Lawyers for ex-FBI director James Comey are set to petition a federal judge to put a stop to the U.S. Justice Department’s third attempt to bring criminal charges against their client on Friday.
Comey has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump and a regular target of Republican ire ever since the president fired him in the early days of his first term.
Documents unsealed on Monday indicate that the Trump administration this month bypassed a grand jury to file what is known as a “criminal information” over an alleged news media leak from ten years ago that had already been investigated.
The DOJ says the maneuver was intended to prevent the 10-year statute of limitations from expiring before it could secure a grand jury indictment, but Comey’s counsel wants the court to dismiss the case as legally invalid. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden in Washington D.C., a Trump appointee, is due to consider the matter on Friday.
The move to prosecute Comey, who maintains his innocence, is one of several politically charged actions by the department ahead of next week’s midterms.
Obama put Comey in charge of the FBI in 2013, and he remained when Trump came to power. In that capacity, he ran the probe into whether Trump's campaign conspired with Russia to put the Republican ahead of Hillary Clinton in 2016. Since then, the two have been at each other’s throats. In a book, Comey likened Trump to a mafia don “untethered to truth,” while the president has called him a traitor and for him to be jailed.
In Virginia, a federal court threw out the first case against Comey on the grounds that the prosecutor was appointed illegally.
The charges stemmed from allegations that he lied to Congress in 2020. Another indictment is pending, alleging he threatened Trump with an Instagram post showing seashells arranged in the numbers “86 47,” with 86 being slang for getting rid of something and 47 the number of the current president. Comey has moved to have that one dismissed as well.
The new allegation concerns a New York Times report in October 2016 about a secret order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court compelling Yahoo to scan emails for possible links to a foreign terrorist group. Two officials told the paper about it anonymously.
John Durham and other federal authorities began looking into the matter in early 2017. A December 2018 classified memo from Durham, who later turned his attention to the FBI’s handling of the Russia inquiry, recommended against bringing criminal charges against anyone, according to a recent filing by Comey’s side.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia tried again in 2019 under the code name Tropic Vortex, but closed the file without charges in February 2020.
