Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted Thursday, days after President Donald Trump publicly said that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi should prosecute him and two other political adversaries.
The indictment includes two counts: making a false statement and obstruction of a congressional proceeding.
The charges stem from testimony Comey gave on Sept. 30, 2020, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Asked by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about testimony he gave in 2017 asserting that he did not authorize leaking information regarding the FBI’s investigations into President Donald Trump or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Comey said, “I stand by the testimony.”
Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, has said that Comey authorized him to leak information to the press, according to a 2018 Justice Department inspector general’s report. But the report also found that McCabe made multiple false or misleading statements.
The statute of limitations for the charges was set to expire Tuesday. Comey could face a maximum of five years in prison if he is convicted.
Trump celebrated the indictment.
“JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey,” Trump said in a social Truth Social post Thursday night.
Bondi said in a post on X that the indictment “reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.” The statement did not name Comey.
Comey denied the charges against him in a video posted on Instagram.
“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either,” Comey said.
“My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system. I’m innocent, so let’s have a trial and keep the faith,” he added.
His arraignment is set for Oct. 9 before U.S. District Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff, an appointee of former President Joe Biden.
Trump has reversed reforms enacted after the Watergate scandal to prevent presidents from ordering the Justice Department to prosecute their political rivals. For the last 50 years, Republican and Democratic presidents have allowed Justice Department officials to decide whether a prosecution is merited.
Since starting his second term, Trump has appointed lawyers who served as his personal defense attorneys to top DOJ positions, pardoned over 1,000 people charged in the Jan. 6 attack and publicly pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate his foes.
Lindsey Halligan, the new acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, brought the charges against Comey despite concerns from prosecutors within her department.
“The charges as alleged in this case represent a breach of the public trust at an extraordinary level,” Halligan said in a statement Thursday.
Prior to the charges, a senior Justice Department official told NBC News that career prosecutors in Halligan’s office sent her a memo documenting why they believed that probable cause did not exist to secure an indictment against Comey.
Comey’s indictment was handed down by a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., in the Eastern District of Virginia. His case was the final one referred to the court after several other unrelated ones were read.
The grand jury failed to return an indictment on an additional count of making a false statement, according to court filings.
There was some confusion in the courtroom and from Judge Lindsey Vaala, who was puzzled by multiple charging documents filed in the same case. Vaala asked why there were two documents in the same case. Halligan told her, “I did not see,” to which Vaala replied, “It has your signature on it.”
Vaala then had Halligan make handwritten changes to one of the documents and said both documents would be uploaded to the docket for the record.
It’s rare to see only the name of the U.S. attorney, in this case Halligan, on the docket and only her signature on the indictment. Usually there are several assistant U.S. attorneys listed, not just the U.S. attorney.
The indictment comes less than a week after Trump, in a Sept. 20 social media post addressed to Bondi, pressed her on Comey and other prominent critics, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” Trump wrote.
Trump doubled down on his comments later that day, telling reporters, “If they’re not guilty, that’s fine. If they are guilty, or if they should be judged, they should be judged. And we have to do it now.”
Trump appointed Halligan, who represented him during his classified documents case, after expressing frustration that her predecessor, acting U.S. Attorney Erik S. Siebert, had not brought fraud charges against James.
In a social social media post Thursday night, Schiff said Trump had “forced out” Siebert because he “wouldn’t go along with Trump’s demands for political prosecutions.”
“Less than a week later, his inexperienced handpicked successor brings charges against a member of Trump’s enemies list,” Schiff wrote. “In my almost six years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, I never witnessed such a blatant abuse of the department. The DOJ is now little more than an arm of the president’s retribution campaign.”
Asked earlier Thursday about a potential indictment of Comey, Trump said he believed he could “get involved” if he wanted to and that the former FBI director is a “bad person.”
“I think I’d be allowed to get involved if I want, but I don’t really choose to do so,” Trump added. “I can only say that Comey is a bad person. He’s a sick person.”
Comey has been in the president’s crosshairs since the FBI, under Comey’s direction, launched an investigation into Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential race and potential ties to the Trump campaign. After Trump’s first inauguration, he and Comey clashed privately over the investigation, according to testimony Comey gave to Congress in 2017 and his 2018 memoir.
Comey was fired in May 2017, leading then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appoint Robert Mueller to take over the Russia probe.
Comey emerged as a prominent Trump critic after his firing, calling the president an “unethical” man who was “untethered to truth” in the 2018 book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership.”
During Trump’s first term, the president directed then-special counsel John Durham to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation. Durham’s team did not charge Comey with a crime.
FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement posted on social media after Comey’s indictment that the bureau was looking to reverse “weaponized federal law enforcement” from past “corrupt leadership.”
“Nowhere was this politicization of law enforcement more blatant than during the Russiagate hoax, a disgraceful chapter in history we continue to investigate and expose,” Patel wrote.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service also investigated Comey earlier this year over a photo showing shells on a beach formed into the numbers “86 47” that he posted on social media in May, which some U.S. officials viewed as calling for Trump’s assassination.
Comey said during an MSNBC interview after the incident that he hadn’t envisioned the post would cause controversy, and warned about “the use of power to aim at individuals, eroding the rule of law.”
Michael Kosnar and Chloe Atkins contributed.
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