The Department of Justice has charged former FBI Director James Comey with transmitting national defense information and conspiring to do so in connection with an alleged 2016 disclosure to The New York Times, according to court documents unsealed Monday.
Prosecutors charged Comey on October 5 with a criminal information rather than a grand jury indictment, and his attorneys have moved to dismiss it.
“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,” Comey said in a video posted Monday to his Substack. “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.”
The charges became public the same day a federal judge ruled that Comey’s daughter, former federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, had been unlawfully fired from the Justice Department and ordered her reinstatement.
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The case, according to a report from NBC News, stems from a New York Times article published on October 5, 2016, about Yahoo’s assistance with U.S. email surveillance. Prosecutors claim Comey directed staff to give information to Times reporter Charlie Savage to “correct misinformation” in a Reuters article published the day before.
“The United States’ investigation has uncovered evidence that former FBI Director, James B. Comey, sought to correct misinformation which had appeared in the press by way of Reuters the day before. The investigation has uncovered evidence that Mr. Comey directed staff to speak to Mr. Savage about specific accuracy concerns related to the Reuters article, and thereby illegally transferred classified information,” Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Farahnak wrote in a filing unsealed Monday, according to NBC.
Comey was still serving as FBI director when the article was published. President Donald Trump fired him from that position several months later in May 2017.
Comey’s attorneys have argued that the new charges are barred by the 10-year statute of limitations because they “are based exclusively on the October 5, 2016, alleged disclosure exactly ten years before the government’s filed criminal information.”
A previous case against Comey — in which he was charged with making a false statement to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation — has already been dismissed. He has also been charged over a beach photo showing seashells arranged as “86 47.”
Comey has denied wrongdoing in all three cases.
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