The FBI director didn’t like a news story about FBI surveillance. So, prosecutors say, he had his people call the New York Times.
That’s the picture painted by the Justice Department’s filing in its case against James Comey. Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Farahnak wrote that the investigation found Comey “sought to correct misinformation which had appeared in the press by way of Reuters the day before,” the Daily Wire reported.
Comey allegedly directed staff to talk to Times reporter Charlie Savage about “specific accuracy concerns related to the Reuters article.” According to the filing quoted by the Daily Caller, that “thereby illegally transferred classified information.”
The story at the center
The Times article ran on Oct. 5, 2016, and dealt with Yahoo’s help with U.S. government email surveillance. Comey was running the FBI at the time. Trump fired him seven months later.
Comey faces two counts: transmitting national defense information and conspiring to do so. Prosecutors filed the charges under seal on Oct. 5 of this year, exactly 10 years after the alleged leak, using a criminal information instead of a grand jury indictment. The records were unsealed Monday.
Comey’s defense: the clock
Comey’s lawyers have asked the court to throw the case out. Their lead argument is timing: the government waited too long. The charges are “based exclusively on the October 5, 2016, alleged disclosure,” they argue, and so are barred by the 10-year statute of limitations.
Comey went on social media to fight back. “It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice,” he said in a video. “I’m still innocent.”
A pile of cases
This is the third time the Justice Department has charged Comey. A 2025 case over his testimony to Congress was dismissed. A separate case over his “86 47” seashell photo is still pending. And on Monday, a federal judge ruled that his daughter, former prosecutor Maurene Comey, was unlawfully fired and ordered her reinstated. The Justice Department has said it will appeal.
The bottom line
Sit with the irony. The man who ran America’s premier spy-catching agency is accused of using his staff to feed a reporter classified details about government surveillance, because he wanted a story told his way.
This is the same James Comey who spent years lecturing the country about integrity and the sacred duty to protect secrets. His best defense now is a stopwatch.
If the law’s deadline saves him, so be it. That is his right. But “they ran out the clock” is not the same as “I’m innocent,” and the American people can tell the difference.