Ex-FBI Director James Comey indicted after Trump pushes for prosecution
of longtime foe
[September 26, 2025]
By ERIC TUCKER, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — James Comey was charged Thursday with lying to
Congress in a criminal case filed days after President Donald Trump
appeared to urge his attorney general to prosecute the former FBI
director and other perceived political enemies.
The indictment makes Comey the first former senior government official
involved in one of Trump's chief grievances, the long-concluded
investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, to face
prosecution. Trump has for years derided that investigation as a “hoax”
and a “witch hunt” despite multiple government reviews showing Moscow
interfered on behalf of the Republican’s campaign, and has made clear
his desire for retribution.
The criminal case is likely to deepen concerns that the Justice
Department under Attorney General Pam Bondi is being weaponized in
pursuit of investigations and now prosecutions of public figures the
president regards as his political enemies. It was filed as the White
House has taken steps to exert influence in unprecedented ways on the
department, blurring the line between law and politics at an agency
where independence in prosecutorial decision-making is a foundational
principle.
Trump on Thursday hailed the indictment as “JUSTICE FOR AMERICA!” Bondi,
a Trump loyalist, and FBI Director Kash Patel, a longtime vocal critic
of the Russia investigation, issued similar statements. “No one is above
the law,” Bondi said.
Comey, in a video he posted after his indictment, said: “My heart is
broken for the Department of Justice but I have great confidence in the
federal judicial system, and I'm innocent. So let's have a trial.”
Comey was fired months into Trump’s first administration and since then
has remained a top target for Trump supporters seeking retaliation
related to the Russia investigation. He was singled out by name in a
Saturday social media post in which Trump appeared to appeal directly to
Bondi bring charges against Comey and complained that Justice Department
investigations into his foes had not resulted in criminal cases.
“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and
credibility,” Trump wrote, referencing the fact that he himself had been
indicted and impeached multiple times. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
Turmoil in the office that filed the case
The office that filed the case against Comey, the Eastern District of
Virginia, was thrown into turmoil last Friday following the resignation
of chief prosecutor Erik Siebert, who had not charged Comey and had
faced pressure to bring charges against another Trump target, New York
Attorney General Letitia James, in a mortgage fraud investigation.
The following evening, Trump lamented in a Truth Social post aimed at
the attorney general that department investigations had not resulted in
prosecutions. He nominated as the new U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, a
White House aide who had been one of Trump’s personal lawyers but has
not previously served as a federal prosecutor.
Halligan had rushed to present the case to a grand jury this week
because prosecutors evaluating whether Comey lied to Congress during
testimony on Sept. 30, 2020, had until Tuesday to bring a case before
the five-year statute of limitations expired. The push to move forward
came even as prosecutors in the office had detailed in a memo concerns
about the pursuit of an indictment.
The sparse two-count indictment does not deal with the substance of the
Russian investigation but instead consists of charges of making a false
statement and obstructing a congressional proceeding.
It accuses Comey of lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he said
he had not authorized anyone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source
in news reports about a particular investigation. Though the indictment
does not mention the investigation or its subject, it appears from the
context to refer to an FBI inquiry related to former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, who ran for president against Trump in 2016.
It also alleges that he did “corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct
and impede the due and proper exercise” of the Senate's inquiry.
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Former FBI director James Comey is sworn via videoconference before
testifying during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol
Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2020, to examine the FBI
"Crossfire Hurricane" investigation. (Ken Cedeno/Pool via AP, File)
Lingering anger over the Russia investigation
Trump has for years railed against both a finding by U.S.
intelligence agencies that Russia preferred him to Clinton, a
Democrat, in the 2016 election as well as criminal investigation
that tried to determine whether his campaign had conspired with
Moscow to sway the outcome of that race.
Prosecutors led by special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish
that Trump or his associates criminally colluded with Russia, but
they did find that Trump’s campaign had welcomed Moscow’s
assistance.
The indictment comes against the backdrop of a Trump administration
effort to recast the Russia investigation as the outgrowth of an
effort under Democratic President Barack Obama to overhype Moscow’s
interference in the election and to undermine the legitimacy of
Trump’s victory.
Administration officials, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe and
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, have declassified a
series of documents meant to chip away at the strength of an
Obama-era intelligence assessment that said Moscow had engaged in a
broad campaign of interference at the direction of Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
A senior Justice Department official in Republican President George
W. Bush’s administration, Comey was picked by Obama to lead the FBI
in 2013 and was director when the bureau opened the Russia
investigation in the summer of 2016.
Comey’s relationship with Trump was strained from the start and was
exacerbated when Comey resisted a request by Trump at a private
White House dinner to pledge personal loyalty to the president. That
overture so unnerved the FBI director that he documented it in a
contemporaneous memorandum.
Trump fired Comey in May 2017, an action later investigated by
Mueller for potential obstruction of justice.
After being let go, Comey authorized a close friend to share with a
reporter the substance of an unclassified memo that documented an
Oval Office request from Trump to shut down an FBI investigation
into his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Trump and
his allies later branded Comey a leaker, with the president even
accusing him of treason. Comey himself has called Trump “ego driven”
and likened him to a mafia don.
The government’s handling of the Trump-Russia investigation is among
the most studied chapters of modern American history, with multiple
reviews and reports dedicated to it, and yet prosecutors have not
pursued cases against senior FBI officials.
Prosecutors in the first Trump Justice Department declined to
prosecute Comey following an inspector general review into his
handling of memos documenting his conversations with Trump in the
weeks before he was fired. He also was not charged by a special
counsel, John Durham, who scrutinized the FBI’s handling of the
Trump-Russia investigation.
Earlier this year, the department fired Comey’s daughter, Maurene
Comey, from her job as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New
York. She has since sued, saying the termination was carried out
without any explanation and was done for political reasons.
Separately, Comey’s son-in-law, Troy Edwards, resigned as a federal
prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia minutes after Comey
was indicted. Troy Edwards wrote in a one-sentence resignation
letter addressed to Halligan that he quit his job “to uphold my oath
to the Constitution and the country.”
____
Kunzelman reported from Alexandria, Virginia.
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