Former FBI Director James Comey in Washington in 2020. A federal grand jury in Virginia has indicted Comey. Photo / Jared Soares, The New York Times
The indictment of former FBI director James Comey is a culmination of United States President Donald Trump’s relentless demand for retribution after the bureau investigated his 2016 presidential campaign over possible ties to Russia.
Comey was indicted by a federal grand jury today on one count of making a false statement and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding in connection with his testimony before a Senate committee on September 30, 2020.
The indictment, filed in Alexandria, Virginia, came over the objection of career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia who found insufficient evidence to support charges.
They were overruled by Lindsey Halligan, a former Trump defence lawyer handpicked by the President to run the office a few days ago.
It represents the most significant legal step yet by the Trump Administration to harry, punish, and humiliate a former official the President identified as an enemy.
It’s at the expense of procedural safeguards intended to shield the Justice Department from political interference and personal vendettas.
The bare-bones, two-page indictment was signed only by Halligan, a Trump loyalist who had no previous prosecutorial experience.
Typically, such filings are also endorsed by career prosecutors who have gathered the evidence in the case.
Comey, in a video statement, declared his innocence and welcomed an opportunity to vindicate himself in a trial. “We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either.”
“Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant” — a reference to his daughter Maurene who was fired this summer from her own post in the Justice Department — “and she’s right, but I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either.”
Comey faces up to five years in prison if convicted, although many current and former prosecutors believe the case will be difficult to prove.
Troy Edwards jnr, Comey’s son-in-law, resigned his post as a prosecutor in the office that brought charges against the former FBI director shortly after the indictment was made public.
Edwards, who helped prosecute January 6 rioters — including members of the Oath Keepers — said he left to “uphold his duty to the Constitution and country”, in an email to his supervisor.
Many current and former Justice Department officials said they viewed the filing of criminal charges against Comey, based on what they considered weak evidence, as deeply troubling.
The consequences could be far-reaching, they argued, including the resignations of more prosecutors over how the Trump Administration has sought to use the agency, and the erosion of public trust in US Attorneys.
Last week, Trump, impatient with the lack of charges against two of his most frequent targets, forced out the US Attorney overseeing those investigations, Erik Siebert, in the Eastern District of Virginia. In his place, the President installed Halligan.
The investigation into Comey has focused in part on whether he misled lawmakers during testimony in September 2020 about the Russia investigation.
The statute of limitations on that testimony expires next week, meaning the clock was ticking on any related charges.
Trump has long sought to turn the criminal justice system against those who have investigated him.
Unlike during his first term, Trump has stocked the uppermost positions of the Justice Department with fierce loyalists.
They have pursued a criminal investigation into Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan and others who, in Trump’s telling, have plotted against him.
After securing the indictment, Halligan entered a magistrate judge’s courtroom to notify the judiciary of the outcome with a group of nearly a dozen prosecutors.
The judge, Lindsey Vaala of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, initially appeared confused, and noted that the grand jury did not indict Comey on one of the charges but voted to charge him on two other counts.
“I’m a little confused,” she said. “This has never happened before.”
Vaala also recognised the unusual hour that the hearing was being held. “I don’t think we’ve ever met this late,” Vaala told one of the jurors, thanking them for their service.
Comey is not the first former head of the FBI to face criminal charges.
In 1978, a former acting head of the bureau during Watergate, L. Patrick Gray, was indicted on charges of conspiring to violate the constitutional rights of Americans.
Prosecutors said he authorised agents to break into homes without warrants, in a hunt for fugitive members of Weather Underground, the far-left militant group. The charges against Gray were dropped two years later.
Comey, who was confirmed as the seventh director of the FBI in 2013, was abruptly fired by Trump four years later, as his bureau investigated whether members of Trump’s campaign had conspired with Russian intelligence operatives seeking to interfere in the 2016 election.
Comey’s firing eventually led to the appointment of a special counsel, Robert Mueller, to oversee the Russia investigation, a fraught two years from which Trump emerged with his presidency more or less intact.
Trump’s enmity only intensified over the years, as he railed against what he called a “witch hunt”.
Comey, in turn, became one of the most high-profile critics of the President, comparing him to a mafia boss.
As Trump campaigned for a second term and faced multiple criminal indictments over whether he sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election and over his handling of classified documents after he left office, Comey warned that a second Trump presidency posed “a danger to all Americans”.
By then, there was little doubt that Trump’s return to the White House posed a particular danger to Comey.
The case in the Eastern District of Virginia is one of three that the Trump Administration has opened related to Comey, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
In the Western District of Virginia, federal prosecutors and agents have in recent weeks interviewed a number of former FBI officials about how certain classified documents related to the Russia inquiry came to be found in certain parts of FBI headquarters in 2025.
That investigation, according to those familiar with the effort, is premised on an unsubstantiated theory pushed by Trump supporters that senior intelligence officials at the FBI and elsewhere tried to hide or destroy secret documents that might cast doubt on the investigation, also known as Crossfire Hurricane.
The inquiry has bewildered many current and former law enforcement officials, since the printed copies of classified documents have for decades been backed up on computers.
The justification for directing prosecutors in Virginia to investigate Comey’s congressional testimony was that he testified remotely during the pandemic, from his Virginia home.
Some Trump Administration officials have been reluctant to empanel grand juries in Washington in politically sensitive cases because of concerns that jurors and grand jurors in the largely Democratic city will be resistant to cases against Trump’s perceived foes.
Todd Gilbert, the US Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, abruptly resigned over the summer, only a month after being appointed to the job. The office has declined to give a reason for Gilbert’s sudden departure.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Devlin Barrett, Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer
Photographs by: Jared Soares, Haiyun Jiang
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