Comey's lawyers in court against a third attempt to charge him, arguing the time limit has lapsed

Attorneys for former FBI Director James Comey were set to appear in court in Washington, D.C., on Friday in an emergency push to have a federal judge dismiss the criminal allegations lodged against him by the Justice Department. The allegations accuse him of mishandling classified information more than a decade ago.

Comey's attorneys are asking District Judge Trevor McFadden, an appointee of President Donald Trump, to toss out the case. Their ground is that the government failed to secure an indictment from a grand jury before a 10-year statute of limitations lapsed regarding Comey's alleged conduct.

It is the third known effort by federal prosecutors to bring charges against Comey in the span of 13 months. It follows a public demand by President Trump for the Justice Department to act 'now' to bring prosecutions against Comey and other perceived political foes.

The latest allegations were revealed on Monday, after Judge McFadden ordered details of the behind-the-scenes legal fight to be unsealed at the request of Comey's legal team.

According to the unsealed court records, prosecutors allege that Comey broke the law by directing FBI staff to leak information to a newspaper reporter for an article published on 5 October 2016. The article centred on Yahoo's alleged help with U.S. email surveillance.

In their response to Comey's motion to dismiss, prosecutors wrote that the investigation had uncovered evidence that Comey sought to correct misinformation that had appeared in the press the day before. They said Comey directed staff to speak to the reporter about specific accuracy concerns related to that earlier article, and thereby illegally transferred classified information.

The article in question centred on whether the Department of Justice sought a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to force Yahoo to search for communications between members of a foreign terrorist organization. The previous day's report had claimed Yahoo secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials.

Prosecutors filed the allegations through a 'criminal information', which does not require the approval of a grand jury. It was filed under seal on 5 October.

Comey was also indicted in North Carolina on 28 April over a controversial Instagram post from last year that prosecutors say was a threat against the president. In the post, Comey shared a picture showing the numbers '86 47' written in seashells on the beach, with a caption about a cool shell formation on his beach walk. The numbers were interpreted to mean getting rid of Trump.

Comey removed the post soon after. He said he did not realize some people associate those numbers with violence, that it never occurred to him, and that he opposes violence of any kind, so he took the post down. His next court appearance in that case is scheduled for January.

The former FBI director was previously indicted in September 2025 on charges of making a false statement and obstruction related to his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020. Comey pleaded not guilty, and the case was ultimately dismissed on the grounds that the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney who brought the case was improperly appointed.