The Trump Justice Department is pursuing a third criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey, accusing him of mishandling sensitive national defense information — with the allegations becoming public just hours after a federal judge ruled that the president unlawfully fired his daughter, Maurene Comey.
The extraordinary timing puts the Justice Department under fresh scrutiny as Trump’s administration continues its legal battles with one of the president’s most prominent longtime adversaries.
Court records unsealed Monday show prosecutors filed a criminal information accusing Comey of two violations of the Espionage Act tied to the alleged transmission of sensitive national defense information to a New York Times reporter in October 2016. The filing was submitted earlier this month, before the 10-year statute of limitations was set to expire, according to The Independent.
Comey wasted little time responding.
“Well, they’re back — again,” he said in a video statement posted to Instagram. “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.”
He continued: “Nothing’s changed with me; I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid of these people — and I still believe in an independent federal judiciary.”
Comey’s attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, has also challenged the prosecution, and his legal team has asked a judge to dismiss the case. Comey denies wrongdoing.
The new case against James Comey became public on the same day U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman ruled that the Trump administration unlawfully fired his daughter, Maurene Comey, from her job as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan.
Maurene Comey served for nearly a decade in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, handling several high-profile prosecutions, including cases involving Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell and music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs.
In a 55-page decision, Furman found that her removal violated federal law governing the dismissal of government employees. He ordered her retroactive reinstatement and back pay for the period between her July 2025 firing and December 2025, when she accepted another job.
The judge sharply rejected the administration’s argument that the president’s constitutional authority gave it essentially unrestricted power to remove federal prosecutors.
Accepting that position, Furman wrote, would “unsettle the very equilibrium established by this Nation’s constitutional system.”
Maurene Comey had argued in her lawsuit that she was fired because of her father’s longstanding feud with Trump, or because of assumptions about her political beliefs. The judge’s ruling found the firing unlawful, but did not establish that retaliation against her because of her father was the reason for it.
The Justice Department has said it disagrees with the ruling and plans to appeal.
The latest prosecution adds another chapter to the legal battles between the Trump administration and the former FBI director, who became a target of the president’s anger after leading the bureau during the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Comey has now faced three separate prosecution attempts under Trump’s second administration. A previous case accusing him of making false statements to Congress was dismissed by a judge, while a separate case involving an alleged threat against Trump remains pending. The new national defense information case is separate from both.
