Comey has faced three distinct federal cases brought by the Department of Justice. In September 2025, he was indicted by a federal grand jury in Virginia on charges of making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding.
In April 2026, he was indicted in the Eastern District of North Carolina for threatening the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. The charges stemmed from a May 2025 Instagram post featuring seashells arranged to spell "86 47," which prosecutors alleged was a threat against President Donald Trump.
Now he is facing new federal charges over allegations that he knowingly and willfully communicated national defense or classified information to an unauthorized person regarding actions around October 2016, when Comey led the FBI investigation into alleged Russian election interference and began a decade-long feud with Trump.
Specifically, prosecutors claim he used an intermediary to send details from an intelligence document to a New York Times reporter to correct what he believed was inaccurate press reporting regarding U.S. government email surveillance.
After refusing Trump's requests for personal loyalty and continuing to investigate Trump's associates, Comey was abruptly fired in May 2017. Since then, he has been a highly vocal critic of Trump, writing a memoir comparing the president's inner circle to the mafia and endorsing his political opponents.
Now, with the 10-year statute of limitations looming, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a two-count criminal information — a formal charging document — in D.C. federal court.
Comey's defense team calls the maneuver unconstitutional and is demanding a grand jury indictment, but legal expert Gerard Filitti of The Lawfare Project explained on American Family Radio that the government chose this specific legal path to beat the clock after years of inaction.
"DOJ here found the tool that it thinks it can use best in order to preserve that statute of limitations issue," he recently told Jenna Ellis. "Ultimately, I think the speed with which the government moves to impanel a grand jury and get an indictment is what will be outcome determinative."
Comey's team argues the prosecution is a politically motivated move, but as it concerns a top official mishandling intelligence materials, Filitti says it is standard accountability — not political retaliation.
"When you're looking at this from the prism of accountability, and the director of a federal agency... deciding by himself that talking to the media about sensitive intelligence matters is worthwhile, then I think we need to question whether that decision was a sound one on his part," Filitti submits. "We're not looking for bloodletting … but prosecuting them for disclosing secrets — that's a pretty serious charge."
Noting that prosecution is necessary for serious security breaches, he warned that the broader environment of partisan legal battles continues to make public service increasingly unappealing for qualified professionals.
"Lawfare in general is to keep talented people out of Washington," the expert said. "They don't want to deal with it; they don't want to become targets."
Comey maintains his innocence as courts prepare to rule on the validity of the DOJ's filing.
