Main: President Donald Trump waves as he arrives at the White House, Sunday, May 31, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon). Right inset: Former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey speaks at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics’ JFK Jr. Forum in Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 24, 2020 (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File).
James Comey is facing a third criminal case brought by the Trump Justice Department in Washington, D.C., even after one indictment alleging false statements was dismissed and a separate case involving “8647” seashell threats remains unresolved. The former FBI director says the newly disclosed prosecution should be thrown out as well.
Comey addressed the charges and maintained his innocence in a Substack post published Monday. The timing coincided with a federal judge’s order reinstating his fired daughter with back pay. Comey described the Espionage Act case as something that “would almost be funny if it wasn’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice.”
The reason for Comey’s public statement soon became apparent.
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden ordered the case unsealed after noting that Comey had requested disclosure and the Justice Department did not object — a point the judge called “significant.”
McFadden, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, also noted that Comey had already moved to dismiss a criminal information the DOJ filed under seal on Oct. 5.
The filing date is important. It came 10 years after what prosecutors describe as the “last overt act during the existence” of an alleged conspiracy to leak classified information to The New York Times. The government’s decision to use a criminal information rather than an indictment is also central to the dispute.
In a motion to dismiss filed Oct. 16, Comey argued that the extended 10-year statute of limitations expired on the alleged Oct. 5, 2016, offense because a grand jury never indicted him.
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“The criminal information charging Mr. Comey should be dismissed as time barred,” the motion stated. It argued that Section 19 of the Internal Security Act permits the government to use an extended 10-year limitations period for Section 793 offenses only when it obtains a grand jury indictment. Because prosecutors can file a criminal information without grand jury involvement, Comey’s lawyers said, that charging document does not meet the law’s requirement.
The filing also challenged what it called the Trump administration’s “unusual and improper approach to charging” Comey. His attorneys said the case was brought for an offense that two other prosecutors had previously declined to pursue, creating what they described as a “fatal problem.”
Court documents show that Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter and Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh filed the criminal information. Both are senior Justice Department officials, but neither serves as a prosecutor in the office of U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro.
Three special assistant U.S. attorneys are also on the case: Patrick Hopple, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s deputy general counsel; Justin Meckler Silverberg; and Dustin Farahnak.
The government disputes Comey’s interpretation, calling him “mistaken.”
In its response, the DOJ argued that Congress had no need to use the term “information” in the statute and therefore did not intend to limit the extended 10-year window to Espionage Act indictments alone.
In a post on X, the DOJ stated that filing a “criminal information to toll the statute of limitations is a widely recognized practice in federal court” that has “been approved by multiple Circuit Courts of Appeals.”
The Trump DOJ’s “unusual and improper approach” may create a “fatal problem” for the newly unsealed criminal case against James Comey.
