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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. Comey has denied any wrongdoing.
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 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.
Bondi added in a statement 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.”
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.
Comey's arraignment is set for Oct. 9 before U.S. District Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff, an appointee of former President Joe Biden.
Former FBI Director James Comey testifies via videoconference during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2020. Stefani Reynolds / Pool / AFP - Getty Images file
Trump has undone norms and guidelines established after the Watergate scandal to prevent presidents from ordering the Justice Department to prosecute their political rivals. For the last 50 years, presidents have refrained from weighing in on whether the DOJ should bring prosecutions.
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 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.
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.
In a statement after the indictment, Halligan said, “The charges as alleged in this case represent a breach of the public trust at an extraordinary level.”
The indictment was handed down by a grand jury in Alexandria, in the Eastern District of Virginia. Comey's case was the final one referred to the court after several other unrelated ones were read.
The grand jury did not 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 appeared puzzled by the multiple charging documents filed for one 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.
Halligan, a former insurance lawyer with no experience as a criminal prosecutor, was sworn in this week. Her former position with the White House was a special assistant tasked with removing “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian museums. She also was part of the legal circle representing Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified records case.
For Comey, longtime federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has applied to the court to represent the former FBI director in his legal proceedings. Fitzgerald, who's a friend and associate of Comey, rose to fame as the special counsel investigating the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame which resulted in the conviction of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, for perjury and obstruction of justice.
Fitzgerald said in a statement on the indictment that Comey denies the charges "in their entirety. We look forward to vindicating him in the courtroom."
Thursday's 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.
He doubled down on the 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.”
The president's appointment of Halligan came after he expressed frustration that her predecessor, acting U.S. Attorney Erik S. Siebert, had not brought fraud charges against James.
In a post on X Thursday night, Schiff said Trump had “forced out” Siebert because the attorney “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.”
The indictment has also sparked at least one resignation.
Comey’s son-in-law, Troy Edwards, resigned as a federal prosecutor for the national security division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia shortly after the indictment, two sources familiar with the office confirmed to NBC News. Edwards said in a letter submitted to Halligan that he was stepping down “to uphold my oath to the Constitution and the country.”
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.
Trump fired Comey in May 2017, leading then-Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to appoint former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel 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, nor did Durham criticize Comey by name in his final report, though he said the FBI “discounted or willfully ignored material information that did not support the narrative of a collusive relationship between Trump and Russia.”
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.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee, issued a short statement after the indictment.
“At the time of Comey’s alleged false statements and obstruction, my colleagues and I had active investigations. If the facts and the evidence support the finding that Comey lied to Congress and obstructed our work, he ought to be held accountable,” Grassley, R-Iowa, said.
Defense attorneys for Comey are likely to cite the DOJ inspector general’s report in his defense. The report found that Comey flatly denied, under oath to investigators, authorizing the McCabe’s leak to the Wall Street Journal.
“[S]o just to make sure there’s no fuzz on it, I did not authorize this,” Comey told investigators. “I would not have authorized this.”
Investigators concluded that “the overwhelming weight of evidence supported Comey’s version of the conversation and not McCabe’s.”
The report’s final paragraph criticized McCabe and said that he had lied under oath when speaking with investigators.
“The OIG found that then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe lacked candor, including under oath, on multiple occasions in connection with describing his role in connection with a disclosure to the WSJ,” the report said. “The OIG also concluded that McCabe’s disclosure of the existence of an ongoing investigation in the manner described in this report violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct.”
The report added that, “In a letter submitted by McCabe’s counsel after reviewing a draft of this report, McCabe argues that ‘the OIG should credit Mr. McCabe’s account over Director Comey’s’ and complains that the report ‘paints Director Comey as a white knight carefully guarding FBI information, while overlooking that Mr. McCabe’s account is more credible.’”
Very few people have been convicted on charges tied to lying to Congress, in part because of how difficult they are to prove.
Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen is the most recent to spend time behind bars for that crime. He was sentenced in 2018 to three years in prison for charges that included lying to Congress and campaign violations for his role in hush money payments made to women during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. During his sentencing, Cohen said, “I want to apologize to the people of the United States. You deserve to know the truth and lying to you was unjust.”
Trump’s former adviser Roger Stone is the most recent person to get convicted. He was sentenced in 2020 for lying to Congress in connection with the Russia probe. He was later pardoned by Trump.
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.”
CORRECTION (Sept. 26, 2025, 10:13 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated who appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel. It was then-Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, not then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
[SRC] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/justice-department-charges-james-comey-lying-congress-rcna233581
