Justice Department charges former FBI Director James Comey with leaking classified information

A former top federal law enforcement official faces criminal prosecution by the Justice Department over alleged disclosures of classified information from 2016, involving questions regarding the statute of limitations and the use of criminal information instead of an indictment.

• •Former FBI Director James Comey was charged by the Justice Department with two counts of transmitting and conspiring to transmit national defense information.
• •The charges stem from an allegation that Comey directed an individual to share classified information with a reporter from The New York Times in October 2016.
• •A federal judge unsealed the complaint on Monday after Comey requested its release.
• •Comey denied wrongdoing in a video posted to his Substack account, calling the prosecution an abuse of the Department of Justice.
• •Comey's lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing the charges are time-barred because the government used a criminal information instead of securing a grand jury indictment.
• •Two separate U.S. attorney's offices previously investigated the disclosure and declined to bring charges.
• •This is the third time the Justice Department has pursued charges against Comey.
• •Comey also faces federal charges in North Carolina regarding a social media post depicting seashells.
• •A previous attempt to prosecute Comey for alleged false congressional testimony in 2020 collapsed after a judge ruled the assigned U.S. attorney was unlawfully appointed.