James Comey

Introduction

James Comey, the former FBI director fired by President Donald Trump in 2017, was charged with federal crimes for a third time on Monday, October 26, 2026, when the Justice Department unsealed a two-count criminal information accusing him of transmitting national defense information to a newspaper reporter a decade earlier. The charging document, filed under seal in Washington, D.C., on October 5 and made public at Comey’s own request, accuses him of a leak tied to an October 5, 2016 New York Times article — while Comey was still director of the FBI. Comey has not been indicted on the new charges and called the case “an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice.”

Background Information

Comey was director of the FBI under President Barack Obama when the 2016 article at the center of the new case 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, and he has been a repeated target of the president ever since — Trump has publicly called him a “dirty cop” and a “sick person,” and NBC News describes Comey as a longtime target of Trump since he initiated the FBI’s Russia probe. Comey, in turn, has become an outspoken critic of the president. The Justice Department has now brought three criminal cases against him since Trump’s second term began.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Charged, not convicted. Comey faces two federal counts — transmission of national defense information and conspiracy to transmit it — filed as a criminal information, not a grand-jury indictment. The charges are accusations; he has not been tried on them, and he denies any wrongdoing.

The unsealed information accuses Comey of “knowingly and wittingly” transmitting national defense information and conspiring to do so, alleging the crime took place October 4–5, 2016. It states that Comey, “through one or more co-conspirators,” directed an unnamed “Individual #1” to “disclose national defense information to a reporter for a national news publication.” Both the New York Post and NBC News report the charges stem from the Times article headlined “Yahoo Said to Have Aided U.S. Email Surveillance by Adapting Spam Filter,” written by reporter Charlie Savage. Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Farahnak wrote in an unsealed filing that Comey “sought to correct misinformation which had appeared in the press by way of Reuters the day before” and “directed staff to speak to Mr. Savage about specific accuracy concerns related to the Reuters article, and thereby illegally transferred classified information.”

The case’s procedural posture is as contested as the accusation. The Justice Department filed the information on October 5 and asked Judge Trevor McFadden to seal it the same day, citing an ongoing investigation; prosecutors agreed Comey should be notified, and his attorneys filed a motion to dismiss on October 9 arguing the ten-year statute of limitations on a 2016 offense had run — because the government had ten years to obtain a grand-jury indictment, not to file a prosecutor’s information, which they called “a faulty information under seal” aimed at putting the clock on hold. On Monday the attorneys asked McFadden to unseal the document, and he agreed. A Justice Department spokesperson told the Post the department “filed a waiverless criminal information to toll the statute of limitations,” calling that “a widely recognized practice in federal court” approved by multiple circuit courts, and said the investigation is ongoing.

Comey’s attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said the article had already been investigated by two different teams of prosecutors during the first Trump administration, and “both times the Government determined that no charges should be brought against anyone.” The information, he said, “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.” The Guardian notes the filing appears designed to get charges on the record before the ten-year statute of limitations expires.

Public Reaction and Consequences

Comey responded within hours in a video on his 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. 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.” Fitzgerald pledged Comey “will fight these charges vigorously and in the open.” The unsealing landed on a striking news day: hours earlier, a federal judge in New York ruled that the Justice Department had unlawfully fired Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and ordered her reinstated with back pay. The Guardian framed the new case as the third brought against “one of Donald Trump’s most despised foes.”

Current Status

Comey has not been indicted in the new case: under NBC News’ account of the law, he cannot be tried on the criminal information alone unless he waives indictment — an unusual step — and prosecutors would still need to obtain an indictment before he could be arrested, arraigned or tried on these counts. His motion to dismiss is pending before Judge McFadden. Separately, Comey is still awaiting trial in the Eastern District of North Carolina, where an April 2026 indictment accuses him of threatening Trump’s life by posting an Instagram photo of seashells arranged to read “8647” — a reading prosecutors built on “86” as slang for getting rid of something and Trump as the 47th president; Comey denies wrongdoing in that case and is seeking its dismissal. His first case — a September 2025 Virginia indictment for false statements and obstruction over Senate testimony — was dismissed on November 24, 2025, after a judge ruled interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan had been unlawfully appointed.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Comey now faces his third federal prosecution in thirteen months, each brought by an administration he has publicly opposed and each arriving with its own legal irregularity argument — an unlawfully appointed prosecutor, a seashells-photo threat theory that the Guardian reports legal experts call thin, and now a decade-old leak case filed under seal in an effort his lawyer and the Guardian both describe as aimed at beating the ten-year limitations window. The pattern has turned his legal fights into a referendum on the Justice Department’s use of criminal power against Trump’s critics; CNBC reports the same judge who dismissed the first Comey case threw out the department’s indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James the same day. Comey, who has maintained his innocence throughout, says the next years “are going to be hard for all of us” — and that he intends to stand straight and keep the faith.

Sources

• New York Post, “Ex-FBI Director James Comey facing new criminal charges for allegedly leaking info to NY Times,” October 26, 2026 — source
• NBC News, “James Comey charged for a third time by the Trump administration,” October 26, 2026 — source
• CNBC, “DOJ charges ex-FBI Director James Comey in new case,” October 26, 2026 — source
• The Guardian, “Justice department charges ex-FBI director James Comey for third time,” October 26, 2026 — source