Former FBI Director James Comey has been charged by federal prosecutors with transmission of national defense information and conspiracy to transmit national defense information.
It’s the third federal case against Comey, who has been a longtime Trump target since he initiated the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The case has played out under seal since Oct. 5.
Comey’s defense attorneys filed a motion 10 days ago to dismiss the charges against him. He has not been indicted in the case.
In a video Monday, Comey responded to the new charges.
“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 he posted on Substack after the charges were made public.
“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,” he said.
The new charges stem from an Oct. 5, 2016, article in The New York Times with the headline “Yahoo Said to Have Aided U.S. Email Surveillance by Adapting Spam Filter” by reporter Charlie Savage.
“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,” Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Farahnak wrote in a filing unsealed Monday. “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.”
Comey’s attorneys argued both counts “are based exclusively on the October 5, 2016, alleged disclosure exactly ten years before the government’s filed criminal information” — and that the charges should tossed because of statute of limitations issues.
The case is “time barred,” they argue, because the government had 10 years to bring the case “by obtaining a grand jury indictment.”
The charges that were filed are a criminal information — essentially a charge filed by prosecutors — and not a grand jury indictment, and should therefore be dismissed, they argue.
Comey was the FBI director when The New York Times article was published. President Donald Trump fired him in May 2017.
The criminal case is the third to be brought against Comey since Trump’s second term began.
The first case was dismissed by a judge; the other came on April 28, when Comey was indicted in North Carolina on charges he made a threat against Trump when he posted an image of seashells arranged to read “8647.” Comey has maintained his innocence.
Dareh Gregorian contributed.
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