Justice Department Files New Charge Against James Comey

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a new criminal charge against former FBI Director James Comey on Monday, citing a classified information leak from 2016.

The move follows a decade of inaction on the specific allegation and arrives two weeks before the midterm elections.

Comey served as the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 2013 to 2017, a period that included his appointment by President Barack Obama and his subsequent firing by President Donald Trump.

The current dispute centers on a New York Times article published in October 2016 that described a secret court order.

That order required Yahoo to scan emails for messages linked to a foreign terrorist organization while barring the company from revealing the judge's directive.

Federal authorities began investigating the disclosure in early 2017, with prosecutor John Durham leading the initial review.

Durham wrote a classified memo in December 2018 recommending that no criminal charges be brought against anyone in connection with the story.

A second investigation opened in January 2019 under the code name Tropical Vortex, but it closed without charges in February 2020.

Comey's legal team, led by Patrick Fitzgerald, stated that the government had already determined twice that no charges were warranted for the same conduct.

Fitzgerald noted that the new filing arrived ten years after the original article appeared, meeting the strict limit for bringing an indictment.

The Justice Department used a legal tool called a criminal information to toll the statute of limitations, a method that does not require a grand jury vote or judicial approval.

A department spokesperson described the filing as part of an ongoing investigation and said the practice is widely recognized in federal courts across multiple circuits of appeals. "They're back, again," Comey said in a video statement released Monday. "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 an independent federal judiciary." "Prosecutors argued that Comey directed staff to speak to a journalist to correct misinformation that had appeared in Reuters the day before the Times story ran. "They claimed this action illegally transferred classified information. "Comey's lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the information, arguing it does not satisfy the explicit demand for an indictment within ten years. "This is the third criminal case brought against Comey in little more than one year. "A prior case in Virginia regarding congressional testimony was dismissed because the prosecutor was illegally appointed. "A separate pending indictment charges him with threatening Trump through an Instagram post featuring seashells arranged in the numerical order 86 47. "The administration's actions have also extended to Comey's daughter, Maurene, who was fired from a Justice Department role in New York last year. "A federal judge ruled that termination illegal on Monday. "The relationship between Trump and Comey deteriorated after Comey declined to pledge personal loyalty during a private dinner in 2017. "Trump fired Comey in May 2017 during the Russia inquiry, which later concluded there was insufficient evidence of a criminal collaboration. "Comey published a memoir in 2018 that criticized Trump's character, prompting Trump to call him an untruthful slime ball. "The pending motion to dismiss will determine whether the case proceeds to trial or collapses on technical grounds.