Judge Set to Rule on Bid to Stop Third James Comey Prosecution
Defense attorneys argue the government bypassed grand jury requirements by filing a criminal information for a 2016 leak investigation.
By Tyler Khalil ·
Former FBI Director James Comey faces a third criminal case in which the Justice Department bypassed a grand jury. Court documents unsealed Monday reveal the department filed a charging document known as a criminal information instead of seeking an indictment.
The move is the latest development in the legal battle between the agency and the former director. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump nominee, is scheduled to hear arguments on the validity of the filing on Friday.
Comey’s legal team contends the case is legally invalid because it skips the standard grand jury process. They argue the government used the alternative filing method to extend the legal time limit for seeking an indictment. The Trump administration defended the maneuver as a necessary step to keep the statute of limitations alive.
The new charges relate to an October 2016 New York Times article about a secret court order. The report stated that a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court required Yahoo to scan emails for messages linked to a foreign terrorist organization. The story cited two government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the order that barred Yahoo from disclosing it publicly.
Prosecutors have investigated this specific disclosure for nearly a decade. Federal authorities, including prosecutor John Durham, began looking into the matter in early 2017. Durham later wrote a classified memo in December 2018 recommending that no criminal charges be brought against anyone in connection with the disclosure.
A second investigation opened by the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia in 2019 also examined the issue. That probe, assigned the code name Tropical Vortex, closed in early 2020 without any charges being filed. The current filing revives the matter after these two prior reviews concluded without prosecution.
Comey has stated he remains innocent of the allegations. In a video statement released Monday, he called the new action an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice. He said he is still not afraid of the people involved and continues to believe in the independent federal judiciary.
This case follows two other legal actions against the former director. A first case filed in Virginia accused him of lying to Congress in 2020 but was dismissed after a judge ruled the prosecutor was illegally appointed. A separate pending indictment charges Comey with threatening Trump through an Instagram photo of seashells arranged in the numerical order 86 47. The former FBI director has also sought to dismiss that case. The two men have maintained a bitter relationship since Trump fired Comey in May 2017 during the Russia investigation. Comey described Trump as a corrupt mafia don in a published book, while Trump has accused Comey of treason and called for his imprisonment. These legal actions occur as the department prepares for the midterm elections next week.
