Comey Charged
Federal prosecutors charge former FBI Director James Comey with two new national security crimes.
James Comey faces new federal charges. Prosecutors charged the former FBI director Monday with transmitting national defense information and conspiring to transmit it, NBC News reported.
In Washington, the criminal complaint landed in U.S. District Court. According to CNBC, it says Comey directed an unnamed person, "through one or more co-conspirators," to give national defense information to a reporter at a national news outlet.
Comey's third federal case. Trump fired him as FBI director in 2017, during the bureau's investigation into ties between his 2016 campaign and Russia. The two have traded public jabs ever since, CNBC reported.
In North Carolina, he faces another indictment. It accuses him of threatening Trump's life with an Instagram photo of seashells arranged as "86 47," a number prosecutors say pointed to violence against the 47th president. Comey is asking a judge to dismiss the case, according to CNBC.
A federal grand jury in Virginia indicted Comey first, in September 2025, charging him with lying to Congress and obstruction. On Nov. 24, a judge dismissed that case, ruling that Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney who brought it, had been invalidly appointed, CNBC reported. That same judge, on that same day, tossed an unrelated indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James, another Trump critic.
The new charges surfaced hours after a separate ruling. U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman found Monday that the Justice Department had illegally fired Maurene Comey, James Comey's daughter and a former assistant U.S. attorney, in July 2025, according to the Guardian and Al Jazeera. Furman ordered her reinstated. Back pay runs through Dec. 20.
The Justice Department argues the president has wide latitude to remove federal employees without cause, Al Jazeera reported. It said Monday it disagrees with Furman's ruling and plans to appeal. Maurene Comey's lawyers called the decision "a hard-earned victory" for "all civil servants, and all fighting for the rule of law," the Guardian reported.
Comey addressed the new charges in a video posted to Substack. "I'm still innocent, I'm still not afraid of these people, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary," he said, according to CNBC.