Comey's Lawyers Seek to Block Justice Department Prosecution

Lawyers for former FBI Director James Comey are scheduled to ask a federal judge on Friday to halt the Justice Department's efforts to prosecute him for a third time. The legal team argues that the current case, based on allegations of a decade-old news media leak, is legally invalid and part of a politically charged effort preceding the midterm elections.

Court documents unsealed this week revealed that the Trump administration bypassed a grand jury to file a charging document known as a "criminal information." The Justice Department stated this maneuver was intended to extend the legal timeframe for seeking a grand jury indictment, a justification Comey's lawyers dispute.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, appointed by Trump, is expected to hear arguments on the validity of the prosecution. Comey maintains his innocence in the allegations.

The push to prosecute Comey, who was fired by President Donald Trump in May 2017 while leading the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, is seen as part of a series of politically charged actions by the department. Comey and Trump have been at odds since Comey's dismissal, with Comey publishing a book critical of Trump and the president frequently calling for Comey's imprisonment.

This is not the first legal challenge against Comey. A previous criminal case filed in federal court in Virginia accused him of lying to Congress in 2020. However, a judge dismissed that case, ruling that the prosecutor who brought the charges had been illegally appointed.

A separate pending indictment charges Comey with threatening Trump through an Instagram photo of seashells arranged in a pattern interpreted as "86 47," where "86" is slang for dismissal and Trump is the 47th president. Comey has also sought to dismiss this indictment.

"It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice — one that we cannot become numb to," Comey said in a video statement Monday. "Nothing’s changed with me; I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid of these people — and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary."

The latest allegations stem from an October 2016 New York Times story concerning a secret court order that required Yahoo to scan emails for messages possibly linked to a foreign terrorist organization. The story cited anonymous government officials regarding the order from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge, which Yahoo was barred from publicly disclosing.

Federal authorities, including prosecutor John Durham, began investigating the disclosure in early 2017. Durham, who later investigated the FBI's handling of the Russia probe, wrote a classified memo in December 2018 recommending no criminal charges in connection with the leak, according to Comey's attorneys. The U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia opened a second investigation into the same matter in 2019, but it was closed without charges in early 2020.