Officials Just Hit James Comey With New Case Alleging Espionage Act Crimes Right in the Nick of Time

A judge threw out one criminal case against James Comey earlier this year.

But now prosecutors came back with a charge buried in a leak from 2016.

They filed the new charges just days before the statute of limitations expired.

Prosecutors Needed a Workaround to Beat the Statute of Limitations

The Justice Department unsealed a third federal case against James Comey, the former FBI director, centered on a 2016 leak of national defense information.

Prosecutors say Comey directed a subordinate to disclose classified details to New York Times reporter Charlie Savage, who published a story on October 5, 2016 about Yahoo scanning customer emails under a secret surveillance order.

The filing says Comey wanted to correct inaccurate reporting that Reuters had published the day before, and that fixing the record meant handing a reporter information he had no authority to share.

Prosecutors filed the case on October 5 as a "criminal information" rather than seeking a grand jury indictment, a move the Justice Department says was used specifically to beat the ten-year statute of limitations before it expired. Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Farahnak later identified Savage as the reporter in an October 23 filing.

A grand jury is a panel of ordinary citizens deciding whether there is enough evidence to charge someone. Skipping that step and filing paperwork straight out of a prosecutor's office is what happens when the calendar, not the evidence, is forcing the government's hand.

Judge Trevor McFadden unsealed the proceedings after Comey asked him to, noting that charges against a former FBI director carry obvious public interest.

Comey faces two counts under the Espionage Act, each carrying the possibility of years behind bars.

John Durham's Team Already Investigated This Exact Leak and Passed

Federal investigators have looked at this exact leak before, and twice they walked away.

John Durham opened a probe called Tropic Vortex into the same 2016 Times story back when he served as a U.S. Attorney during Trump's first term.

The D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office later took over that investigation.

Those 2017 memos quote former FBI general counsel James Baker saying he believed he had Comey's authorization to talk to reporters about the matter. That is about as close to a confession as this case has ever produced.

Even with that on the record, two separate prosecution teams passed on charging anyone, and the office formally closed the case in January 2020.

A third team, under a different administration, just decided they were wrong.

Why Prosecutors Are Still Chasing James Comey After Two Lost Cases

Comey's lawyer Patrick Fitzgerald called this the third attempt to charge his client "in little more than one year," and he is not wrong about the pattern.

The first case accused Comey of lying to Congress about authorizing a leak to his friend Daniel Richman. A judge dismissed it in November 2025 after ruling the prosecutor who brought it, Lindsey Halligan, had been unlawfully appointed.

The second case, still pending trial in February 2027, charges Comey over a seashell photo captioned "86 47" that prosecutors call a threat against President Trump.

Comey posted a video calling the new charges an abuse of the Justice Department and insisting nothing has changed. "I'm still innocent," he said.

Charging someone under the Espionage Act carries far higher stakes than the lying-to-Congress count a judge already threw out, and prosecutors clearly know it.

This Justice Department just told every official who ever leaked and walked away that the file never actually closed.

Comey bet on that clock running out quietly. It did not.

Sources:

• The Federalist, "James Comey Faces New Charges in Alleged New York Times Leak," The Federalist, October 27, 2026.
• Just the News, "New Federal Case Against James Comey Centers Again on Alleged Leak of Classified Information," Just the News, October 27, 2026.
• The Washington Times, "Justice Department Charges Former FBI Director James Comey in New Case," The Washington Times, October 26, 2026.