Comey Faces Third Set of Charges Under Trump, Accused of Leaking National Defence Information

On Monday, sealed court documents came to light showing that the Trump administration has accused James Comey, the former director of the FBI, of two counts of unlawfully disseminating information related to national defence. It is the third time since Donald Trump returned to the presidency in January 2025 that the government has moved to bring criminal charges against Comey.

The filing, dated October, alleges that Comey, acting through one or more co-conspirators, directed a person identified only as Individual #1 to disclose national defence information to a reporter for a national news publication. Prosecutors say Comey ordered FBI colleagues to leak to the news media. The charges concern a New York Times article published on October 5, 2016, about Yahoo being ordered to scan traffic on its site for a specific computer signature allegedly tied to a terrorist organisation. Prosecutors say the information went to Charlie Savage, the reporter on that story.

Comey has not been indicted, and the procedure is part of what is now in dispute. Prosecutors did not take the case to a grand jury, which would have to decide whether to approve charges. They used a mechanism called a criminal information, which lets them bypass that step. Comey's defence lawyer, Pat Fitzgerald, said that ten years after the article ran, the government filed an information that was neither approved by a judge nor issued by a grand jury. He said it purports to charge crimes Comey did not commit. He also said the government had investigated the matter twice before and both times concluded that no one should be charged. Comey's legal team has asked for the charges to be dismissed. Judge Trevor McFadden of the US District Court in Washington, DC, a Trump appointee, is overseeing the case.

Comey responded in a video on Substack, calling the effort political retribution. He said it would almost be funny if it were not such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice, one that people cannot become numb to. He said nothing had changed: he is innocent, not afraid, and still believes in an independent federal judiciary. He also noted that Trump is only midway through his second term, and suggested more charges may follow. The next couple of years, he said, will be hard for everyone.

The history runs back to 2017, when Trump fired Comey, who had led the FBI since 2013, as the bureau was investigating possible collusion between Russia and Trump's 2016 campaign. Trump has repeatedly called that probe a hoax.

The first case followed a September 2025 social media post in which Trump appeared to urge then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to act against Comey, Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James, writing that they were all guilty and that justice must be served now. Five days later, on September 25, Comey was indicted for lying to Congress and obstructing a legislative proceeding. That case was dismissed because the prosecutor in charge, Lindsey Halligan, had been unlawfully appointed.

A second indictment came on April 28, accusing Comey of threatening the president by posting a photo of seashells arranged to spell "86 47". Forty-seven refers to Trump as the 47th president, and "86" is service-industry slang for throwing out a dish or a customer. The administration argues that "86" implies violence. That case is ongoing.

Also on Monday, before the new charges surfaced, a federal judge in a separate case ruled that Comey's daughter, Maurene Comey, a former assistant US attorney, was unlawfully fired last year. She has maintained that her dismissal was retaliation against her father. The court found she was entitled to retroactive reinstatement and backpay.

What to watch now is whether the dismissal motion succeeds, and whether a judge accepts the use of a criminal information in place of a grand jury indictment.