The Justice Department criminally charged James Comey over a decade-old allegation that he ordered his staff to leak classified information to a reporter, the third time that prosecutors have levied criminal allegations against the former FBI director.
Comey is charged over allegedly leaking a sensitive national security document when he was FBI director in October 2016, according to court records made public Monday, allegations that his attorneys said were investigated previously without resulting in charges.
“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 he posted on social media.
The Justice Department, however, says the document that the two charges are outlined in — called an information — is not enforceable and that they have yet to file their official charges against Comey. The move is instead an attempt to push back the 10-year deadline on bringing charges under the Espionage Act against the former FBI director, which expired earlier this month, a department official said in a statement.
“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,” the DOJ official said. “This is an ongoing criminal investigation, and we will not comment further.”
Ultimately, a judge will decide whether the Justice Department’s move to prosecute Comey after the statute of limitations expired is valid. Comey moved earlier this month to dismiss the case, saying that there needs to be an indictment within 10 years and that the DOJ filing does not suffice.
The case was unsealed on Monday, but documents include scant details about what prosecutors are specifically alleging.
Asked about the new charges on his return to Washington, DC, from a rally in Mississippi, President Donald Trump said he knew nothing about it.
“I don’t know too much about it. I just heard about it,” Trump said, according to a pool report. “I think he’s a dirty cop, James Comey, but I know nothing about it.”
The controversy over the alleged leaks to The New York Times began in the early days of Trump’s first administration. After he was fired as FBI director by Trump, Comey shared with his team at least one memo describing his conversations with the president. The information was then shared with a New York Times reporter.
The allegations into Comey’s conduct have been at the center of multiple investigations, including by the Justice Department’s inspector general and by Special Counsel John Durham, who was brought in to examine the origins of the federal investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Durham brought charges against three people associated with the probe and while he criticized some of the decisions made by Comey and other top government officials, Durham didn’t find evidence to support criminal prosecutions against them.
Comey faces a separate criminal charge still in North Carolina where he is accused of threatening Trump by posting last spring on social media a photo of seashells in the sand arranged to say “8647.” A previous case against Comey over his Congressional testimony about leaks to the media was dismissed by a judge last year.
“This is a bizarre, and likely improper, use of a criminal ‘information’ ’to end-run the statute of limitations,” Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor and CNN’s senior legal analyst said Monday. “Typically an information must be agreed to by a defendant — and Comey did not consent here. It therefore likely cannot extend the statute of limitations, which would have expired on October 5, 2026.”
This story was updated with additional information.
CNN’s Aleena Fayaz contributed to this report.
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