What are the charges against Comey?

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LiveUpdated Oct. 8, 2025, 9:24 a.m. ETThe former F.B.I. director, scorned by the president since he ordered the inquiry into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, will be arraigned in Virginia.ImageFormer F.B.I. director James B. Comey in 2017. He is being arraigned at the US District Court in Alexandria, Va. on Wednesday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times PinnedUpdated Oct. 8, 2025, 9:23 a.m. ETJames B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director reviled by President Trump and targeted as part of his retribution campaign, is set to be arraigned Wednesday morning in federal court in Alexandria, Va.The case against Mr. Comey, who ordered the investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia in 2016, is the most significant legal action taken against those Mr. Trump has publicly targeted. And his indictment came shortly after the president all but commanded his attorney general to take legal action against Mr. Comey; Senator Adam B. Schiff, a California Democrat; and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James.Mr. Comey faces one count of making a false statement and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding in connection with his testimony before a Senate committee in September 2020. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted, though many current and former prosecutors believe the case will be difficult to prove.Here’s what else to know:Routine proceeding: In court, Mr. Comey will hear the charges against him. Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff will then ask for his plea. Before the hearing is over, the judge is expected to lay out the next steps in the case.Rocky path: The case proceeded over the opposition of prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia. The prosecutor who ultimately handled it was Lindsey Halligan, a White House official hastily installed by Mr. Trump as U.S. attorney after her predecessor found insufficient evidence to indict Mr. Comey.Deep animus: Mr. Trump sought to see Mr. Comey investigated and prosecuted for the better part of a decade, pressing for action against a figure he sees as pivotal to the Russia inquiry, which he has cast as a “witch hunt” intended to delegitimize his victory in 2016. Mr. Comey, in turn, has been an outspoken critic of the president even as Trump and Clinton supporters alike have criticized his leadership of the F.B.I.President’s impact: Vindictive prosecution motions are notoriously difficult to win, but Mr. Trump’s voluble vitriol and his repeated attacks on his former F.B.I. director could provide Mr. Comey’s defense with an avenue to protect him.Oct. 8, 2025, 9:24 a.m. ETPresident Trump has been vocal about the Comey case, making it clear he wanted the former F.B.I. director to face charges.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York TimesEven before James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, was indicted last month, legal experts were already questioning whether the case might be vulnerable to an uncommon but powerful legal attack: allegations that President Trump, who has long called for Mr. Comey to be jailed, had pushed the Justice Department into opening an improper vindictive prosecution.Such speculation gained at least a little steam after Mr. Trump recently weighed in on the charges, which center on whether Mr. Comey lied to Congress, in a manner that seemed to prejudge his guilt.“Whether you like Corrupt James Comey or not, and I can’t imagine too many people liking him, HE LIED!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media last month. “It is not a complex lie, it’s a very simple, but IMPORTANT one. There is no way he can explain his way out of it.”The remarks by Mr. Trump were not the first time he had shared — or over-shared — his opinions about whether Mr. Comey should be prosecuted, evincing what defense lawyers may seek to argue was a political animus by the Justice Department.While vindictive prosecution motions are notoriously difficult to win, the president’s voluble vitriol and his incessant need to be on the attack could provide defense lawyers with an avenue to protect the very people he most wants to punish.Oct. 8, 2025, 9:09 a.m. ETJames B. Comey testified remotely during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September 2020.Credit...Pool photo by Stefani ReynoldsAt the center of the Trump administration’s indictment of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, is testimony he delivered before Congress in September 2020. But the details of the accusation against him remain murky because the indictment is extremely sparse. It was filed by a novice prosecutor installed last month by President Trump to lead the Eastern District of Virginia after her predecessor refused to bring the case.The indictment charges Mr. Comey with one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding.The false statement charge asserts that in appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020, Mr. Comey told a U.S. senator that he “had not ‘authorized someone else at the F.B.I. to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an F.B.I. investigation concerning” an unnamed person. But in fact, the indictment says, Mr. Comey had authorized someone to do so.The obstruction charge is even vaguer. It asserts that Mr. Comey made “false and misleading statements” before the committee, but offers no details.Here is a closer look at the indictment that the prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, a former personal lawyer to Mr. Trump, obtained from a grand jury, along with a proposed charge that the jury rejected.Oct. 8, 2025, 5:03 a.m. ETJames Comey, the former F.B.I. director, in 2020.Credit...Jared Soares for The New York TimesThe proceedings at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va., on Wednesday morning will have the superficial trappings of any other arraignment: The accused will stand before a judge, hear the charges against him and sign the paperwork.But the initial court appearance of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, on charges of lying to Congress five years ago will be a highly unusual event with potentially enormous political and legal implications.The indictment of Mr. Comey, who ordered the investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia in 2016, represented the most significant legal action taken against those President Trump has publicly targeted for retribution.The case was presented to a grand jury on Sept. 25 — over the opposition of prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia — by Lindsey Halligan, a White House official hastily installed by Mr. Trump as U.S. attorney after her predecessor found insufficient evidence to indict Mr. Comey.It came shortly after the president all but commanded Attorney General Pam Bondi to take legal action against Mr. Comey; Senator Adam B. Schiff, a California Democrat; and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James.“Nothing is being done,” he wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.”Mr. Comey faces up to five years in prison if convicted, though many current and former prosecutors believe the case will be difficult to prove — if his lawyers do not succeed in getting the charges quickly dismissed.“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,” Mr. Comey said in a video released hours after he was charged.“We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either,” added Mr. Comey, who has assembled a formidable defense team, including Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the former U.S. attorney in Chicago known for prosecuting major terrorism and corruption cases.The arraignment was originally scheduled for Thursday, but the chief judge of the district court moved it up a day, citing logistical and security concerns.The visuals of vengeance are of great importance to Mr. Trump, who rose to national prominence as a reality television star who often watched his broadcasts with the sound off to better judge how he looked.An agent in the F.B.I.’s Washington field office was suspended after he refused to organize an escort of uniformed law enforcement officials to walk Mr. Comey into the courthouse before the media, according to people with knowledge of the move who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.It remains unclear how that would have worked. Thus far, Mr. Comey has only been issued a summons to appear in court, although arrests are not unheard-of in such cases.In 2022, Peter Navarro, a longtime Trump adviser, was taken into custody and handcuffed as he boarded an airplane in Washington, an action criticized as overly aggressive by the judge in his case.Ms. Halligan, who narrowly secured a two-count indictment after a shaky solo appearance before the grand jury, has had a hard time getting anyone in her new office to help her with the case, according to current and former prosecutors in the office.Two prosecutors who work in the Eastern District of North Carolina, Tyler Lemons and Gabriel Diaz, gave official notice on Tuesday that they had been assigned to the case, according to court records.The case has cast a corrosive pall over the Eastern District of Virginia, one of the most important federal prosecutor’s offices in the nation.Erik S. Siebert, the district’s former U.S. attorney, came under pressure from Mr. Trump after telling his superiors in the Justice Department that there was not enough evidence against Mr. Comey or, in a separate potential case, Ms. James. Mr. Siebert quit on Sept. 19, hours after the president called for his ouster.Since then, Trump Justice Department appointees have fired without cause two top career prosecutors who also objected to the Comey indictment. Many other officials in the Eastern District of Virginia have applied for jobs on the outside or have written memos justifying their actions in case they have to contest personnel actions or sue the department.The bare-bones, two-page indictment against Mr. Comey was signed only by Ms. Halligan, a former defense lawyer for Mr. Trump who had been serving as a midlevel lawyer in the office of the White House staff secretary.Mr. Comey was indicted on one count of making a false statement and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding in connection with his testimony before a Senate committee in September 2020.Court records indicate that Ms. Halligan also tried to get the grand jury to indict Mr. Comey on a second false statement charge, which was rejected.Mr. Comey is not the first former head of the F.B.I. to face criminal charges. In 1978, a former acting head of the bureau during Watergate, L. Patrick Gray, was indicted on charges of conspiring to violate the constitutional rights of Americans.Prosecutors said he authorized agents to break into homes without warrants, in a hunt for fugitive members of Weather Underground, the violent far-left group.The charges against Mr. Gray were dropped two years later.See more on: James B Comey, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Justice Department, Donald Trump