BREAKING: DOJ Charges Former FBI Director James Comey With…

Former FBI Director James Comey has been charged with violating the Espionage Act, and the court filing behind the case stayed under seal for three weeks before the public found out. It is the third time in just over a year that the Justice Department has gone after him.

Prosecutors filed the charges on October 5, 2026, in federal court in Washington, D.C. The case was made public on Monday, October 26, after Comey’s own lawyers asked a judge to dismiss it and unseal the paperwork.

The filing accuses Comey of two felonies: unauthorized transmission of national defense information, and conspiracy to transmit that information. Both counts fall under Section 793 of the Espionage Act, and each carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.

According to the government, Comey directed the disclosure of national defense information to a reporter in 2016. The case is tied to an October 5, 2016 article in The New York Times.

The date of the filing is no coincidence. The statute of limitations for the offense is ten years, and the alleged disclosure took place on October 5, 2016. Prosecutors filed on the tenth anniversary.

A Justice Department spokesperson said the department filed a waiverless criminal information to toll the statute of limitations. In plain English, prosecutors used a charging document that does not require a grand jury in order to stop the clock from running out.

That choice is now the center of a legal fight. Comey has not been indicted by a grand jury in this case, and he cannot be tried on the information alone unless he waives his right to an indictment.

Comey’s lawyers argue the government filed a faulty information under seal in an effort to run out the clock, and they say the limitations period applies to indictments and cannot be extended this way. The Justice Department counters that the request to dismiss is premature because no indictment has been returned yet.

In an emergency hearing, the government agreed to hold off on seeking an indictment for 30 days, according to Comey’s attorneys. That window, and what prosecutors do inside it, may determine whether the case survives.

The case has been assigned to Judge Trevor McFadden. How he rules on the limitations question could shape the entire prosecution.

Comey’s lawyers also claimed in a court filing that multiple federal law enforcement officers have surveilled his movements in recent days. That claim comes from the defense filing.

Comey responded with a video on Monday and said he remains innocent.

This is Comey’s third federal case in 13 months. The first, filed in September 2025, accused him of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding over his 2020 Senate testimony. A federal judge dismissed it after finding that Lindsey Halligan, who secured the indictment, was unlawfully appointed as U.S. attorney. The Justice Department has appealed.

The second came in April 2026 in the Eastern District of North Carolina, where prosecutors accused Comey of threatening President Donald Trump by posting a photo of seashells arranged to read 86 47.

Now comes the Espionage Act case, the most serious of the three in terms of the statute involved. Section 793 deals with the handling and disclosure of national defense information, and it is the same statute that was invoked in the classified documents case against President Trump during the Biden years.

Conservatives have long argued that Comey presided over a politicized FBI during the Russia investigation, and many see this prosecution as accountability that was years in coming. Trump fired Comey in May 2017 and has repeatedly demanded that he be prosecuted.

Supporters of the effort point out that the statute of limitations forced prosecutors’ hand, and that the law does not exempt former officials, no matter how high their rank was.