Former FBI director James Comey has accused the Trump administration of an “appalling abuse” of its powers, after it laid charges against him for the third time in just over a year.
Comey on Monday won a judicial order to unseal court documents to reveal the latest attack on him, over a decade-old alleged leak of classified information.
Comey was fired by Donald Trump in 2017 after he oversaw an investigation into potential ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian intelligence.
He has publicly feuded with Trump ever since. His 2018 memoir called Trump “unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values” and compared him to a mafia don.
In return, Trump has called Comey a “slimeball”, “either very sick or very dumb” and “a corrupt piece of garbage”.
Last September Trump issued a Truth Social post – possibly intended as a direct message – calling for Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute Comey, and less than a week later the first indictment was laid.
‘It would almost be funny’
According to unsealed court documents, the government charged Comey in early October over his conduct in mid-October 2016 when he was director of the FBI: one charge of transmitting a “sensitive document related to the national defense to a person not entitled to receive it”, and another count of conspiracy with “others known and unknown” in relation to the first count.
The charges are over an article in the New York Times about secret email surveillance being used to combat terrorism. It sourced the scoop to “two government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity”.
The government alleges that Comey had directed staff to pass classified information to the NYT reporter, in order to correct the record over a previous inaccurate report from Reuters.
In a video on social media on Monday, Comey said “It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice – one that we cannot become numb to.”
“Nothing’s changed with me, I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid of these people, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary, ” he said. “We’ll stand up in court and fight the latest and whatever comes after this.”
Comey’s lawyers have asked the judge to dismiss the charges before trial, arguing the government has not laid a grand jury indictment within the ten-year statute of limitations. They said the alleged disclosure of classified information to the newspaper was “investigated by two separate US attorneys over the past ten years [and] both declined to prosecute”.
They said the government had taken an “unusual and improper approach to charging [Comey]” and called on the judge to unseal the proceedings because “sunlight is the best disinfectant”.
In response, the DOJ lawyers said they had filed an official “information” of the charges in order to keep them alive before an indictiment is laid, despite the ten year hiatus.
‘The process is the punishment’
Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner told the BBC there was a “track record of the current administration going after the former director of the FBI over and over again unsuccessfully”.
“You have to wonder if this is just more of the same,” he said. “It seems like this is a revenge-fuelled attempt by Donald Trump to have his Department of Justice find something that might stick.”
Kirschner said Comey had a good chance of getting the charges dismissed, as the government’s ploy to keep them alive without a grand jury indictment was on shaky legal ground.
“It really does seem to expose the weakness of this administration and its department of justice in trying to come up with some sort of a criminal charge,” he said.
“They are putting [Comey] through a very difficult time, he is now facing 10 years on each of the two charges that have been brought.
“It requires him to hire counsel, it probably results in sleepless nights for him and his family and it feels like this administration is using the process as the punishment, not necessarily the prospect of a successful prosecution.”
“[But Trump] is clearly not letting go of James Comey.”
‘The great seashell caper’
In May 2025, after Trump’s return to office, Comey posted a photo on Instagram of some seashells on a beach arranged to say “86 47”, remarking “cool shell formation on my beach walk”.
The numbers combine a slang term for getting rid of something, and 47 referring to Trump, the 47th president.
He was accused of calling for Trump’s assassination. Comey took down the post, saying he thought it was a political slogan and had not realised some people would see a violent connotation.
But in April this year the DOJ secured a grand jury indictment on a charge that Comey “did knowingly and wilfully make a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States”.
In response, Comey’s lawyers said 86 47 was a “well-known political slogan that expresses opposition to the president” and that interpreting the post as a “true threat” was “contradicted by every possible source of meaning: dictionaries, context, precedent and common sense”.
“86 simply means ‘get rid of’,” they said. “Allowing this prosecution to proceed would sharply depart from our nation’s history and tradition.”
Kirschner said the indictment, which he calls the “great seashell caper”, may be dismissed before trial.
“For the Department of Justice to say that is an assassination attempt when he simply posted that picture of those seashells on Instagram, I think really strains credulity.”
Charge dismissed
In September last year the DOJ charged Comey with making ” fraudulent statements” by telling a Senate Judiciary Committee had not “authorised someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports”.
Comey’s lawyers told the court the president was using the DOJ to “bring a criminal prosecution against a vocal and prominent critic in order to punish and deter those who would speak out against him”, and asked the judge to rule it was a vindictive prosecution. They also alleged procedural irregularities in bringing the prosecution.
A judge dismissed the indictment in November, finding that the attorney behind it had been improperly appointed.
Kirschner said this case had been “tossed out by the judge at the earliest possible stage”, even before the defence got around to arguing its “strong claim” that it was a vindictive prosecution.