Grand Jury Indicts Longtime Trump Target, Former F.B.I. Director James Comey

A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, a culmination of President Trump’s relentless demand for retribution after the bureau investigated his 2016 presidential campaign over possible ties to Russia.

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.

The indictment, filed in Alexandria, Va., came over the objection of career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia who found insufficient evidence to support charges but were overruled by Lindsey Halligan, a Trump loyalist handpicked by the president to run the office a few days ago.

It represents the most significant legal step yet by the Trump administration to harry, punish and humiliate a former official the president identified as an enemy, at the expense of procedural safeguards intended to shield the Justice Department from political interference and personal vendettas.

The bare-bones, two-page indictment was signed only by Ms. Halligan, a former defense lawyer for Mr. Trump who personally presented the case to the jury, despite her lack of any previous prosecutorial experience. Typically such filings are also endorsed by career prosecutors who have gathered the evidence in the case.

Court records indicate that Ms. Halligan also tried to get the grand jury to indict Mr. Comey on a second false statement charge, and that it was rejected.

In a video statement, Mr. Comey declared his innocence and welcomed an opportunity to vindicate himself in a trial. “We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either.”

Referring to his daughter, Maurene, who was dismissed this summer from her own post at the Justice Department, he added, “Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant, and she’s right, but I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either.”

Mr. Trump praised the move, posting on Truth Social shortly after the indictment was announced. “JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” he wrote.

For a charging document as consequential as an indictment of a former F.B.I. director, the filing was not particularly revealing. It asserts that Mr. Comey falsely claimed during the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had not authorized someone else at the F.B.I. to be an anonymous source in news reports regarding an investigation into “Person 1,” which appears to be a reference to Hillary Clinton.

“That statement was false,” the indictment charges, because Mr. Comey “had in fact authorized PERSON 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an F.B.I. investigation concerning PERSON 1.”

The document does not identify either Person 1 or Person 3, but at the hearing, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, pressed Mr. Comey on whether he had ever authorized his former deputy, Andrew McCabe, to discuss an investigation with a reporter. Mr. Comey stood by his answers at past hearings and denied doing so.

Career prosecutors who looked at the evidence against Mr. Comey thought the case was far too weak to justify an indictment, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. For one thing, the key exchange was brief. For another, it referred to testimony from three years earlier, and Mr. Comey said he stood by those answers without elaborating.

The vague description of authorizing someone at the F.B.I. to share information with a journalist could also apply to a different episode from that period. Republicans have criticized Mr. Comey over designating a college professor he trusted, Daniel Richman, as a special government employee who then spoke to a reporter for The New York Times.

The wording of the indictment leaves unclear which of those two situations is at issue, though in recent days investigators had re-interviewed Mr. Richman, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Comey faces up to five years in prison if convicted, although many current and former prosecutors believe the case will be difficult to prove.

Shortly after the indictment was made public, Troy A. Edwards Jr., Mr. Comey’s son-in-law, resigned his post as a prosecutor in the office that brought charges against the former F.B.I. director.

Mr. Edwards, who helped prosecute Jan. 6 rioters, including members of the far-right Oath Keepers, said in an email to his supervisor that he left to “uphold his duty to the Constitution and country.”

Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, in a statement, warned that the indictment underscored how the president intended to deploy the justice system. “This kind of interference is a dangerous abuse of power,” he said. “Our system depends on prosecutors making decisions based on evidence and the law, not on the personal grudges of a politician determined to settle scores.”

Mr. Trump, who claims his actions are motivated by the weaponization of government against him, has intensified his public pressure campaign on the Justice Department in recent days. He has publicly called upon Pam Bondi, the attorney general, to use her power to go after adversaries he has described as “scum,” including Mr. Comey and Letitia James, the New York attorney general who sued Mr. Trump for inflating the value of his assets.

Ms. Bondi and her top deputy have quietly raised concerns that the case against Mr. Comey was too weak to result in convictions, according to current and former officials. But she appeared to embrace the move in a social media post, without mentioning Mr. Comey by name, writing: “No one is above the law.”

The F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, suggested on social media that the indictment would not be the administration’s last against what he referred to as “previous corrupt leadership and their enablers.” He added: “Everyone, especially those in positions of power, will be held to account - no matter their perch.”

Many current and former Justice Department officials said they viewed the filing of criminal charges against Mr. Comey as deeply troubling. The consequences could be far-reaching, they argued, including the resignations of more prosecutors over how the Trump administration has sought to use the agency, and the erosion of public trust in U.S. attorneys.

Last week, Mr. Trump, impatient with the lack of charges against two of his most frequent targets, forced out the U.S. attorney overseeing those investigations, Erik S. Siebert, in the Eastern District of Virginia. In his place, the president installed Ms. Halligan, his White House aide and one of his former defense lawyers.

The investigation into Mr. Comey has focused in part on whether he misled lawmakers during testimony in September 2020 about the Russia investigation. The statute of limitations on that testimony expires on Tuesday, meaning the clock was ticking on any related charges.

The justification for directing prosecutors in Virginia to investigate Mr. Comey’s congressional testimony was that he appeared remotely during the pandemic, from his Virginia home.

Mr. Trump has long sought to turn the criminal justice system against those who have investigated him. Unlike in his first term, Mr. Trump has stocked the uppermost positions of the Justice Department with fierce loyalists, and they have pursued a criminal investigation into Mr. Comey; the former director of the C.I.A., John O. Brennan; and others who, in Mr. Trump’s telling, have plotted against him.

After securing an indictment at the federal courthouse in Alexandria on Thursday evening, Ms. Halligan entered a courtroom to notify a magistrate judge of the outcome, accompanied by a group of nearly a dozen prosecutors, including Maggie Cleary, Ms. Halligan’s top subordinate.

The judge, Lindsey R. Vaala, noted that the grand jury did not indict Mr. Comey on one of the counts but voted to charge him on two others. “I’m a little confused,” she said. “This has never happened before.”

Judge Vaala also recognized the unusual hour given that prosecutors reached her chambers well past the typical hour that grand juries are dismissed.

“I don’t think we’ve ever met this late,” Judge Vaala told a juror.

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 far-left militant group. The charges against Mr. Gray were dropped two years later.

Mr. Comey, who was confirmed as the seventh director of the F.B.I. in 2013, was abruptly fired by Mr. Trump four years later, as his bureau investigated whether members of Mr. Trump’s campaign had conspired with Russian intelligence operatives seeking to interfere in the 2016 election.

Mr. Comey’s firing eventually led to the appointment of a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to oversee the Russia investigation, a fraught two years from which Mr. Trump emerged with his presidency more or less intact.

Mr. Trump’s enmity only intensified over the years, as he railed against what he called a “witch hunt.”

Mr. Comey, in turn, became one of the most high-profile critics of the president, comparing him to a mafia boss. As Mr. Trump campaigned for a second term and faced multiple criminal indictments, Mr. Comey warned that a second Trump presidency posed “a danger to all Americans.”

By then, there was little doubt that Mr. Trump’s return to the White House posed a particular danger to Mr. Comey.

The case in the Eastern District of Virginia is one of three that the Trump administration has opened related to Mr. Comey, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In the Western District of Virginia, federal prosecutors and agents have in recent weeks interviewed a number of former F.B.I. officials about how certain classified documents related to the Russia inquiry came to be found in certain parts of F.B.I. headquarters in 2025.

That investigation, according to those familiar with the effort, is premised on an unsubstantiated theory pushed by Trump supporters that senior intelligence officials at the F.B.I. and elsewhere tried to hide or destroy secret documents that might cast doubt on the investigation, also known as Crossfire Hurricane.

The inquiry has bewildered many current and former law enforcement officials, since the printed copies of classified documents have for decades been backed up on computers.

Internally, Justice Department officials have justified placing much of that investigation in western Virginia because the F.B.I. operates a document storage facility in Winchester, west of the Northern Virginia suburbs, according to people familiar with the matter.

Some Trump administration officials have been reluctant to impanel grand juries in Washington in politically sensitive cases because of concerns that jurors and grand jurors in the largely Democratic city will be resistant to cases against Mr. Trump’s perceived foes.

Todd Gilbert, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, abruptly resigned over the summer, only a month after being appointed to the job. The office has declined to give a reason for Mr. Gilbert’s sudden departure.

Minho Kim contributed reporting from Alexandria, Va.