Federal prosecutors have charged former FBI Director James Comey with transmission of national defense information and conspiracy to transmit national defense information.
It’s the third federal case against Comey, who has been a longtime target of President Donald Trump since he initiated the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The case has played out under seal since Oct. 5.
Comey’s defense attorneys filed a motion 10 days ago to dismiss the charges. He has not been indicted in the case.
Comey responded to the new charges in a video Monday.
“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 in a video on Substack after the charges were made public.
“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 said.
The new charges stem from an Oct. 5, 2016, article in The New York Times with the headline “Yahoo Said to Have Aided U.S. Email Surveillance by Adapting Spam Filter” by reporter Charlie Savage.
“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 a filing unsealed Monday. “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’s attorneys argued that both counts “are based exclusively on the October 5, 2016, alleged disclosure exactly ten years before the government’s filed criminal information” — and that the charges should be tossed out because of statute-of-limitations issues.
The case is “time barred,” they argue, because the government had 10 years to bring the case “by obtaining a grand jury indictment.”
The charges that were filed are a criminal information — essentially a charge filed by prosecutors, not a grand jury indictment — and should therefore be dismissed, they argue.
Comey cannot be tried on the criminal information alone unless he waives indictment, which would be an unusual move. Prosecutors will still need to seek an indictment, if the court permits it, before Comey can be arrested on the charges, arraigned, enter a plea and ultimately be tried.
The case was unsealed by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, who noted that the facts underlying the investigation “have been subject to considerable press coverage.”
McFadden said that while it is not unusual to “initially seal a charging instrument,” those are usually sealed only to aid the apprehension of a defendant.
Prosecutors maintain that the charges are timely and that Comey’s attorneys are misreading the applicable law.
A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement that its filing was meant to “toll,” or pause, the statute of limitations.
“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. This is an ongoing criminal investigation, and we will not comment further,” the spokesperson said.
Greg Rosen, a former supervisor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, disputed that characterization.
“Filing a placeholder charge the defendant can’t be tried on, on the last possible day, under seal, in the third case against the same man, is not routine or ‘widely recognized.’ It is exactly what it appears to be: vindictive,” Rosen, who now works for a law firm, told NBC News.
Comey was the FBI director when the Times article was published. Trump fired him in May 2017 after he launched an investigation into Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential race and potential ties to the Trump campaign.
Trump has repeatedly called for Comey to be prosecuted in the years since, calling him a “dirty cop” and a “sick person.”
The criminal case is the third to be brought against Comey since Trump’s second term began.
The first case was dismissed by a judge; the other came on April 28, when Comey was indicted in North Carolina on charges he made a threat against Trump when he posted an image of seashells arranged to read “8647.” Comey has maintained his innocence.
Comey attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said in a statement Monday that the first case was dismissed after “the Department of Justice used a person who was not actually a United States Attorney to seek an Indictment that was not actually shown to the grand jury. And it charged Mr. Comey with crimes that he did not commit. That case was promptly and properly dismissed.”
“In April 2026, the Department of Justice filed charges in the Eastern District of North Carolina concerning Mr. Comey’s posting of a photograph of seashells spelling ‘8647.’ We will not comment beyond our filings in that case,” he added.
Fitzgerald said the most recent case involves an article “that two different teams of prosecutors investigated during the first Trump administration. Both times the Government determined that no charges should be brought against anyone. Now, ten years after the article was published, the Government filed an ‘Information’ against Mr. Comey that was not approved by a judge nor issued by a grand jury” and “purports to charge Mr. Comey with crimes that he did not commit.”
“Mr. Comey will fight these charges vigorously and in the open,” he said.
The unsealing of the charges comes the same day that a federal judge ruled that Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, had been unlawfully fired from the Justice Department last year and ordered that she be reinstated.
