both charges should be thrown out because the statute of limitations has been exceeded. Comey’s legal team states that the case is “time barred,” since the government had 10 full years to bring charges “by obtaining a grand jury indictment.”
As Comey’s lawyers point out, these latest charges were filed as criminal information — which NBC News defines as “essentially a charge filed by prosecutors, not a grand jury indictment” — and argues they be dismissed.
In fact, prosecutors will need to obtain a grand jury indictment — if the court will even allow it — before Comey can be arrested and then arraigned on those charges before entering a plea and going to trial.
Previous Charges Against Comey
The first criminal case against Comey accused him lying to Congress in 2020; that charge was dismissed when the judge in the case concluded that the prosectuor who brought those charges, Lindsey Halligan, had been appointed illegally.
A second indictment was brought against Comey in April 2026, charged with threatening Trump after he shared a photo on social media of seashells on a beach arranged to form the numbers “86 47.” That case has been delayed to 2027, and legal experts are skeptical anything will come of it.
Trump fired Comey in May 2017 in the midst of an FBI investigation into the former “Celebrity Apprentice” host’s ties with Russia, and his campaign’s complicity in Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Comey subsequently raised Trump’s hackles in his 2018 memoir, “A Higher Loyalty,” in which he likened Trump to a Mafia don who was “untethered to truth.” Trump responded by blasting Comey as an “untruthful slime ball” who should be charged with “treason.”
Former FBI Director James Comey Charged By Trump Admin for the Third Time