The Justice Department charges James Comey a third time, and a judge orders his daughter reinstated

The Justice Department filed its third case against James Comey under seal on October 5 and kept it sealed for three weeks. On Monday the case became public, and so did a court order running the other way against the department in his daughter's case.

The new charges accuse Comey of transmitting national defense information to someone who was not entitled to receive it, and of conspiring to do so, over a disclosure that prosecutors tie to an October 2016 New York Times article, while Comey ran the FBI. Prosecutors filed a criminal information instead of seeking a grand jury indictment. A department spokesperson told the New York Post that the department "filed a waiverless criminal information to toll the statute of limitations as it relates to allegations concerning former FBI Director Comey," and called the filing "a widely recognized practice in federal court" that "has been approved by multiple Circuit Courts of Appeals." The spokesperson said the investigation is ongoing and the department would not comment further.

Comey answered in a video on his Substack page. "Well, they're back, again," he said. "It would almost be funny if it wasn't such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice, one that we cannot become numb to." He added: "Nothing's changed with me. I'm still innocent, and I'm still not afraid of these people and I still believe in the independent judiciary." His lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, said two earlier teams of prosecutors investigated the same alleged disclosure and decided charges were not warranted. Comey's lawyers have asked the court to dismiss the case and argue the filing came too late to stop the clock.

The case is the third the administration has brought against Comey. A grand jury indicted him in September 2025 on false statement and obstruction charges, and a judge dismissed that case after ruling that Lindsey Halligan, the United States attorney who obtained the indictment, had not been lawfully appointed. Prosecutors indicted him again in April over a photograph he posted of seashells arranged to read 8647, which they charged as a threat against the president. That case is still waiting for trial.

Maurene Comey won her own ruling on Monday. She worked as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, on the prosecutions of Ghislaine Maxwell and Sean Combs among others, until the department fired her in July 2025 without giving a reason. Judge Jesse Furman ruled the firing violated the separation of powers, the Administrative Procedure Act and her due process and statutory rights, NBC News reported, and he ordered her reinstated retroactively with back pay running to December 20, 2025, when she started a new job. Furman wrote that the department's position, that the attorney general can remove her at will, "flies in the face of nearly two centuries of Supreme Court precedent," because Congress gave the attorney general the removal power and put limits on it. He has not ruled on her First Amendment claim and asked both sides for more briefing. A department spokesperson said the department disagrees with the decision and will appeal. Her lawyers called the ruling a reaffirmation that the president is not above the law.