On October 26, 2026, Judge Trevor McFadden of the federal court in Washington unsealed a criminal case the Justice Department filed against former FBI Director James Comey on October 5 (United States v. Comey, 1:26-cr-00229). It is the third federal case against Comey, NBC News reported. The two counts, under the Espionage Act's 18 U.S.C. 793(d) and (g), concern an October 5, 2016 New York Times article about Yahoo and email surveillance, and the case was filed ten years to the day after it.
The charge is a criminal information, which prosecutors file on their own, not a grand jury indictment. A department spokesperson said it was filed to toll, or pause, the 10-year statute of limitations; Comey's lawyers say the law required the government to act “by obtaining a grand jury indictment.” He cannot be tried on the information unless he waives indictment, and he has not been arrested or arraigned. At an October 9 hearing, his lawyers wrote, the government agreed not to seek an indictment for 30 days while their motion to dismiss is pending.
Prosecutors allege that Comey “directed staff to speak to Mr. Savage about specific accuracy concerns related to the Reuters article, and thereby illegally transferred classified information,” referring to Times reporter Charlie Savage. The information is signed by Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter, another senior department official, Aakash Singh, and three special assistant U.S. attorneys; CBS News called the senior officials' signatures an unusual move. Comey's lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, said two teams of prosecutors in Trump's first term investigated the same article and “determined that no charges should be brought against anyone.”
Comey called the case “such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice, one that we cannot become numb to.” Asked about it, Trump said, “I think he's a dirty cop, James Comey, but I know nothing about it,” CBS reported. The department said, “Filing a criminal information to toll the statute of limitations is a widely recognized practice in federal court and has been approved by multiple Circuit Courts of Appeals.” Greg Rosen, a former federal prosecutor in Washington, told NBC News the filing is “exactly what it appears to be: vindictive.”
It is the third case against Comey in Trump's second term. A 2025 indictment for false statements to Congress was dismissed because the prosecutor who obtained it had been unlawfully appointed (see A Judge Throws Out the Comey and Letitia James Indictments Because Trump's Hand-Picked Prosecutor Was Unlawfully Appointed), and an April 2026 indictment over an Instagram photo of seashells is pending in North Carolina (see Comey Is Indicted a Second Time, Now for an Instagram Photo of Seashells Spelling '86 47'). McFadden, a Trump appointee, unsealed the case at Comey's request without opposition from the government and has not ruled on the motion to dismiss. Hours earlier, a judge ruled that the department had unlawfully fired Comey's daughter (see Judge Rules Trump's Justice Department Illegally Fired Prosecutor Maurene Comey, Orders Back Pay).