The Department of Justice has indicted former FBI director James Comey, the first in a series of potential charges against Trump critics after the US president demanded that the attorney general launch swift prosecutions against his political enemies.
“No one is above the law,” attorney general Pam Bondi wrote on X. “[It] reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people. We will follow the facts in this case.”
The indictment accuses Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017, of making false statements and obstructing justice during congressional testimony in September 2020. The document notes that a grand jury didn’t concur on one of the charges prosecutors originally sought.
During questioning in the Senate at the time mentioned in the indictment, Comey defended the truthfulness of prior testimony where he said he did not authorize FBI investigations into Trump and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton to be leaked to the press.
A former official who worked under Comey, Andrew McCabe, has claimed the director did in fact authorize him to leak to the press, a 2018 inspector general report found. However, the report also found McCabe had made false and misleading statements in the past.
“Comey stated that he did not authorize someone at the FBI to be an anonymous source,” the Justice Department said in a statement on Thursday. “According to the indictment, that statement was false.”
The former FBI director said in a statement on Instagram that he was innocent and accused Trump of being a “tyrant.”
“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way,” Comey said. “We will not live on our knees and you shouldn’t either.”
“My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I am innocent, so let’s have a trial,” he added.
The president celebrated the charges in a Truth Social post, calling Comey “one of the worst human beings this country has ever been exposed to.”
“He has been so bad for our country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our nation,” Trump wrote.
The federal charges are the first to hit one of the individuals Trump named in a Truth Social post on Saturday, in which the president publicly told Bondi, “We can’t delay any longer.”
The president called for action “now” against Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Democratic senator Adam Schiff of California, another frequent critic of the president.
The charges against Comey come after the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District, Erik Siebert, an experienced federal prosecutor, resigned on Friday.
The official reportedly left his post because of pressure to bring a mortgage fraud case against James, despite investigators failing to find evidence of wrongdoing.
Trump criticized Siebert in the weekend Truth Social post as a “woke” official “who was never going to do his job.”
Siebert was then replaced on an acting basis with Lindsey Halligan, a Trump administration official with no prior experience as a prosecutor.
Halligan has previously worked as one of the president’s personal lawyers and oversaw a White House effort to review materials at the Smithsonian Institution.
The charges were brought shortly before the statute of limitations on Comey’s alleged misconduct would have barred prosecution.
The current FBI director, Kash Patel, hailed the indictment of Comey.
“Nowhere was this politicization of law enforcement more blatant than during the Russiagate hoax, a disgraceful chapter in history we continue to investigate and expose,” Patel wrote on X. “Everyone, especially those in positions of power, will be held to account – no matter their perch. No one is above the law.”
Schiff, writing on X, said the indictment meant the DOJ is “now little more than an arm of the president’s retribution campaign.”
“Donald Trump forced out a respected U.S. attorney because they wouldn't go along with Trump’s demands for political prosecutions,” the senator wrote. “Less than a week later, his inexperienced handpicked successor brings charges against a member of Trump's enemies list. In my almost six years as an assistant U.S. attorney, I never witnessed such a blatant abuse of the department.”
Troy Edwards, Comey’s son-in-law, a federal prosecutor in the office that indicted the former FBI director, resigned on Thursday, writing that he felt compelled to take the step to "uphold my oath to the constitution and the country.”
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