Justice Department Charges James Comey With Leaking National Defense Information

The U.S. Justice Department on Oct. 26, 2026, charged former FBI director James Comey with two counts of leaking information related to national defense. The charges were filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., according to The Guardian.

Prosecutors allege that Comey leaked the information in 2016 and conspired with an unnamed person to pass it to a national news outlet. NBC News reported the counts as transmission of national defense information and conspiracy. CNBC described the charge as knowingly communicating national defense information to a person not entitled to receive it. National defense information generally refers to classified or sensitive government material related to security.

Comey's attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, said the charges concern an Oct. 5, 2016, article in The New York Times that prosecutors had already investigated. The case was brought through a criminal "information," a charging document that prosecutors file without a grand jury, the panel of citizens that normally reviews evidence before a felony indictment.

The Oct. 26 case is the third time the Trump administration has filed criminal charges against Comey. An earlier Justice Department case accusing him of lying to Congress was thrown out after a judge found that the prosecutor handling it had been unlawfully appointed.

Separately, the Justice Department filed charges against Comey in federal court in North Carolina over a social media post of a photograph of seashells spelling out "8647."

Comey was fired by President Donald Trump in 2017, while he was working on an investigation into whether Trump allies had colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential election. The new charges connect back to that period, though the 2016 article at the center of the case was published before his firing.