The Justice Department has brought charges against former FBI Director James Comey for the third time in 13 months, this time related to alleged leaks of national security information to the media.
According to court documents filed earlier this month and unsealed on Monday, federal prosecutors are accusing Comey of “willfully” mishandling information related to national defense in October 2016, resulting in the information appearing in media reports.
“Having reason to believe such information could be used to injure the United States and to the advantage of any foreign nation,” the court document said Comey “knowingly and willfully communicated, delivered, transmitted, and caused that information to be communicated, delivered, and transmitted to a person not entitled to receive it.”
The inquiry is the latest attempt to prosecute Comey, who is a prominent critic of President Donald Trump. Trump fired Comey in 2017 while Comey was leading the FBI investigation into potential ties between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. The first Trump Administration cited a memo related to Comey’s handling of the FBI investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails. Since then, Trump has publicly called for criminal investigations into Comey and celebrated the indictments he’s faced.
In a video posted on Monday, Comey said the latest investigation was an attempt to politically persecute him.
“They’re back, again,” Comey said. “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.”
“I’m still innocent. I’m still not afraid of these people,” he added.
Comey’s attorneys argued in court filings that the alleged leaks had already been investigated twice during the first Trump Administration in 2017 and 2019, and neither had resulted in charges.
The Justice Department has pursued a number of investigations and indictments against prominent Democrats in recent weeks, appearing to break with the unofficial “unwritten 60-day rule” of avoiding filing new charges or taking public investigatory action that could influence an approaching election. Earlier this month, the Department secured a search warrant for the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D, Minn.), who called the effort “the latest escalation in [Trump’s] campaign of political intimidation.” The DOJ also secured an indictment against Virginia Senate Leader Louise Lucas, who led the Democrats’ counter-effort against Republican gerrymandering, on drug trafficking and money laundering charges. Lucas denied the allegations and said she would fight back against an attempt by “people in power … to silence those who stand up to them.”
According to court documents, prosecutors allege that around Oct. 4 and 5, 2016, Comey directed FBI staff to speak with the New York Times “about specific accuracy concerns” related to “misinformation which had appeared” in a Reuters report about Yahoo’s cooperation with U.S. surveillance.
In doing so, prosecutors contend, Comey “illegally transferred classified information.”
The Times article had described how Yahoo had adapted its existing email filtering system, used to detect spam, malware, and child sexual abuse material, to comply with a secret surveillance order to search messages for a computer “signature” associated with communications by a foreign, state-sponsored terrorist organization. The article said the Justice Department had obtained the order from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge in 2015 and that Yahoo was barred from disclosing it.
A spokesperson for the Times said the newspaper “does not comment on the sourcing behind our reporting, but we know from experience that prosecutions like this one are designed to discourage sources from providing journalists with the kind of valuable and illuminating information that the public needs to know.”
Comey’s lawyers argued in a motion to dismiss the case that the Trump Administration did not file an indictment within the 10-year statute of limitations. On Oct. 5, prosecutors filed the charges in a criminal information under seal in Federal District Court in Washington, which does not require approval from a grand jury or a judicial finding of probable cause, but have not obtained an indictment.
Previous charges against Comey
The Justice Department has brought multiple charges against Comey during Trump’s second term. It secured an indictment against him in September 2025 over allegations that he made false statements to Congress in 2020 related to alleged leaks to the media. The charges were thrown out by a federal judge in November, concluding that the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, had been unlawfully appointed.
Comey was also indicted in April over allegedly making a threat against Trump by posting on Instagram a photograph of seashells on a North Carolina beach arranged to spell “86 47.” Prosecutors argued that the arrangement was intended as a threat “to kill” Trump, who is the 47th President. Comey, who deleted the post after initial backlash, said he did not intend the photograph to be a threat against Trump, and that he understood the numbers to be a “political message.” The numbers “86” have commonly been used to mean “to throw out” or “to refuse service to,” according to Merriam-Webster, but have also been used in some instances to mean “to kill.”
That case is set to go to trial in North Carolina in February 2027.
Earlier on Monday, a federal judge in New York ruled that the Justice Department had unlawfully fired Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, in July 2025. The judge ordered her retroactive reinstatement with back pay, concluding that the Trump Administration had violated the Constitution and federal law by claiming the President had executive authority to fire civil servants.
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