Former FBI director James Comey has been charged by the US Department of Justice with allegedly leaking national defence information, the third time he has faced criminal charges in the past 13 months.
The charges, unsealed on Monday in the United States, accuse Mr Comey of directing an individual, “through one and more co-conspirators”, to disclose national defence information to a reporter at a national news publication in 2016, when he was FBI director.
Court documents indicate the case was filed exactly 10 years after the alleged leak took place, apparently on the final day before the statute of limitations for the offence expired.
The document was signed by Trent McCotter, the acting US deputy attorney-general. He was appointed to the position in April by attorney-general Todd Blanche, who previously served as one of Donald Trump’s lawyers.
Mr Comey rejected the accusation in a video posted on Instagram. “Well, they’re back – again,” he 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.”
He added: “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.”
Mr Comey’s lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, said the allegation concerned an article published by The New York Times in October 2016. He said the circumstances had previously been investigated by two prosecution teams without charges being brought.
“Now, 10 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,” Mr Fitzgerald said. “It purports to charge Mr Comey with crimes that he did not commit.”
Mr Comey is already facing a separate case over an Instagram photograph showing seashells arranged on a beach to spell “86 47”. Prosecutors alleged the image was a death threat against Mr Trump because “86” can mean getting rid of something in restaurant parlance and has also been used as a mob term.
Last year, Mr Comey was indicted over allegations that he made false statements to a Senate hearing in 2020 and obstructed a congressional investigation. A judge later dismissed that case after finding that the prosecutor who brought it, Lindsey Halligan, had been illegally appointed. Ms Halligan is a former personal lawyer to Mr Trump.
The latest charges were unsealed on the same day that a New York judge ruled that the Justice Department had unlawfully fired Mr Comey’s eldest daughter, Maurene Comey, in July 2025.
Ms Comey, a prosecutor in the Manhattan US Attorney’s office, had brought criminal cases against Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell and music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs. She argued successfully that she had been dismissed because of her father, in breach of federal protections against politically motivated firings and rules guaranteeing due process for federal employees.
Mr Trump’s hostility towards James Comey dates back to the former FBI director’s authorisation of an investigation into alleged links between the president’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government, which Mr Trump has repeatedly called the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax”.
