Former FBI Director James Comey speaks during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Thursday, June 8, 2017, in Washington.
Alex Brandon/AP
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Alex Brandon/AP
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is trying to prosecute James Comey over what it calls a decade-old leak of classified information, an effort that the former FBI director’s lawyers immediately rejected as invalid and outside the legal time limit during which the Justice Department can file criminal charges.
The Justice Department’s allegations were revealed Monday in newly unsealed court documents that shed light on a closed-door brawl that represents an unmistakable escalation in the administration’s targeting of Comey, a longtime critic and foe of President Donald Trump who has faced two other criminal cases since the Republican returned to the White House last year. The efforts to pursue Comey are also part of a series of politically charged investigative actions the department has undertaken in the run-up to next week’s midterm elections.
“Well, they’re back, again,” Comey said in a video statement Monday. “It would almost be funny if this wasn’t such an appalling abuse of the Justice Department – one that we cannot remain insensitive to. Nothing has changed with me; I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid of these people – and I still believe in an independent federal judiciary.”
The Justice Department said it filed what’s called a “criminal information” to extend the statute of limitations on when it can legitimately file an indictment.
“Filing a criminal complaint to impose the statute of limitations is a widely recognized practice in the federal courts and has been approved by several circuit courts of appeal. This is an ongoing criminal investigation and we will not comment further,” a department spokesperson said.
An information can be filed without the approval of a judge or without a grand jury finding probable cause in a court of law. Comey’s lawyers have made clear they intend to fight the charges as invalid and barred by a 10-year statute of limitations.
“For the third time in just over a year, the Justice Department has attempted to charge Mr. Comey with a federal crime. Mr. Comey firmly maintains his innocence,” his lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, said in a statement.
The allegation has already been investigated
The latest allegation concerns an October 2016 New York Times article regarding a secret court order requiring Yahoo to scan emails for messages potentially linked to a foreign terrorist organization. The article cited two government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity about a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge’s order barring Yahoo from making public disclosures.
Federal authorities, including prosecutor John Durham, began investigating the disclosure in early 2017. Durham, who later investigated the FBI’s conduct as it examined potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, wrote a classified memo in December 2018 recommending against criminal charges against anyone in connection with the disclosure, Comey’s lawyers said in a recent court filing.
In January 2019, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia opened a second investigation into the same case under the code name “Tropical Vortex.” But this investigation was closed without any charges being filed in February 2020.
“Both times, the government determined that no charges should be brought against anyone. Now, ten years after the article was published, the government has filed an ‘information’ against Mr. Comey that has not been approved by a judge or issued by a grand jury. It purports to accuse Mr. Comey of crimes he did not commit,” Fitzgerald said.
Prosecutors, in a newly unsealed filing, said investigators found evidence that Comey “sought to correct erroneous information that appeared in the press through Reuters the day before” and the New York Times story was published, ordered his staff to speak to a reporter at the paper regarding accuracy issues “and thereby illegally transferred classified information.”
The criminal information was filed under seal on October 6, 2016, 10 years after the story was published. “But,” Comey’s lawyers said, “the applicable statute of limitations explicitly requires an indictment within 10 years of the offense; information is not enough.”
They asked a judge to throw out the information, a request that is still pending.
Trump and Comey have a long and difficult history
The first criminal case against Comey, filed in federal court in Virginia, accused him of lying to Congress in 2020, but was thrown out by a judge who concluded that the prosecutor who brought the charges was illegally appointed. Another pending indictment accuses the former FBI director of threatening Trump via an Instagram photo of seashells in the numerical layout “86 47,” a case he sought to dismiss and some legal experts greeted with skepticism.
The cases are part of a campaign of retaliation by Trump that even extended to Comey’s daughter, Maurene, who was fired from her job as a Justice Department prosecutor in New York last year, a firing that a federal judge ruled illegal on Monday.
Comey was director of the FBI when Trump took office in 2017, having been appointed by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and previously a senior Justice Department official in the Republican administration of President George W. Bush.
But the relationship was strained from the start, notably after Comey resisted a request from Trump during a private dinner to pledge his personal loyalty to the president — an overture that so angered the FBI director that he documented it in a contemporaneous memorandum.
Trump fired Comey in May 2017 as part of an FBI investigation into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. That investigation, later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, found that although Russia had interfered in the 2016 election and the Trump team appreciated its help, there was insufficient evidence to prove criminal collaboration.
The two men have been at deep odds since Comey’s firing. Comey published a memoir in 2018, “A Higher Loyalty,” that portrayed Trump in deeply unflattering ways, comparing him to a mob don and calling him “detached from the truth.” Trump, for his part, has repeatedly asserted that Comey should face charges of “treason” — a charge Comey called “stupid lies” — and called him a “lying ball of slime.”
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