Two leak counts filed in Washington
Federal prosecutors in Washington have accused former FBI director James Comey of two counts of leaking material tied to national defense, according to court papers made public on Monday. The filing offers little detail about what exactly Comey is said to have disclosed. The government contends that the leak occurred in 2016 and that Comey worked with a person who is not named to pass the material to a national news organization.[S1][S2][S3][S4][S5][S6][S7]
The charges were submitted through a procedure known as an information rather than through a grand jury indictment. Prosecutors will still need a grand jury to approve the counts eventually, but using an information appears aimed at getting the case on file before the ten-year statute of limitations runs out.[S1]
Defense says the deadline has passed
Patrick Fitzgerald, Comey's lawyer, said the counts concern an article published by the New York Times on 5 October 2016 that prosecutors had already examined. In a statement, Fitzgerald said the government had filed an information against his client a decade after the article appeared, without approval from a judge or a grand jury, and he described the charges as alleging conduct Comey did not commit.[S1]
In a court filing unsealed on Monday, Comey's legal team argued that the indictment should be thrown out because the limitations period had lapsed and because the matter had been investigated twice with no charges recommended. The lawyers also maintained that the law called for an indictment, not an information, within the ten-year window.[S1]
A history of clashes with Trump
Trump dismissed Comey in 2017 while the FBI director was overseeing an inquiry into whether allies of the president coordinated with Russia during the 2016 election campaign. Since then, Comey has become a vocal critic of Trump.[S1]
Last year the Justice Department accused Comey of lying to Congress, but a judge dismissed that case after finding that the prosecutor assigned to it, a White House ally brought in to handle the matter, had been appointed unlawfully. Earlier this year, prosecutors in North Carolina charged Comey over a photograph he posted of seashells arranged to spell 8647, a sequence some read as a call to remove Trump; legal analysts have called that case weak.[S1]
In a video posted online, Comey said the department was back again and described the pursuit as an appalling abuse of the Justice Department that the public must not grow numb to.[S1]
