Comey charged for a third time as prosecutors revive a 2016 leak allegation

Federal prosecutors in Washington have charged former FBI director James Comey with unlawfully passing national defence information to a reporter a decade ago, opening the third criminal case against him since Donald Trump returned to the White House. The charging document was unsealed on Monday 26 October 2026 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, after being filed under seal three weeks earlier. Comey responded within hours in a video statement, calling the charges an abuse of the Justice Department and insisting he is innocent. Read more: Two men charged under National Security Act over incident at RAF Fairford

The case turns on a single alleged disclosure, and on whether prosecutors acted in time. According to the three-page criminal information, Comey — while entrusted with information relating to the national defence — knowingly and wilfully communicated it to a person not entitled to receive it, and conspired to do so by directing another person, through one or more co-conspirators, to disclose it to a reporter for a national news publication. The document does not describe the information, name the reporter or the publication, or identify the alleged co-conspirators. It also seeks forfeiture of any proceeds traceable to the offences, according to a review of the filing.

The key figures

Key figures

Measure	Figure	Source
Counts charged	2	Court filing
Alleged disclosure	5 October 2016	Court filing
Filed under seal	5 October 2026	Court filing
Unsealed	26 October 2026	Court filing
Statute of limitations	10 years	Court filing, via reports
Court docket	1:26-cr-00229-TNM	US District Court, via reports

The defence case

Comey's lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, has said the case concerns a New York Times article published on 5 October 2016 about United States government email surveillance, and that the disclosure at issue was aimed at correcting inaccurate reporting by Reuters about whether Yahoo had built a system to scan incoming emails for information supplied by intelligence officials. Fitzgerald has also said the matter was investigated twice before — including by former special counsel John Durham — and that both investigations ended without criminal charges. On that basis, the defence has asked the judge to dismiss the case, arguing that prosecutors needed a grand jury indictment within the ten-year deadline, and that a criminal information filed by prosecutors alone does not satisfy it.

The Justice Department takes the opposite view. It has told reporters that filing the information paused the limitations clock, a practice it describes as widely recognised, and that federal appeals courts have allowed informations to suspend the deadline while prosecutors pursue an indictment. The department has also said the investigation is ongoing and declined further comment. The judge who unsealed the document, Trevor McFadden, did so at Comey's request, with prosecutors not opposing — a detail that underlines how much of this fight is procedural before it is ever about the underlying facts.

A third case in a long-running conflict

This is the third time prosecutors have charged Comey since January 2025, and the history matters to how the new case will be read. The first case, alleging false statements to Congress and obstruction, was thrown out by a federal judge on the grounds that the prosecutor who brought it had been unlawfully appointed. The second, over a social-media post showing the numbers "86 47" spelled out in seashells, remains contested — prosecutors say it threatened the president, Comey says it did not. Comey himself framed the new case in the same terms as the old ones. "It would almost be funny if it weren't such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice, one we cannot become numb to," he said in his video response. "Nothing's changed with me, I'm still innocent, I'm still not afraid of these people."

The timing added another layer. The charges became public only hours after a federal judge ruled that the Justice Department had unlawfully fired Comey's daughter, Maurene Comey, from her post as a federal prosecutor in New York — a ruling reported by several outlets on the same day. Neither the department nor the White House has publicly linked the two events, and the filing itself says nothing about them. But the coincidence has already shaped the political argument around the case, with Comey's supporters calling it retaliation and his critics calling it long-overdue accountability. Both characterisations are arguments, not findings, and neither settles whether the disclosure alleged in the filing actually happened.

What happens next

Comey has not entered a plea in the new case, and no trial date has been set. The immediate question is the dismissal motion: if the judge accepts that the ten-year deadline required a grand jury indictment, the case ends before any evidence is heard; if the judge accepts the department's reading, the case proceeds and prosecutors must still prove, with evidence, that the information disclosed was national defence information and that Comey directed its disclosure. Either way, the allegations remain allegations until a court decides otherwise. Europe Unfolded will report the judge's ruling and any further filings when they are confirmed, not the claims made before them.

Updates & corrections

Published 28 October 2026.

No updates or corrections have been made to this article since publication.

Sources

• USA Today, 26 October 2026, on the charges, the two counts and Comey's denial: usatoday.com
• Malay Mail (AFP), 27 October 2026, on the unsealed complaint, the earlier cases and Comey's video response: malaymail.com
• Crosswire News, 26–27 October 2026, on the sealed filing, the unsealing judge and the limitations argument: crosswirenews.com
• Law Commentary, 26 October 2026, on the defence account of the 2016 article and the earlier investigations: lawcommentary.com
• The Digital Free Press, 27 October 2026, on the filing's wording, the counts and the statute cited: thedigitalfreepress.com
• EconoTimes, 27 October 2026, on the docket number, the filing's contents and the Justice Department's position: econotimes.com

If you spot an error, see our Corrections Policy.