A photo of seashells posted on Instagram by the former FBI director James Comey is now being investigated by the US [Secret Service](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/secret-service), after the US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem said it constituted a “threat” against Donald Trump. On Thursday, Comey posted a photo of seashells forming the message “8647”, with a caption that read: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.” Trump’s supporters have interpreted the message as an endorsement of violence against Trump – the 47th president. There is more debate around the use of 86, a slang term often used in restaurants to mean getting rid of or throwing something out, and which, [according to Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/eighty-six-meaning-origin), has been used more recently, albeit sparingly, to mean “to kill”. Comey later took down his post, saying in a statement that he was unaware of the seashells’ potential meaning and saying that he does not condone violence of any kind. “I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message,” Comey said in a statement. “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.” A spokesperson for the Secret Service [confirmed the agency was](https://x.com/SecretSvcSpox/status/1923175809189056526) “aware of the incident” and said it would “vigorously investigate” any potential threat, but did not offer further details. The post ignited a firestorm on the right, with Trump loyalists accusing the former [FBI](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/fbi) director of calling for the president’s assassination. Trump survived an attempt on his life at a campaign event in Pennsylvania last year. “Disgraced former FBI director James Comey just called for the assassination of [POTUS](https://x.com/POTUS) Trump,” Noem wrote on X. “DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.” Comey and Trump have a deeply antagonistic relationship that stretches back to the early days of the first Trump administration when, according to Comey, Trump sought to secure a pledge of loyalty from the then FBI director, who refused. In a move that shocked Washington, Trump dismissed Comey, who was leading the criminal investigation into Russian meddling in the US election. Comey later wrote a memoir that recounted the episode, prompting Trump to declare him an “untruthful slime ball”. Comey has remained a Maga world bête noire, drawing rightwing ire whenever he steps into the political fray. Allies of the president were swift to condemn Comey on Thursday. “We are aware of the recent social media post by former FBI director [James Comey](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/james-comey), directed at President Trump,” Kash Patel, the FBI director, wrote on X, adding: “We, the FBI, will provide all necessary support.” > While President Trump is currently on an international trip to the Middle East, the former FBI Director puts out what can clearly be interpreted as “a hit” on the sitting President of the United States—a message etched in the sand. > > This is deeply concerning to all of us and is… [pic.twitter.com/RF0Dl3t1JF](https://t.co/RF0Dl3t1JF) > > — Taylor Budowich (@Taylor47) [May 15, 2025](https://twitter.com/Taylor47/status/1923128430415184173?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) Taylor Budowich, the White House deputy chief of staff, also [responded](https://x.com/Taylor47/status/1923128430415184173) by calling the photo “deeply concerning” and accused Comey of putting out “what can clearly be interpreted as ‘a hit’ on the sitting President of the United States”. Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett, a staunch Trump supporter, called for Comey to be [jailed](https://x.com/timburchett/status/1923150359423287703). “Arrest Comey,” he [wrote](https://x.com/timburchett/status/1923134955212677474) on X.

Getty Images James Comey had a tumultuous tenure as FBI director, and has clashed with Donald Trump. Former FBI director James Comey is being investigated by the Secret Service after he shared then deleted a social media post, which Republicans alleged was an incitement to violence against President Donald Trump. Comey posted on Instagram a photo of seashells that spelled the numbers "8647", which he captioned: "Cool shell formation on my beach walk." The number 86 is a slang term whose definitions include 'to reject' or 'to get rid of', according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which also notes that it has more recently been used as a term meaning 'to kill'. Trump is the 47th US president. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem alleged the message was a call for the assassination of Trump, but Comey said he opposed violence. In a post in X, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said: "We vigorously investigate anything that can be taken as a potential threat against our protectees. "We are aware of the social media posts by the former FBI Director & we take rhetoric like this very seriously. Beyond that, we do not comment on protective intelligence matters." Comey deleted the Instagram post, saying in a follow-up that he "assumed \[the sea shells\] were a political message". "I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence," he added. "It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down."  "Cool shell formation," Comey commented before deleting the post Trump survived two assassination attempts last year. Current FBI Director Kash Patel responded on social media, saying that the bureau was "aware of the recent social media post by former FBI Director James Comey, directed at President Trump". "We are in communication with the Secret Service and Director Curran. Primary jurisdiction is with SS \[Secret Service\] on these matters and we, the FBI, will provide all necessary support." Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said on X: "Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of Trump." She said her department and the Secret Service would investigate the matter. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino posted on X, accusing Comey of "a plea to bad actors/terrorists to assassinate the POTUS' while traveling internationally", referring to Trump's current tour of the Middle East. The president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, also responded on X, commenting: "James Comey causally \[sic\] calling for my dad to be murdered." Comey served as the FBI's director between 2013-17. He had a tumultuous tenure that included overseeing the high-profile inquiry into Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's email just weeks before the 2016 election that she ended up losing to Trump. He was fired by Trump amid an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.  Follow the twists and turns of Trump's second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher's weekly [US Politics Unspun](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68093155) newsletter. Readers in the UK can [sign up here](https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsletters/zgmn46f). Those outside the UK can [sign up here](https://cloud.email.bbc.com/US_Politics_Unspun_Newsletter_Signup).

[Donald Trump](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump) accused the former FBI director [James Comey](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/james-comey) on Friday of calling for his assassination in a coded social media post written in seashells. Comey’s [Instagram](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/instagram) post – a photograph of seashells on a beach arranged to spell the numbers 8647, which he captioned “Cool shell formation on my beach walk” – was used by rightwing supporters of Trump to claim that it was a call to assassinate the US president. The [Secret Service](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/secret-service) said it has launched an investigation. Comey has said it “never occurred to me” that the numbers represented a coded threat. The number 86 is common slang for stopping or getting rid of something, typically old equipment, or being ejected from an establishment such as a bar, and is often a synonym for “nix”. The number 47 could be understood to indicate Trump, the 47th president. “He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant? That meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News from Abu Dhabi, where he is wrapping up a four-day Middle East trip. Trump claimed Comey “was hit so hard because people like me and they like what’s happening with our country”, adding: “And he’s calling for the assassination of the president.” Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017 during an investigation into Russian collusion in the 2016 election, removed the post hours after it began to draw attention from Trump administration officials and supporters. After taking down the post, Comey said he thought it was a political message but said it did not occur to him that it could have been associated with a call to violence. The exchanges are the latest in an ongoing war over inflamed political rhetoric. Two assassination attempts were made against the president last year, both from people without any clear partisan ideology. The number 86 has also been used by Republicans calling for the impeachment of Joe Biden: for example, [T-shirts sold on Amazon read “8646”](https://x.com/RetroAgent12/status/1923201303775244519), indicating a call to impeach Biden (the 46th president). Overheated political rhetoric has long been a subject of controversy. Biden said last July it had been a mistake for him to say “time to put Trump in a bullseye”, days before Saturday’s assassination attempt on his election rival, while Trump has repeatedly used similar language, including suggesting that the former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney might not be such a “warhawk” if she had rifles “shooting at her” to see how she felt. A spokesperson for the Secret Service [confirmed the agency was](https://x.com/SecretSvcSpox/status/1923175809189056526) “aware of the incident” and said it would “vigorously investigate” any potential threat, but did not offer further details. In a statement, Comey said: “I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.” The post ignited a firestorm on the right. [skip past newsletter promotion](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/16/james-comey-investigation-8647-trump#EmailSignup-skip-link-15) Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration **Privacy Notice:** Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our [Privacy Policy](https://www.theguardian.com/help/privacy-policy). We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google [Privacy Policy](https://policies.google.com/privacy) and [Terms of Service](https://policies.google.com/terms) apply. after newsletter promotion “Disgraced former FBI director James Comey just called for the assassination of POTUS Trump,” the homeland security director, Kristi Noem, wrote on X. “DHS and [Secret Service](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/secret-service) is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.” The director of the FBI, Kash Patel, [said](https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1923151715777356062) his agency would “provide all necessary support” as part of an investigation headed by the Secret Service. Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesperson for the presidential security agency, [said](https://x.com/SecretSvcSpox/status/1923175809189056526) on social media that the agency investigates anything that could be taken as a threat. “We are aware of the social media posts by the former FBI Director & we take rhetoric like this very seriously,” he added. Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, said she didn’t buy Comey’s explanation that the message carried no greater meaning. Gabbard said Comey had “just issued a call to action to murder the president of the United States”. “As a former FBI director and someone who spent most of his career prosecuting mobsters and gangsters, he knew exactly what he was doing and must be held accountable under the full force of the law,” [Gabbard posted on X](https://x.com/DNIGabbard/status/1923198011108192532). [Gabbard later told Fox News](https://x.com/DNIGabbard/status/1923198011108192532) that Comey was “issuing a hit” on the president and that “the dangerousness of this cannot be underestimated.” The post comes as the former FBI director is about to publish FDR Drive, the third installment of a crime series about a fictional New York lawyer, Nora Carleton. [Publisher’s Weekly outlined](https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781613166444) the plot as centering on a US attorney who tries to bring to justice “a far-right media personality with a popular podcast vilifying those he thinks are destroying America: intellectuals, immigrants, and people of color”.

 The Trump administration is investigating former FBI Director James Comey over a social media post that some government officials and supporters of President Trump are interpreting as a threat to the president. On Thursday, Comey shared a picture on Instagram of seashells on a beach arranged into the numbers "8647." The caption read: "Cool shell formation on my beach walk." "Eighty-six" is a [slang term](https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/eighty-six-meaning-origin) that means "get rid of," and Trump is the 47th (and 45th) president of the United States. According to [Merriam-Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/eighty-six-meaning-origin), the most common meaning of 86 — which has its roots in the service industry — is to "throw out" or "refuse service to" a customer. The dictionary notes that the term has also come to mean "to kill." But the dictionary says it does not include this meaning in the official entry "due to its relative recency and sparseness of use." The post sparked uproar among some Republicans, who suggested Comey was threatening the president. Donald Trump Jr. [accused him](https://x.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1923118680658862260) of "calling for my dad to be murdered." But Comey, who deleted the photo within hours, said he assumed the shells were a "political message," not a violent one. It's unclear who created the shell formation. Comey has been an outspoken critic of Trump since he led the FBI during the president's first term. Trump [fired](https://www.npr.org/2017/05/09/527663050/president-trump-fires-fbi-director-james-comey) Comey in 2017, four years into his ten-year term, as he was overseeing an investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election. "I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence," Comey [wrote on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/DJsN4GAPoxY/?hl=en). "It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down." Several Republican politicians are calling for Comey to face consequences ranging from an [investigation](https://ogles.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-ogles-urges-fbi-secret-service-investigate-james-comey) to an [arrest](https://x.com/timburchett/status/1923134955212677474). Homeland Security Secretary [Kristi Noem announced](https://x.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1923118680658862260) late Thursday that her department and the Secret Service are "investigating this threat and will respond appropriately." NPR has reached out to Comey for comment and did not receive a response before publication of this story. Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi told NPR on Friday that the agency is aware of Comey's post and takes "rhetoric like this very seriously." "The Secret Service vigorously investigates anything that can be taken as a potential threat against our protectees," Guglielmi said. Some Republicans, including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, say they do not believe Comey was unaware of the term's violent connotations. "I'm very concerned for the president's life; we've already seen assassination attempts," Gabbard [told Fox News](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gabbard-says-comey-should-put-behind-bars-after-picture-allegedly-issuing-call-assassinate-trump) on Thursday. "I'm very concerned for his life and James Comey, in my view, should be held accountable and put behind bars for this." Then-candidate Trump survived two assassination attempts while running for reelection last year. He [was wounded in a shooting](https://www.npr.org/2024/07/19/nx-s1-5041734/trump-shooting-assassination-crooks-bulter-secret-service) during a July campaign rally in Pennsylvania. In September, a man trained his rifle on the president's security detail [as he golfed](https://www.npr.org/2024/09/16/nx-s1-5113917/trump-apparent-assassination-attempt-shooting-suspect) in Florida, but fled after being spotted. The man, Ryan Routh, was charged with attempted assassination of a presidential candidate but has pleaded not guilty — and on Thursday [asked a judge](https://www.npr.org/2025/05/14/nx-s1-5398066/ryan-routh-assassination-court-hearing-donald-trump) to dismiss some of the charges against him. On Friday, Trump [told Fox News](https://www.foxnews.com/video/6372900047112) that he thinks Comey "knew exactly what he meant." "A child knows what that meant. If you're the FBI director and you don't know ... that meant 'assassination,'" Trump said in a clip of an interview scheduled to air Friday night. "And it says it loud and clear. He wasn't very competent, but he was competent enough to know what that meant." ### '86' has shown up in politics before This isn't the first time that "86" has caused a stir in U.S. politics. It seems to have crossed into the political lexicon in 2018, when Sarah Huckabee Sanders — then-press secretary in the first Trump administration — was [kicked out of a Virginia restaurant](https://www.npr.org/2018/06/23/622882115/sarah-sanders-joins-list-of-top-trump-aides-confronted-at-restaurants). The restaurant's closing staff wrote "86 Sarah Huckabee Sanders" [on their note](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/06/sarah-sanders-was-asked-to-leave-restaurant-over-trump-work.html) to the morning manager, a photo of which went viral. In October 2020, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, gave a Zoom interview to _Meet the Press_ with an "8645" pin visible behind her, prompting some Republicans to wonder if she was sending a pointed, or possibly violent, message. _Detroit News_ [reported at the time](https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/10/18/whitmer-asks-trump-cool-it-says-hes-inciting-domestic-terrorism/3702262001/) that Whitmer's team said the Trump campaign's reaction was evidence no one in the campaign had worked in the restaurant industry. Anne Curzan, a linguist at the University of Michigan, [told Michigan Public](https://www.michiganpublic.org/politics-government/2020-10-23/republicans-criticized-whitmer-for-use-of-86-what-does-it-actually-mean) at the time that the most accurate meaning of the term was likely the same as in the Huckabee Sanders incident. "It could mean they're fired, that there's no more use for them, they've been asked to leave," she said. "So that meaning is out there as well, which is more relevant to the '8645.'" The "8647" slogan has quietly become a code for opposition to Trump, circulating [in TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@stellaroseamelia/video/7503601039115914527?embed_source=121374463%2C121468991%2C121439635%2C121433650%2C121404359%2C121497414%2C121477481%2C121351166%2C121487028%2C121679410%2C73347566%2C121331973%2C120811592%2C120810756%2C121503376%3Bnull%3Bembed_name&refer=embed&referer_url=www.distractify.com%2Fp%2Fwhat-does-8647-mean%3Futm_campaign%3Dtrueanthem%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dfacebook&referer_video_id=7476123886594051358) posts and on [protest signs](https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1908714270109446290) in recent months. The online publication [Distractify reported](https://www.distractify.com/p/what-does-8647-mean?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook) in March that people use it to mean they don't want Trump to be president. "The message is vague about how exactly these people want to do that, but it seems that the point is to signal that you don't want Trump to be in the White House," it said. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah [retweeted a photo](https://x.com/BasedMikeLee/status/1908717461114880497) of one such sign at an anti-Trump protest in April, saying "All Americans should condemn this." He [condemned Comey's post](https://x.com/BasedMikeLee/status/1923161787697885616) in a 14-tweet thread on Thursday, saying it "hits too close to home — and occurs too soon after two serious, nearly successful assassination attempts … to be dismissed as a joke or harmless hyperbole." ### Some liberals see a double standard Merchandise stamped with "8647," from shirts and hats to bumper stickers and pins, are offered by vendors on sites like Amazon and Etsy. So too, however, are "8646" items — a reference to former President Joe Biden. NPR has reached out to Amazon and Etsy to ask whether those items violate their seller policies prohibiting items that glorify violence. Some liberal critics on social media say that Republicans did not seem to take issue when the same slogan — or even more violent rhetoric — was targeted at a Democratic president. They are pointing to examples of violent rhetoric by the president and his allies, including Trump's [2024 post on Truth Social](https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112180192938619231) featuring video of a truck driving on the highway with an image of Biden tied up on the back. In 2021, then-Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., was censured after [sharing an anime video](https://www.npr.org/2021/11/09/1053895408/paul-gosar-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-anime-twitter-video-backlash) of himself killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and swinging swords at Biden. And some have found examples of prominent conservatives using the "86" slogan over the years, digging up far-right influencer Jack Posobiec's [2022 tweet](https://x.com/JackPosobiec/status/1487642601536864256) reading: "86 46." In 2024, then-Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., [used the term](https://x.com/mattgaetz/status/1762892328941879457) to describe Republicans who had been removed from office, which did not cause notable controversy at the time.

James Comey went for a walk on the beach with his wife when they stumbled on a message in the sand: 8647. According to the former [FBI](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/fbi) director, his wife wondered if it was an address. They stood over the seashells, trying to decipher meaning. His wife, according to Comey’s account, recalled her days as a server, and said 86 was the term used to remove an item from the menu. Comey chimed in that when he was a kid, “86” meant “to ditch a place”. “I said: ‘That’s really clever,’” Comey recounted in a Monday interview on MSNBC, describing the events of last week that led him to post a photo of the seashells on Instagram, [leading to a firestorm of accusations](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/15/james-comey-instagram-trump) from Trump allies that he was calling for violence against the president. “I posted it on my Instagram account and thought nothing more of it, until I heard through her that people were saying it was some sort of a call for assassination, which is crazy. But I took it down. Even if I think it’s crazy, I don’t want to be associated with violence of any kind,” he said. To “86” [is common slang](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/16/8647-meaning-james-comey-instagram-trump) for stopping or getting rid of something, while “47” could be seen as a reference to Trump, the 47th president. Comey said he was hoping for a buzz around his forthcoming legal thriller FDR Drive: A Crime Novel. Instead he got a call from the Secret Service, who had opened an investigation into the post. Comey, who was fired by Trump in his first term, appeared voluntarily at the Washington field office for an interview, after the president insisted there was no innocent reading of the message. “He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant,” Trump said. “If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear.” Comey, who ultimately took down the post, appeared nonplussed by the investigation. “It’s not my first rodeo,” he said, noting his tempestuous relationship with Trump which Comey said deteriorated after he rebuffed Trump’s early attempts to secure a pledge of loyalty from the then FBI director. The agency is now led by Kash Patel, whose abiding loyalty has raised urgent questions about the FBI’s independence. But Comey warned that the episode pointed to a more worrying trend by this administration: “The use of power to aim at individuals, eroding the rule of law.” His advice to others who may find themselves on the receiving end of Trump’s retribution? “The rule of law is still our saving grace,” Comey said. “We have a judiciary in this country that will support the truth. Take solace in that. Take prudent steps, but don’t freak out. These people are not good enough for you to be freaked out about. Protect yourself, be measured about the effect the threat has on you, and know that you’re going to be OK.”

Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu BBC News, Washington DC Reuters Maurene Comey worked at the US attorney's office for the Southern District of New York since 2015 The US Department of Justice has fired a veteran federal prosecutor who worked on the cases against sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and hip hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs. It is not clear why Maurene Comey was removed from her job at the Southern District of New York, but her exit was confirmed by sources to the BBC's US partner CBS. She is the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, whom President Donald Trump fired in 2017. The justice department has been firing lawyers who worked on cases that angered the president, including a special prosecutor investigation of Trump. Ms Comey - who had been a trial lawyer at the high-profile justice department office in Manhattan since 2015 - was given no explanation for her firing, a person familiar with the matter told Politico. Her exit comes as Trump and the justice department's leader, Attorney General Pam Bondi, face backlash over the administration's handling of files relating to Epstein. * [Trump's Epstein strategy could pit him against loyal supporters](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjrlg94wnq9o) Epstein, the well-connected convicted paedophile, died by suicide in a New York jail while awaiting trial in 2019. Bondi appeared to indicate in February she would release Epstein's client list, before saying last week [there was no "incriminating list" and no further files would be disclosed.](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2m879neljo) On Wednesday, Trump fired off his strongest rebuke yet on social media at supporters who claim there has been a cover-up on Epstein, labelling them "weaklings" and saying he did not want their backing anymore. Watch: Trump calls out "stupid Republicans" in Jeffrey Epstein files saga Ms Comey's firing comes after her prosecution team failed in their bid to convict Sean Combs on [the most serious charges he faced of racketeering and sex-trafficking.](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjd2e310k25o) The rapper was found guilty this month of lesser counts. According to ABC News, Trump has privately expressed displeasure about having a Comey work in his administration. Her father, James Comey, was recently interviewed by the US Secret Service after posting - then deleting - [a seashell photo on Instagram that federal officials alleged was a call for violence against Trump.](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70nqk9rlxpo) Earlier this month it was reported that the justice department had launched an investigation into the former FBI director. Prosecutors were said to be examining Comey's statements to Congress over an inquiry into alleged Russian attempts to influence the 2016 White House election. That probe failed to find Trump had criminally conspired with the Kremlin. The BBC has contacted the justice department for comment. The agency has been purging officials since the Republican president returned to office in January. Last week Bondi fired at least 20 staff who had roles in Special Counsel Jack Smith's twin investigations into Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat and the alleged mishandling of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. A number of prosecutors who charged participants in the US Capitol riot, when Trump supporters stormed Congress, have also been sacked. Getty Images Former FBI Director James Comey

Maurene Comey, a federal prosecutor involved in cases against [Jeffrey Epstein](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/jeffrey-epstein) and his accomplice [Ghislaine Maxwell](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ghislaine-maxwell) and led the recent case against [Sean “Diddy” Combs](https://www.theguardian.com/music/diddy), filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging her abrupt termination as politically motivated retaliation against her father, former FBI director James Comey. According to [the court documents](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.649409/gov.uscourts.nysd.649409.1.0.pdf), the justice department fired Comey without cause or explanation on 16 July, citing only “article 2 of the United States constitution and the laws of the United States” in a brief email. When she asked for a reason, interim US attorney Jay Clayton told her: “All I can say is it came from Washington. I can’t tell you anything else.” Just three months before her termination, the 35-year-old prosecutor received a glowing review from the same attorney who would later deliver news of her firing, the lawsuit alleges. The lawsuit seeks her reinstatement, back pay, and a declaration that her termination violated the constitution. Her removal came after a sustained pressure campaign by [Laura Loomer](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/04/who-is-laura-loomer), a far-right activist and [Trump administration](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/trump-administration) whisperer with clear influence over personnel and policy decisions. In May, Loomer posted to her 1.7 million X followers calling for the firing of James Comey’s “liberal daughter”. “Both Maurene Comey and Lucas Issacharoff need to be FIRED from the DOJ immediately,” Loomer wrote. After the termination, Loomer celebrated: “This comes 2 months after my pressure campaign on Pam Blondi to fire Comey’s daughter.” The lawsuit alleges the firing was designed to retaliate against James Comey, whom Trump has attacked in hundreds of social media posts, repeatedly calling him the “worst” FBI director in history. Tensions escalated in May when the elder Comey [posted](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/19/james-comey-seashell-instagram-photo-trump) a cryptic message featuring seashells arranged to spell “8647”, which Trump [interpreted](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/16/james-comey-investigation-8647-trump) as an assassination threat. Maurene Comey’s case portfolio included high-profile wins: the conviction of Maxwell for sex trafficking, the prosecution of gynecologist Robert Hadden for sexual abuse, and most recently leading the team that convicted Combs. The [Trump administration](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/trump-administration) has argued that article 2 grants unlimited presidential removal authority over career prosecutors, but the federal lawsuit claims that violates constitutional separation of powers and federal service protections. In a farewell email to colleagues, Comey said: “If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decision of those who remain. Do not let that happen.”

James Comey, the former FBI director and one of Donald Trump’s most frequent targets, was indicted on Thursday on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of justice, according to a person familiar with the matter, in the latest move in the president’s expansive retribution campaign against his political adversaries. “No one is above the law. Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people,” [Pam Bondi](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/pam-bondi), the US attorney general, said in a [statement](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-bondi-director-patel-statements-regarding-indictment-former-fbi-director) on Thursday. Trump celebrated the charges in a post on Truth Social. “JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is [James Comey](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/james-comey), the former Corrupt Head of the FBI,” he wrote in a post. “Today he was indicted by a Grand Jury on two felony counts for various illegal and unlawful acts. 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. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” The indictment came shortly after Trump instructed Bondi to “move now” to prosecute Comey and other officials he considers political foes, in an extraordinarily direct social media post trampling on the justice department’s tradition of independence. The charges came less than a week after Lindsey Halligan was installed as the top federal prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia, after Trump fired her predecessor, Erik Siebert, after he declined to bring charges against Comey over concerns there was insufficient evidence. Halligan, most recently a White House aide and former Trump lawyer who has no prosecutorial experience, was also presented with a memo earlier this week laying out why charges should not be brought. But the justice department still pushed it through, people familiar with the matter said. The indictment, filed in federal court in the eastern district of Virginia, shows grand jurors charged Comey was charged with obstructing “a congressional investigation into the disclosure of sensitive information” and making a false statement to the FBI when he said he did not authorize someone at the agency to be an anonymous source. Prosecutors [sought a third charge](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136.3.0.pdf) against Comey, but grand jurors rejected the request, court documents show. “Today, your [FBI](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/fbi) took another step in its promise of full accountability,” Kash Patel, the FBI director, said in a statement. Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia, condemned the charges. “Donald Trump has made clear that he intends to turn our justice system into a weapon for punishing and silencing his critics,” he said in a statement. “This kind of interference is a dangerous abuse of power. 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.” Days before submitting his resignation under pressure, Siebert reportedly conveyed to his superiors at the justice department that the cases against Comey and James were unlikely to result in charges. In social media posts on Saturday, Trump claimed that Comey, James and a third political opponent, Democratic senator Adam Schiff of California, were “guilty as hell” and that his supporters were upset that “nothing has been done”. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump posted. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” Trump’s contempt for Comey stretches back to the early days of his first term, when according to Comey, Trump sought to secure a pledge of loyalty from the then FBI director, who refused. At the time, Comey was leading the criminal investigation into Russian meddling in the US election. Trump dismissed Comey in May 2017. Earlier this year, Comey was investigated by the Secret Service after he shared and then deleted a cryptic social media post of seashells in the formation of “8647” that Trump’s allies alleged was an incitement of violence against the president. Comey said he opposed violence of any kind and said he was unaware that “86” had a violent connotation. Comey voluntarily sat for an interview with the agency.

 The Justice Department has leveled charges against former FBI Director James Comey, after President Trump demanded prosecutors speed up their pace in an investigation targeting one of his most prominent critics. Comey faces one count of making false statements and one count of obstruction of justice in connection with his [testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee nearly five years ago](https://www.npr.org/2020/09/30/918438002/graham-plans-new-political-offensive-in-hearing-with-old-foe-comey). The move comes days after the top federal prosecutor in Northern Virginia cast doubt on the evidence, only to be forced out by the president and [replaced with one of Trump's former defense attorneys](https://www.npr.org/2025/09/21/nx-s1-5549086/trump-nominates-white-house-aide-top-us-prosecutor-probing-letitia-james). "No one is above the law.," Attorney General Pam Bondi [said in a post on X](https://x.com/AGPamBondi/status/1971345371583611099). "Today's indictment reflects this Department of Justice's commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people." Trump has long railed against Comey, blaming the former FBI leader for the [appointment of a special prosecutor](https://www.npr.org/2017/05/17/528846598/former-fbi-director-mueller-appointed-special-counsel-to-oversee-russia-probe) who probed contacts between Russia and Trump's 2016 campaign through most of the president's first term in office. The charges against Comey mark the latest escalation in a years-long war of words between Trump and Comey, who famously likened the president to a mob boss. This year the Secret Service interrogated the former FBI director after he posted a photo of seashells in [the shape of the numbers "86 47."](https://www.npr.org/2025/05/16/nx-s1-5400400/comey-trump-8647-investigation-instagram) Comey later removed the post, saying he thought it was a restaurant-themed joke about removing Trump, the 47th president. But Trump's son and cabinet members interpreted the message as an assassination threat. "Eighty-six" is a [slang term](https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/eighty-six-meaning-origin) that means "get rid of," and Trump is the 47th (and 45th) president of the United States. Comey once served as second in command at the Justice Department, under President George W. Bush. But he started his career as a federal prosecutor, working to some acclaim in the same office in Virginia that later moved to seek his indictment. DOJ fired his daughter, Maurene Comey, from a prominent job as an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan earlier this year, only hours after she said she had been asked to lead an important public corruption case. This month, Maurene Comey sued current Justice Department leaders, arguing she was fired without cause and in violation of the Constitution and federal statutes. Her lawsuit said she thought she was dismissed because of "her father's protected speech, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, or both."

Donald Trump’s long public campaign to get someone in his administration to bring criminal charges against James Comey, the former FBI director he fired in 2017, finally succeeded on Thursday, but the president has been so public about his loathing of the indicted man, and his desire to see him jailed, that it might be hard for prosecutors to convince a jury that the case was not brought for political reasons. Comey was fired by Trump in 2017 after he reportedly refused a request to pledge his loyalty to the newly elected president, and then publicly confirmed to Congress that the [FBI](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/fbi) was conducting a counterintelligence investigation of Russian efforts to help Trump get elected in 2016. Trump’s firing of Comey backfired, however, because it helped convince then deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein [to appoint a special counsel](https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/appointment-special-counsel#:~:text=For%20Immediate%20Release,regard%20to%20partisan%20political%20considerations.), former FBI director Robert Mueller, to, in his words, “oversee the previously confirmed FBI investigation of Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election and related matters”. Although Mueller’s report, issued in 2019, [concluded](https://theintercept.com/2019/04/18/annotating-special-counsel-robert-muellers-redacted-report/) that his team “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities”, the investigation unearthed evidence that a Russian effort did take place and, in Mueller’s words, “established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome”. Mueller added that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts”. Mueller declined to charge Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr, with violating campaign finance laws by soliciting information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government in a meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign, although the investigation made it plain that the Trump campaign had been open to help from Russia. When a publicist for the Russian oligarch who paid Trump to stage his Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013 wrote to tell Don Jr that a Russian prosecutor wanted to offer the Trump campaign “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia”, calling it “part of Russia and its government’s support to Mr Trump”, Trump’s son replied, “If it’s what you say, I love it,” and got Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to attend the meeting. The indictment of Comey comes as Trump seeks to use the power of the justice department to punish a man he sees as a central figure in the Russia investigation he has continually described as “a witch-hunt” and “a hoax”. One of the ironies of the situation is that Comey, who cast himself as a rigidly non-partisan law enforcement official, played an outsized role in helping Trump to get elected in the first place. It was Comey who, as [FBI](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/fbi) director in the summer of 2016, decided not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server to conduct official business while secretary of state, but took it upon himself to hold a press conference to explain his decision. In that public forum, [Comey said](https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system) that while Clinton and her staff had been “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” and there was “evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information”, he had concluded, as a former prosecutor, that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case”. That news conference offered Trump, then running against Clinton, ammunition to describe her use of a personal email server as reckless. Trump embraced that line of attack, particularly after [WikiLeaks published](https://x.com/wikileaks/status/856404404278362112) emails from Clinton campaign aides that had been stolen by Russian government hackers. Then, days before the November election, Comey suddenly announced that the FBI had reopened its investigation of Clinton’s own emails, after copies of some messages were found on the laptop of the disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, who was then married to Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin. Although Comey announced, before election day, that the review of the additional emails had found nothing of substance, Clinton [dropped in the polls](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-comey-letter-probably-cost-clinton-the-election/) in the closing days of the campaign, and narrowly lost to Trump. Another irony is that Comey was indicted by the new, Trump-appointed US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, an office where he once served as a federal prosecutor. He went on to hold two of the most senior positions in the justice department, as the US attorney for the southern district of New York, and then deputy attorney general under George W Bush, before later being appointed FBI director by Barack Obama in 2013. Comey’s indictment comes nearly nine years after Hillary Clinton observed, [in a 2016 debate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XzL1sQWRd4), “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.” Trump replied: “Because you’d be in jail.”

On Thursday night, the Justice Department indicted former FBI Director James Comey — accusing him of having lied to Congress during sworn testimony. For me, a journalist who covers declining democracies, this set off some pretty obvious alarm bells. President Donald Trump had already [openly called on Attorney General Pam Bondi](https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115239044548033727) to prosecute Comey, one of his most prominent critics, but there she was hampered by what looked like a total lack of evidence. Just this morning, ABC News reported that attorneys in Virginia’s Eastern District had investigated Comey for two months but [found insufficient cause to support an indictment](https://abcnews.go.com/US/prosecutors-memo-new-us-attorney-recommended-plans-charge/story?id=125925246). That such an indictment was filed anyway feels a lot like a vindictive effort by an authoritarian president to wield law against his enemies. But hey, I thought — maybe I was being unfair to Lindsey Halligan, the federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of Virginia. Maybe ABC was wrong, and there really was damning evidence that Comey committed a crime. So I read the indictment. And wow, is it worse than I thought. The indictment is very short — just two pages. I’ve uploaded it below, and I’d recommend you read it all before we proceed. The first count alleges that Comey knowingly lied to the Senate in September 2020, when he said that he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” in regards to an investigation into an unnamed party described as Person 1 (who, given the context of the hearing, [is mostly likely Trump](https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/2020-senate-testimony-that-led-charges-against-ex-fbi-chief-comey-2025-09-26/)). The indictment claims that he in fact did authorize someone to be an anonymous source to the media about this person, and thus lied to Congress. And that’s it. There’s no explanation of what Comey was talking about during the hearing, why federal prosecutors believed him to be lying — nothing. Just a simple assertion that Comey lied. The second count of the indictment is even more vague. It alleges Comey “did corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct and impede the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which an investigation was being had before the Senate Judiciary Committee by making false and misleading statements.” That confusingly worded line says statements, plural — not just the single quote in count one. Yet there’s no explanation of what those statement_s_ are. It is impossible to understand what federal prosecutors are claiming Comey did wrong, or why they’re claiming it. You may think this is normal for a high-profile federal indictment. I assure you [it is not](https://bsky.app/profile/pwnallthethings.bsky.social/post/3lzp6bd4da22t). A typical indictment contains clear and specific details designed to show that there is good reason to believe the accused person committed the crimes in question. If you look at [the indictment of Jeffrey Epstein](https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1180481/dl), for example, you get damningly detailed descriptions of how Epstein procured minors for sex. If you read [the indictment of former Sen. Bob Menendez](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/05/nyregion/bob-menendez-obstruction-justice.html) (D-NJ), you see pictures of the literal gold bars he took as bribes. And if you read [one of the federal indictments of Trump](https://www.justice.gov/storage/US_v_Trump_23_cr_257.pdf), you will find accounts of the conversations in which Trump helped construct a conspiracy to unlawfully overturn the 2020 election. But if you read the Comey indictment, you’ll find absolutely nothing of the kind. There is zero reason to believe that he committed any crimes other than the government’s said so. Now, it’s still _possible_ federal prosecutors have something. Comey acknowledged, [in 2017 testimony](https://abcnews.go.com/US/questions-raised-comey-admitting-leaked-contents-memo-trump/story?id=47918343), that he gave memos about his conversation with Trump to a friend, intending the friend (a law professor named Daniel Richman) to ultimately leak them. And federal prosecutors recently [subpoenaed Richman](https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/friend-former-fbi-director-james-comey-subpoenaed-federal/story?id=125666973) as part of the perjury investigation. But would Comey have really lied about something that he himself already admitted? To make matters more confusing, we don’t even know that the indictment is about Richman. [My colleague Andrew Prokop suggests](https://x.com/awprokop/status/1971376534653907352) that the indictment is likely about a separate dispute between Comey and his former deputy Andrew McCabe about leaks to the Wall Street Journal. This would be a problem for the prosecution as an investigation by the Office of the Inspector General found “the overwhelming weight of that evidence supported Comey’s version of the conversation.” So why bring the case now? This might all be a little bit clearer if federal prosecutors had put details into their indictment, but they chose not to. There is literally no way to evaluate their allegations, because the allegations have no substance. Which brings me back to my original point — fears of a political prosecution. Trump has openly called for political prosecutions and pressured the Justice Department to go after Comey specifically. The indictment was a golden opportunity to create the impression that this was legitimate, which is what smart authoritarians do when they arrest their enemies — and they completely botched it. The legal work is so far below par that it seems as if they’re actively trying to vindicate claims that this is a trumped-up political case. MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian, a deeply sourced Justice Department beat reporter, said the mood in the department is grim. “What I am hearing from DOJ sources: The Comey indictment is among the worst abuses in DOJ history,” [Dilanian wrote](https://x.com/DilanianMSNBC/status/1971353961375596668). “It’s hard to overstate how…big a moment this is.” This suggests that the common sense read of the indictment — that it’s an authoritarian overreach by [an authoritarian president](https://www.vox.com/politics/462076/trump-democracy-jimmy-kimmel-charlie-kirk) — is also the correct one. See More: * [Donald Trump](https://www.vox.com/donald-trump) * [Policy](https://www.vox.com/policy) * [Politics](https://www.vox.com/politics)

Ali Abbas Ahmadi and Max Matza Watch: "I'm not afraid", says James Comey after indictment A federal grand jury in the US state of Virginia has formally charged former FBI Director James Comey with two offences related to testimony he gave to Congress. Mr Comey, who has long drawn US President Donald Trump's criticism, is accused of lying to a Senate committee in 2020 about whether he authorised a leak of classified information to the media. The indictment comes days after Trump called on the country's top law enforcement official to more aggressively investigate his political adversaries, including Mr Comey. Responding to the indictment, Mr Comey declared himself innocent and said he had "great confidence in the federal judicial system". * [Indictment escalates Trump's promise of political retribution](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c33r872egvjo) An indictment in the US justice system is a formal accusation issued by a grand jury after they review evidence to determine if a case should proceed. Mr Comey may have his first court appearance on Friday but his arraignment - where charges are formally read out in front of a defendant in court - has been set for 9 October in Alexandria, Virginia, the BBC's US partner CBS reports. The probe is being led by Lindsey Halligan, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who was previously Trump's personal lawyer and took over her new role on Monday. Attorney General Pam Bondi, urged by Trump at the weekend to pursue Comey, said in a statement that the indictment "reflects this Department of Justice's commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people". The [two-page indictment](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136.1.0_3.pdf) is short on detail but it says Mr Comey has been charged with one count of making false statements and another of obstruction of justice. Both counts relate to Mr Comey's appearance at a Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020, when he was questioned about the FBI's handling of two explosive investigations - one on pro-Trump election interference by Russia and another on Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. The five-year statute of limitations for charges based on that hearing would have expired next week. The first count relates to Mr Comey telling the committee he had not authorised someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about an FBI investigation into what the indictment describes as "PERSON 1", believed to be Hillary Clinton. The second count alleges that Mr Comey "did corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct and impede" the committee by making false statements to it. The jury rejected a third count of making false statements. If found guilty, Mr Comey could face up to five years in prison. He said in a video statement: "My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump." "We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn't either," he continued, adding: "And, I am innocent. So, let's have a trial." Watch moments from James Comey's 2020 hearing at heart of indictment The case had recently been handed over to a new prosecutor after Erik Seibert, the original US attorney overseeing the case, departed amid concerns he would be forced out. Trump later said he fired Mr Seibert, who was replaced by Ms Halligan. The case is considered to be the highest-profile indictment of a public figure during Trump's second term. Trump recently voiced his frustration that prosecutions of his public critics such as Mr Comey, Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James are taking so long. "We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!" Trump said on Truth Social last week. Asked about Mr Comey hours before the indictment was unsealed, Trump called him a "bad person" but said he had no advanced knowledge of his prosecution. Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, said it will be a very challenging case to prosecute. "It's often the defendant's word against someone else's and you're gonna have to look at the credibility of both," she told BBC News. "And even if James Comey got things wrong, that doesn't mean that he knowingly or intentionally lied to Congress. So proving that is going to be the heart of the case." Ms Levenson also said this prosecution and Trump's public pressure to move forward on it suggests that the traditional firewall between the White House and the US Department of Justice had "collapsed with this case". Watch: James Comey is a "bad person", says Trump hours before indictment Several Democrats condemned the charges, with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries denouncing them as "a disgraceful attack on the rule of law", vowing "accountability" for "anyone complicit in this malignant corruption". Mr Comey served as the FBI's director between 2013 and 2017. He had a tumultuous tenure that included overseeing a high-profile inquiry into Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's emails just weeks before the 2016 election, which she lost to Trump. He was fired by Trump amid an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. This is not the first investigation into the former FBI boss to be launched this year. He was investigated by the Secret Service after he shared and then deleted a social media post of seashells spelled the numbers "8647", which Republicans alleged was an incitement to violence against US President Donald Trump. The number 86 is a slang term whose definitions include "to reject" or "to get rid of", according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. In July, Mr Comey's daughter Maurene Comey was fired from her role as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. She was given no reason for being removed from the office where she had worked for 10 years, according to media reports. Earlier this month, she sued the Trump administration over her dismissal. The Justice Department has been firing lawyers who worked on cases that angered the president, including a special prosecutor investigation of Trump. _Additional reporting by Sumi Somaskanda_

For [Donald Trump](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump), the indictment of former FBI director and longtime foe [James Comey](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/james-comey) was,“justice in America”. Legal observers and lawmakers see something far more troubling. A former Republican appointed to lead the bureau by Barack Obama and kept on by Trump until he fired him in 2017, Comey was [indicted Thursday](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/25/james-comey-fbi-director-indictment) on charges related to allegedly lying to Congress five years ago during a hearing on the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. The charges were filed in the eastern district of Virginia only after Erik Siebert was [forced out](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/19/us-attorney-letitia-james-erik-siebert) as US attorney for reportedly finding no grounds to indict Comey. The justice department replaced him with a Trump loyalist with little prosecutorial experience, Lindsey Halligan, and shortly after, a grand jury indicted Comey on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The indictment is the latest sign that the president is making good on his promise “to turn our justice system into a weapon for punishing and silencing his critics”, said Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee. “This kind of interference is a dangerous abuse of power. 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,” Warner said. Adam Schiff, the Democratic senator and a former federal prosecutor who played a lead role in Trump’s first impeachment, [said on X](https://x.com/SenAdamSchiff/status/1971360273857425667) he had “never witnessed such a blatant abuse of the” justice department, calling it “little more than an arm of the president’s retribution campaign”. In a letter to Pam Bondi, the attorney general, [Democrats](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/democrats) on the Senate judiciary committee described Siebert’s firing and Comey’s indictment as “the latest steps in President Trump’s efforts to reshape the nation’s leading law enforcement agency into a weapon focused on punishing his enemies”. Top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries said it was “crazy to me” that Trump was pursuing a “malicious prosecution” against Comey, given that the FBI chief’s [public revival of an investigation](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/13/james-comey-book-hillary-clinton-email-investigation) into Hillary Clinton’s email use days before the 2016 election is seen as playing a role in Trump’s victory. “These charges are going to be dismissed. [James Comey](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/james-comey) will win in court. But what it reflects is a broader attack on the rule of law that should frighten every single American, whether you’re a Democrat, an independent or a Republican,” he said at the Capitol. Mike Zamore, national director of policy and government affairs at the American Civil Liberties Union, said Trump “has yet again proven his disdain for the principles that have actually made America great”. “By undermining the rule of law at each and every turn, threatening individuals who speak out against him, and arresting, investigating, and prosecuting elected officials of the opposition party and others who displease him, the president and his administration have corrupted our system of justice to turn his campaign of retribution into reality,” he said, adding that Trump’s public push to indict Comey amounts to “a grotesque abuse of presidential power”. Eric Swalwell, the Democratic congressman and member of the House judiciary committee, told CNN: “I promise you, when Democrats are in the majority, we are going to look at all of this, and there will be accountability, and bar licenses will be at stake in your local jurisdiction if you are corruptly indicting people where you cannot prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt on.” Norm Eisen, executive chair of pro-democracy group Democracy Defenders Fund, warned the indictment puts “the safety of every American and our national security itself in danger. This indictment has all the hallmarks of a vindictive and meritless prosecution, worthy only of the totalitarian states the United States used to oppose”. “This matters far beyond James Comey. It’s about every citizen’s right to live free from persecution by their own leaders. Criticizing our leaders is a fundamental right, regardless of how much our leaders don’t like it,” he said. Trump has spent the hours since Comey’s indictment was announced insulting him on Truth Social, calling him “One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to” on [Thursday night](https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115267513846352215) and “A DIRTY COP” on [Friday morning](https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115270250599016202). His allies have taken up his argument, if not his tone. “Comey demonstrated complete arrogance and unwillingness to comply with the law,” said Ted Cruz, the Republican senator whose exchange with the former FBI director at a 2020 hearing is the subject of the allegations. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair of the Senate judiciary committee, said: “If the facts and the evidence support the finding that Comey lied to Congress and obstructed our work, he ought to be held accountable.” “Say it with me, Democrats: nobody is above the law,” said Mike Davis, a prominent Trump legal defender, echoing a phrase often used by Democrats when Trump and his allies were facing prosecutions before his election victory last year. “We are just getting started today with this indictment,” Davis said. “It’s going to get much worse for the Democrats.”

_This story appeared in [The Logoff](https://www.vox.com/the-logoff-newsletter-trump), a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. [Subscribe here](https://www.vox.com/pages/logoff-newsletter-trump-administration-updates)_. **Welcome to The Logoff:** President Donald Trump’s campaign of retribution against his perceived political enemies is escalating after the Thursday evening indictment of former FBI Director James Comey. **What happened?** Comey was indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia on two charges: lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding. [As my colleague Zack Beauchamp wrote](https://www.vox.com/politics/462958/james-comey-indictment-read-perjury-trump-bondi), the charges are remarkably slapdash and were reportedly presented to a grand jury over the opposition of career federal prosecutors. **What’s going on in the Eastern District of Virginia?** The charges against Comey were brought by interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan, formerly a personal lawyer to Trump. Halligan ended up with that job after the previous US attorney resigned last week under pressure for refusing to indict another Trump foe, New York Attorney General Letitia James; the next day, Trump endorsed Halligan in a social media post addressed to US Attorney General Pam Bondi. **What happens next?** Trump has made it clear that he sees the Comey indictment as only the start of his retaliation campaign, warning Friday that “there’ll be others.” In the aforementioned Saturday post to Bondi, he wrote: > What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? … We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! On Thursday, [the New York Times also reported](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/us/politics/justice-trump-george-soros-foundation.html) that Justice Department leadership is directing an effort to prosecute George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, a major supporter of pro-democracy initiatives and liberal causes, on charges potentially including material support of terrorism. **What’s the big picture?** Trump has long called for his opponents to be investigated and charged, but now it’s actually happening. It’s possible there are things we still don’t know about the Comey indictment — but from everything we _do_ know, it’s a grave abuse of power by Trump and a serious attack on the rule of law. Here’s a fun science story to end the week: What do fish sound like underwater? Scientists (and the Washington Post) are looking into it, and their findings could have broader implications for the health of coral reefs and more. You can read the Post’s story via a gift link [here](https://wapo.st/42Tgd07) — enjoy and we’ll see you back here on Monday! See More: * [Donald Trump](https://www.vox.com/donald-trump) * [Politics](https://www.vox.com/politics) * [The Logoff](https://www.vox.com/the-logoff-newsletter-trump)

About two decades ago, Justice Antonin Scalia went on a duck hunting trip with then-Vice President Dick Cheney. This trip became an issue because the Supreme Court was considering a case challenging some of Cheney’s official actions within the Bush administration, and a party to that case asked Scalia to recuse because of his personal relationship with the vice president. In his [opinion denying this request](https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/590-2004-scalia-recusal-memo-for-cheney-case/86f45f298f34b1b5385a/optimized/full.pdf), Scalia argued that requiring justices to “remove themselves from cases in which the official actions of friends were at issue would be utterly disabling.” Many of the justices, Scalia explained, “reached this Court precisely because they were friends of the incumbent President or other senior officials,” and his opinion described several past examples of close relationships between justices and presidents or other top members of the executive branch. Setting aside the question of whether Scalia’s argument against recusal was persuasive, his opinion is an accurate description of elite Washington culture. The pool of people who receive high-level presidential appointments is fairly small, and the pool of Republicans who serve in those roles is even smaller. Serving in government means endless meetings, as competing agencies hash out their differences and competing political factions jockey for position. By the time someone rises to the highest offices — a justice or an agency leader — they are likely to be well-acquainted with their peers and friends with many of them. Which brings us to Trump’s recent decision to [bring criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey](https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2025/09/comey-indictment.pdf) — charges that are [so weak](https://www.vox.com/politics/462958/james-comey-indictment-read-perjury-trump-bondi) that President Donald Trump had to [fire a US attorney and install a loyalist](https://www.vox.com/politics/462869/lamonica-mciver-prosecution-trump-authoritarianism) to secure an indictment. Although Democratic President Barack Obama appointed Comey to lead the FBI, largely because Obama wanted to [avoid a difficult confirmation fight](https://theweek.com/articles/463795/james-comey-why-obama-wants-republican-fbi-chief) with Senate Republicans, Comey was a Republican for most of his career (although he announced that he’d [left the party during Trump’s first term](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/comey-republican-party-left/story?id=54535829)). He served as deputy attorney general, the Justice Department’s No. 2 job, under Republican President George W. Bush — and that was after Bush appointed him to a prestigious job as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan. In his many political jobs, Comey most likely worked directly with at least two of the sitting justices. His tenure as deputy attorney general overlaps with Justice Neil Gorsuch’s tenure in a senior Justice Department role. And Comey worked on a [Senate investigation into the 1990s-era Whitewater scandal](https://time.com/4276988/jim-comey-hillary-clinton/) at the same time that Justice Brett Kavanaugh [worked on independent counsel Ken Starr’s investigation](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/04/us/politics/brett-kavanaugh-clinton-impeachment.html) into the same matter. Meanwhile, for the reasons Scalia laid out in his recusal opinion, most of the justices undoubtedly know Comey. He was a top official in two presidential administrations, and one of the preeminent Republican lawyers in Washington, DC. Comey is cut from the exact same cloth as each of the Republican justices. So I hope these similarities are on these justices’ minds as they consider whether to rein in Trump’s growing attempts to weaponize the Justice Department against his political foes. Trump isn’t just targeting Democrats, and he isn’t [just targeting people from very different backgrounds](https://www.vox.com/politics/462869/lamonica-mciver-prosecution-trump-authoritarianism) than the justices themselves. Trump is now targeting people exactly like the Republican justices. And if they don’t stop [behaving as sycophants for this administration](https://www.vox.com/scotus/460270/supreme-court-republican-partisan-hacks-donald-trump) and take steps to restrain Trump now, the justices themselves could be next. One of the sickest ironies of Trump’s prosecution of Comey is that, without Comey, it is very unlikely that Trump would have become president in the first place. When Hillary Clinton became secretary of state in 2009, it was common for the nation’s top diplomat to conduct government business using a personal email account; [both of Clinton’s Republican predecessors did so](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/04/colin-powell-condoleezza-rice-private-email-accounts-classified-hillary-clinton), and Clinton followed the same practice. A top official in Clinton’s State Department later explained that the secretary of state often needs to [communicate quickly with other senior diplomats](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/22/20924795/hillary-clinton-emails-new-york-times-state-department), and this is impossible if she complies with the rigid security rules that govern classified communications among more junior government employees. Yet Clinton’s decision to conduct work business using a personal email account somehow became the biggest story of the 2016 election cycle, and while [the media also bears blame](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/22/20924795/hillary-clinton-emails-new-york-times-state-department), James Comey was a major reason. After the FBI concluded that Clinton should not be prosecuted for using a personal email account, Comey, as FBI director, nonetheless called a press conference labeling her actions “[extremely careless](https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/six-years-later-james-comeys-hillary-clinton-conference-still-stings-rcna36772).” Then, just days before the 2016 election, he again made the emails the biggest story in the country by sending a cryptic letter to Congress announcing that the FBI was [reopening its investigation into Clinton](https://archive.thinkprogress.org/the-case-for-firing-james-comey-f6e72f397646/). (The second investigation was swiftly closed.) These actions violated longstanding Justice Department protocols. As former deputy attorneys general Jamie Gorelick and Larry Thompson wrote at the time, the DOJ “operates under long-standing and well-established traditions limiting disclosure of ongoing investigations to the public and even to Congress, [especially in a way that might be seen as influencing an election](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/james-comey-is-damaging-our-democracy/2016/10/29/894d0f5e-9e49-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html).” Comey violated norms against “creating unfair innuendo to which an accused party cannot properly respond.” Indeed, these norms aren’t simply a good idea; they are [rooted in the Constitution](https://archive.thinkprogress.org/the-case-for-firing-james-comey-f6e72f397646/). If Clinton had been charged with a crime, she would have received a trial and been given a formal process where she could seek vindication. But, when Comey used the prestige of his office to disparage her, he denied her due process. She had no way to formally repudiate Comey’s allegations against her. The end result was that, while Clinton won nearly 3 million more votes nationwide than Trump, she [barely lost the key states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania](https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/president). The race was so close that Comey’s intervention against Clinton [likely tipped the balance](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/11/14215930/comey-email-election-clinton-campaign). If Comey had complied with the Justice Department’s safeguards against disparaging unindicted individuals and interfering with elections, Donald Trump would most likely be a washed-up real estate developer today. One might think that Trump would be eternally grateful to Comey for more or less handing him the presidency. Instead, Trump lost faith in Comey after the FBI investigated possible ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government in 2017, and Trump eventually [fired Comey from his position at the top of the FBI](https://www.vox.com/2017/5/9/15601432/trump-fires-james-comey-explained). Comey has been on Trump’s enemies list ever since. Just last week, Trump appears to have accidentally posted an order to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Truth Social, Trump’s social media site. The order instructed Bondi to [target Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), and New York’s Democratic Attorney General Letitia James](https://www.vox.com/politics/462869/lamonica-mciver-prosecution-trump-authoritarianism). Trump’s decision to target Comey reveals — in starker form than [ever](https://www.vox.com/politics/458971/john-bolton-fbi-raid-trump-retribution) — that he will turn on people who’ve benefited him in the past the moment he thinks they have raised a hand against him. And he is willing to use the full power of the United States government against people who’ve displeased him. All of which is a long way of saying that maybe the Republican justices should have thought twice before they said in July 2024, in the Court’s [benighted Trump immunity decision](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf), that Trump is immune from prosecution even if he orders the Justice Department to target someone “[for an improper purpose](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf).” The Republican justices may bear as much blame for Trump’s charges against Comey as Comey bears for the entire Trump presidency. For the moment, at least, it is not too late for the Supreme Court to reverse course. The Court has several cases pending before it right now where Trump seeks [sweeping authority over US fiscal and monetary policy](https://www.vox.com/politics/461677/supreme-court-trump-dictator-economy-tax-spending). The Republican justices do not need to give it to him. Nor do they need to play ball when Trump’s prosecutions of his political enemies reach the Supreme Court. But, if they do play ball, they will have no excuse if Trump later comes for them. The indictment of James Comey is a warning. Even Republicans who have done extraordinary things to benefit Donald Trump are not immune from his vindictiveness. See More: * [Criminal Justice](https://www.vox.com/criminal-justice) * [Donald Trump](https://www.vox.com/donald-trump) * [Policy](https://www.vox.com/policy) * [Politics](https://www.vox.com/politics) * [Supreme Court](https://www.vox.com/scotus)

 President Trump campaigned on a promise to use the justice system to seek retribution against his perceived political enemies. Yesterday, the Justice Department indicted former FBI director [James Comey on two criminal counts](https://www.npr.org/2025/09/25/nx-s1-5552690/james-comey-indicted). The decision to bring a case against Comey is a turning point for the Department of Justice. NPR senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson and Justice correspondent Carrie Johnson explain how Trump is following through on his campaign promise to punish his enemies. The rapid remaking of the justice system under his guidance is also feeding Trump's efforts to consolidate more power into the executive branch.

Watch: "I'm not afraid", says James Comey after indictment The US Department of Justice has charged James Comey with perjury over testimony he gave to Congress five years ago. The news puts the former FBI boss back in the spotlight nearly a decade after playing a key part in the drama of the 2016 election campaign. Who is James Comey? ------------------- After a childhood in New York and New Jersey, the young lawyer worked for various federal prosecutors including Rudy Giuliani in the high-profile Southern District of New York in the late 1980s. He later made waves as lead prosecutor against celebrity homemaker Martha Stewart, jailed for lying about financial misconduct in 2004. He scaled the echelons of the justice department, but left for the private sector before President Barack Obama appointed him to run the FBI in 2013. His action as its director in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential election campaign, investigating Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, caused a storm. Breaking with agency norms, Mr Comey announced 11 days before polling day that he was reopening the case due to the discovery of new emails. Then a week later the case was closed again with no further action taken. The inspector general was critical of Mr Comey's handling of the case and Clinton blamed his actions for her election defeat. A few months later he was out of a job, fired by Donald Trump, the new president. Why did Trump fire Comey? ------------------------- At the time, Mr Comey was leading an investigation into Russian election interference and whether there were any links between Moscow and Trump's campaign. The White House said the firing was over Mr Comey's handling of the Clinton probe. Democrats said it was due to the Russia investigation. This assertion was given extra weight when Trump said in an interview that Russia had been on his mind in acting against Mr Comey. As a result of the firing, the investigation was placed in the hands of a special counsel. It led to dozens of criminal charges against Trump campaign staff and associates for offences including computer hacking and financial crimes. But it did not find that the Trump campaign and Russia had conspired to influence the election. Watch: Trump says “there will be others” after Comey indictment Why was Comey indicted? ----------------------- The two-page indictment is short on detail, but it says Mr Comey has been charged with one count of making false statements and another of obstruction of justice. He maintains he is innocent and will prove that in court. Both counts relate to Mr Comey's appearance via video before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020. He was being questioned about his handling of the Clinton case and another investigation on pro-Trump election interference by Russia. Prosecutors allege Mr Comey misled the Senate by saying he had not authorised a leak to the media about an FBI investigation. The five-year statute of limitations for charges based on that hearing would have expired next week. What was he testifying about in 2020? ------------------------------------- It is not clear from the indictment what part of Mr Comey's evidence is being used by prosecutors, or which leak they are referring to. One key exchange was when Senator Ted Cruz referred Mr Comey to testimony he had given to Congress three years before, in 2017. In it, he denied being a source for stories about the Trump or Clinton investigations and denied authorising anyone at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports. Mr Comey told Cruz: "I stand by the testimony you summarised that I gave in May of 2017." Some Republicans have cited this answer by Mr Comey as potentially false because they say it has been disputed by his FBI deputy at the time, Andrew McCabe. They point to a report by the justice department's inspector general in 2018 in which Mr McCabe is said to have told investigators that Mr Comey authorised him to leak information to the press. Watch moments from James Comey's 2020 hearing at heart of indictment What has Trump said about Comey? -------------------------------- The president urged his attorney general last weekend to aggressively go after some of his opponents, naming James Comey among them. The fact these charges were filed just days later has the president's critics saying he has weaponised the justice department for his own purposes, shattering the independence from political meddling that the agency is traditionally meant to uphold. Conservatives argue that norm was already broken with what they see as partisan investigations against Trump. When news emerged of the indictment, Trump posted: "JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI." His antipathy to Mr Comey goes back years. After his firing, Mr Comey was critical of Trump and wrote a book recounting conversations in which he said the president had acted like a mob boss by pressuring him to drop the Russia investigation. What happens next? ------------------ Mr Comey will appear in court for an arraignment on 9 October where the charges will be read to him and he will enter a plea. The case will then go to trial. Trump has said there could be more charges coming against other political figures. He has urged prosecutors to charge Democratic Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has denounced his actions as "a disgraceful attack on the rule of law".

Donald Trump said on Friday that he expected more people whom he considers his political enemies to face criminal charges, a day after the justice department [indicted former FBI director James Comey](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/25/james-comey-fbi-director-indictment) and faced a torrent of criticism for enacting the president’s campaign of retribution. “It’s not a list, but I think there’ll be others,” Trump said as he departed the White House to travel to the Ryder Cup golf tournament. “I mean, they’re corrupt. They were corrupt radical left Democrats.” Trump’s blunt remarks underscored the perilous moment for his political adversaries, given that the justice department pressed ahead with criminal charges against Comey, even though it was widely seen – inside and outside the administration – to be a weak case. The indictment against Comey, filed in federal district court on Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia, alleged that he misled lawmakers in September 2020 when he stood by his previous testimony to Congress claiming he had never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak to reporters. Prosecutors alleged that statement was not true and that Comey had authorized his friend and Columbia law school professor Dan Richman to leak to reporters about an investigation into Hilary Clinton, when Richman worked for a short time as a special government employee at the FBI. But the underlying evidence against Comey, which remains unclear from the two-page indictment, was considered to be insufficient for a conviction. The issues were laid out in a memo and Erik Siebert, the then interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, declined to bring charges. Trump fired Siebert within days and replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, most recently a White House aide with no prosecutorial experience. Halligan was briefed on the problems with the case but pressed forward with charges anyway, presenting the case herself to the grand jury. The grand jury returned an indictment on two counts but declined to approve a third. Even then, only 14 out of 23 grand jurors voted to bring the false statement charge, barely more than the 12-person threshold, court documents show. The fraught nature of the Comey indictment raised fresh fears that Trump’s political appointees at justice department headquarters in Washington and at its field offices elsewhere will feel emboldened to pursue criminal cases against the president’s other adversaries. Among other people, Trump has fixated in recent weeks on criminal investigations against the New York attorney general Letitia James and Democratic senator Adam Schiff over mortgage fraud allegations. James brought a civil fraud case against Trump last year and Schiff led the first impeachment trial. Last weekend, before Comey’s indictment, Trump called on his attorney general Pam Bondi to pursue Comey, James and Schiff. “They impeached me twice and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!” Trump posted on Truth Social. The administration also launched a criminal investigation into former CIA director John Brennan, who Trump despises for his role in the US intelligence community’s assessment in 2016 about Russian malign influence operations aimed at helping the Trump campaign. Last month, the FBI also searched the home and office of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser turned critic, over allegations he mishandled classified documents. The FBI recovered documents with classification markings but Bolton’s lawyer claimed they had been declassified. Quick GuideShow  The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know. If you have something to share on this subject, you can contact us confidentially using the following methods. **Secure Messaging in the Guardian app** The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said. If you don't already have the Guardian app, download it ([iOS](https://apps.apple.com/app/the-guardian-live-world-news/id409128287)/[Android](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.guardian)) and go to the menu. Select ‘Secure Messaging’. **SecureDrop, instant messengers, email, telephone and post** If you can safely use the Tor network without being observed or monitored, you can send messages and documents to the Guardian via our [SecureDrop platform](https://www.theguardian.com/securedrop). Finally, our guide at [theguardian.com/tips](https://www.theguardian.com/tips) lists several ways to contact us securely, and discusses the pros and cons of each. Illustration: Guardian Design / Rich Cousins Thank you for your feedback.

Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted after a push by President Trump. The move marks a dramatic escalation in Trump's effort to go after his political opponents.

In 1931, an exceptionally talented young Berlin attorney named Hans Litten summoned [Adolf Hitler](https://www.theguardian.com/world/adolf-hitler) to testify in a criminal case. Litten represented four victims of a brutal assault perpetrated by members of Hitler’s Sturmabteilung, or SA, on a dance hall frequented by leftist workers; by the time the assault ended, [three people were dead](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14572578). At trial, the defense sought to portray the SA as a disciplined political organization, under orders from Hitler to use force only as self-defense. In his three-hour cross-examination of the head of the Nazi party, Litten managed what precious few dared to attempt. Hitler had expected the young lawyer to be intimidated; instead, Litten aggressively and skillfully dissected him under oath, reducing the supposedly gifted orator to a stammering rage. In trapping Hitler in contradictions and exposing him as an inveterate liar, Litten also made clear the Nazis’ goal of destroying the Weimar Republic. Hitler left the witness stand rattled and humiliated, henceforth forbidding Litten’s name to be uttered in his presence. Hitler’s revenge came two years later, barely a month after he had been installed in power. In the wake of the [Reichstag fire](https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zpknb9q/revision/4) – an arson attack on the parliament building – and relying on a hastily drafted emergency decree for the “protection of people and state”, Hitler ordered the arrest and “[protective custody](https://www.gdw-berlin.de/en/recess/biographies/index-of-persons/biographie/view-bio/hans-litten/?no_cache=1)” of numerous perceived political enemies, including Litten. Over the next five years, as he was shuttled from concentration camp to concentration camp, Litten was repeatedly beaten and tortured. In 1938, with no prospect of release, he took his own life. His crime: trying to protect the role of law and a constitutional democracy from a would-be authoritarian. The United States in 2025 is not Germany in 1933. That said, Litten’s experience has a disturbingly familiar ring. Last week, the US attorney’s office for the eastern district of Virginia (EDVA) announced that the former FBI director James Comey had been indicted for allegedly lying under oath to a congressional committee. The case against Comey is so flimsy that Erik Siebert, Trump’s hand-picked chief federal prosecutor for the post, balked at filing charges. Siebert’s fair assessment predictably earned him the ire of the president. “I want him out,” Trump fumed, and so [Siebert resigned](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/us/politics/erik-siebert-comey-letitia-james.html) before he could be fired, vacating the position he had occupied for barely eight months. Trump hastily named a replacement: Lindsey Halligan, a member of Trump’s coterie of personal lawyers who now occupy some of the most pivotal positions within the Department of Justice. Never mind that Halligan has [no prior prosecutorial experience](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/22/white-house-aide-erik-siebert-office) and that the head of the EDVA oversees the prosecution of many of the nation’s most complicated and sensitive cases involving national security and financial crimes; Halligan’s great qualification was apparently her willingness to do what Siebert would not: indulge Trump’s hankering for revenge. Her indictment of Comey, handed down scant days before the five-year statute of limitations on the alleged crimes was to expire, only confirmed Siebert’s doubts. Law students invariably learn the old canard that any decent prosecutor can get a grand jury “to indict a ham sandwich” – but maybe not Halligan: the grand [jury refused to indict](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/25/james-comey-fbi-director-indictment) on one of the three counts that the prosecutor submitted. Trump greeted the news of the two-count indictment by crowing on Truth Social: “[JUSTICE IN AMERICA!](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/25/james-comey-fbi-director-indictment)” – which might be an apt, if inadvertently Orwellian, description of the present state of the rule of law in our nation. The case is certainly about score-settling, but it’s also far more disturbing than that. Let’s assume for the moment that Trump was unfairly targeted for investigation during his first term; it would still be unseemly for a sitting president to respond to one injustice with another. But the fact is that the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election – the source of Trump’s crusade against Comey – was not a politically motivated “witch-hunt” (Trump’s favorite go-to term of impugnment to discredit attempts to hold him to account). Instead, it revealed a “[sweeping and systematic](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2019/apr/18/mueller-report-trump-russia-key-takeaways)” campaign to interfere with the 2016 election. Comey’s true “crime” recalls Hans Litten’s. He dared to show fidelity to his office and to the law, and not to the Great Leader. This is not to say that Comey risks sharing the fate of the intrepid German lawyer. In publicly declaring Comey “guilty as hell” and in transparently interfering in the legal process, Trump has handed the judge a reason to simply dismiss the case as an exercise in vindictive prosecution. Should Comey go to trial, the case’s obvious weaknesses might well result in an acquittal. And even if Comey were to be convicted and sent to prison, the US does not, at present, operate a system of concentration camps where political opponents face systematic torture. But that is cold comfort. The fact remains that Comey is being persecuted, not prosecuted, for putting service to the nation above obedience to a man. As if following a script from the authoritarian playbook, Trump is making Comey pay for his act of constitutional fidelity. What should disturb all Americans is the ease with which Trump, aided by his craven and opportunistic legal lackeys, has turned the proudly independent justice department into a tool of authoritarian consolidation. * Lawrence Douglas teaches at Amherst College. His newest book, The Criminal State: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice, will be published in the spring of 2026

Watch: "I'm not afraid", says James Comey after indictment An FBI agent has reportedly been suspended because they refused to participate in a "perp walk" of the bureau's former director James Comey, US media reports. The agent was suspended for insubordination, according to the BBC's news partner CBS, after the agent found the plan to be inappropriate. Mr Comey was indicted in Virginia on two federal charges days after Donald Trump called on law enforcement to more aggressively investigate his political adversaries, including Mr Comey. FBI leadership has discussed sending "large, beefy" agents in Kevlar vests to bring Mr Comey to his court arraignment in Alexandria next week, CBS reports. The BBC has reached out to the FBI. During a perp walk, law enforcement publicly escort a person accused of a crime as they are transported outside a police station or courthouse, usually in view of media cameras. The practice is common in high profile cases in the US. Mr Comey is set to appear in court on 9 October to be arraigned on charges of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding. This is when his charges will be formally read out to him in court. Mr Comey is [accused of lying to a Senate committee in 2020](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy50ggv35zpo) about whether he authorised a leak to the media of classified information. He led the FBI during a tumultuous time, when the bureau was investigating two high-profile matters: pro-Trump election interference by Russia in 2016 and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. He has denied the criminal allegations and said he has "great confidence in the federal judicial system". Getty Images If found guilty, he could face up to five years in prison. Trump fired Mr Comey early into his first term in office in 2017 as the FBI was investigating Russian interference, a probe that later found the Trump campaign did not co-ordinate with the Kremlin in the election. Mr Comey has been a target of Trump's ire since that time. The charges against Mr Comey were filed just days before the five-year statute of limitations would have expired and days after the [president appointed a new top prosecutor to the region](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wgg4vgeedo) - Lindsey Halligan, who previously worked as Trump's personal attorney. Trump appointed Halligan after expressing frustration that "nothing is being done" to his political adversaries. In a public post on social media, he called on US Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Mr Comey along with New York Attorney General Letitia James and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, who oversaw his first impeachment trial. "We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility," Trump said in the post. It's unclear if the plans to bring in Comey with FBI agents will move forward. His attorneys were reportedly planning to travel with Mr Comey to his court arraignment - a more common move for a non-violent criminal case. The BBC has reached out to his attorneys.

Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, will face senators on Tuesday, as [Donald Trump](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump) ramps up his crackdown on political opponents, Democratic-run cities and alleged drug traffickers. Bondi’s appearance before the Senate judiciary committee will give lawmakers from both parties the opportunity to question her about the president’s high-profile interventions into the justice system, including [the indictment](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/30/trump-comey-prosecution-justice-department) last month of the former FBI director James Comey, a longtime foe. “No one is above the law,” Bondi wrote on social media after the charges against Comey were announced – an echo of rhetoric used by Democrats after Trump was indicted during Joe Biden’s presidency. Though the charges were filed against Comey only after a top federal prosecutor [was dismissed](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/30/trump-comey-prosecution-justice-department), reportedly for not moving forward with the case, Bondi said: “Today’s indictment 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 attorney general is also likely to be questioned on the legal underpinnings of the Trump administration’s deadly strikes on boats believed to be carrying drugs off the coast of Venezuela, as well as the brewing controversy over the [release of documents](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/26/democrats-jeffrey-epstein-documents) related to alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Bondi’s appearance comes as Trump ordered national guard troops into Chicago over the objections of the city’s leaders, and is sending the California national guard to Portland after a federal judge blocked him from sending Oregon’s forces. The state of Illinois [has sued](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/06/trump-administration-illinois-national-guard) over the Chicago deployment, while California’s governor Gavin Newson said his state [would ask](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/05/gavin-newsom-california-trump-lawsuit) a judge to stop its troops from being sent to Portland. In addition to her appearance before the Senate, Bondi was expected to testify this week to lawmakers in the House of Representatives, but Speaker Mike Johnson has kept that chamber out of session to pressure Senate Democrats to accept a Republican proposal to fund the government.

 Attorney General Pam Bondi is set to testify before Congress Tuesday amid mounting concerns that the Justice Department under her leadership is being weaponized to go after President Trump's perceived enemies. Bondi's appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee comes less than two weeks after the department secured an [indictment against former FBI Director James Comey](https://www.npr.org/2025/09/25/nx-s1-5552690/james-comey-indicted) following [public demands from the president](https://www.npr.org/2025/09/22/nx-s1-5550132/trump-justice-department-comey-letitia-james-virginia) to do so. Comey, who faces one count of making false statements and one count of obstruction of justice stemming from congressional testimony in 2020, is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday in federal court in Alexandria, Va. The Comey indictment — and the machinations that led to it — are the latest, and [arguably most concerning, example](https://www.npr.org/2025/09/22/nx-s1-5550132/trump-justice-department-comey-letitia-james-virginia) of what many legal observers point to as the politicization and [weaponization of the department under Bondi](https://www.npr.org/2025/05/06/g-s1-64305/weaponization-doj-trump-bondi-justice-department). Since she took the helm in February, the department has been in almost constant turmoil. Bondi and her top lieutenants have fired prosecutors who worked Capitol riot cases or investigated Trump and pushed out senior officials at the FBI. _Bondi is set to testify at 9 a.m. ET. Watch it live:_ The Public Integrity Section, which prosecutes public corruption, has been almost entirely emptied out, while more than 70 percent of the attorneys in the [Civil Rights Division have departed](https://www.npr.org/2025/05/19/g-s1-66906/trump-civil-rights-justice-exodus) as well. At her confirmation hearing, Bondi echoed Trump's assertions that the Justice Department under President Biden was weaponized against Trump and conservatives more broadly. She vowed that would change under her leadership. "The partisanship, the weaponization will be gone," she told lawmakers. "America will have one tier of justice for all." In an appearance on Fox News after Comey was indicted, she told Sean Hannity, "the weaponization has ended." "We've made that very clear," she said. "Whether you're a former FBI director, whether you're the head of a former intel community, whether you are a current state or local elected official, whether you're a billionaire funding organizations to try to keep Donald Trump out of office, everything is on the table. We will investigate you and we will end the weaponization. No longer will there be a two-tier system of justice." Traditionally, the Justice Department enjoys a degree of independence from the White House, particularly in investigations and prosecutions to insulate them from partisan politics. But critics say that firewall has been bulldozed since Trump returned to office and put Bondi and other loyalists in top DOJ jobs. Last month, [Trump openly directed Bondi](https://www.npr.org/2025/09/22/nx-s1-5550132/trump-justice-department-comey-letitia-james-virginia) to go after his perceived political adversaries, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, a Senate Judiciary Committee member, and Comey. "We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility," Trump said in a social media post addressed to Bondi. "JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!" Shortly before that post, the president pushed out the [top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert,](https://www.npr.org/2025/09/20/nx-s1-5547837/us-attorney-virginia-resigns-letitia-james-probe) a career prosecutor Trump tapped for the role earlier this year. Siebert's office was leading investigations into both James and Comey, and Siebert had had expressed concerns about the strength of the evidence in both cases. Trump then installed [Lindsey Halligan](https://www.npr.org/2025/09/21/nx-s1-5549086/trump-nominates-white-house-aide-top-us-prosecutor-probing-letitia-james), a former insurance attorney and White House aide with no prosecutorial experience, as U.S. attorney to replace Siebert. She sought and secured an indictment against Comey, overruling career prosecutors who questioned the strength of the case. After Comey was charged, Bondi posted on social media: "No one is above the law. Today's indictment 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." Since his indictment, several career prosecutors in that U.S. attorney's office have been fired. A letter signed by nearly 300 former career DOJ employees and released on the eve of Bondi's hearing says the department is failing to uphold the rule of law, keep the country safe and protect civil rights. "The administration is taking a sledgehammer to other longstanding work the Department has done to protect communities and the rule of law, too," the letter says. "We call on these leaders to reverse course — to remember the oath we all took to uphold the Constitution — and adhere to the legal guardrails and institutional norms on which our justice system relies." The letter was released by Justice Connection, a group that supports DOJ employees. DOJ has not responded to NPR's request for comment on the letter.

The former FBI director James Comey is set to make his first appearance in court on Wednesday in connection [with federal charges](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/25/james-comey-fbi-director-indictment) that he lied to Congress in 2020. Comey will be booked and fingerprinted, which is normal practice for defendants, at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, before being arraigned and formally read the charges against him by US district judge Michael Nachmanoff. Nachmanoff was appointed to the federal bench by Joe Biden in 2021. The FBI has reportedly been weighing whether to submit Comey to a “perp walk” in which they would parade him in front of media cameras. An FBI agent [was reportedly](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-arrest-perp-walk-james-comey-suspended-agent-refusing-doj-trump/) relieved of duty for refusing to participate in such an effort. The [brief indictment](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136.1.0_12.pdf) handed down by a federal grand jury on 25 September accused Comey of making a false statement and obstructing a congressional investigation in connection with his September 2020 testimony to Congress. While the details of the charge remain unclear, they appear to be related to his claim that he never authorized anyone in the FBI to be an anonymous source in news stories. “I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial. And keep the faith,” Comey said in a video statement the night the charges were filed. The case against Comey marks a significant step in Donald Trump’s effort to politicize the justice department and punish his political enemies. Even though the attorney general and top justice department officials are political appointees, the department has typically operated at arm’s length from the White House in order to preserve independent decision-making necessary to uphold the rule of law. Trump has upended that norm and has said more charges are coming. Trump fired Comey in 2017 and has fumed at the former FBI director for years for his role in investigating connections between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. Comey’s firing eventually prompted the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to take over the investigation. Mueller’s [final report](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2019/apr/18/mueller-report-trump-russia-key-takeaways) detailed numerous instances in which Trump attempted to influence the investigation. Trump [forced out](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/19/us-attorney-letitia-james-erik-siebert) Erik Siebert, the top federal prosecutor in the eastern district of Virginia, after Siebert determined there wasn’t sufficient evidence to bring charges against Letitia James, New York’s attorney general. At Trump’s request, the justice department replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who was part of Trump’s personal legal team and has no prosecutorial experience. Career prosecutors in the eastern district of Virginia reportedly presented Halligan with a memo outlining why charges against Comey were not warranted. In an unusual move, Halligan presented the case herself to a federal grand jury, which handed down the indictment just a few days after she started on the job. No career prosecutors from the eastern district of Virginia have entered an appearance in the case. Instead, two prosecutors from the eastern district of North Carolina, Nathaniel Lemons and Gabriel Diaz, will join Halligan in handling the case. Two other prosecutors in the eastern district of Virginia have been fired since the charges against Comey were filed. The prosecutors, Maya Song, a top Siebert deputy, and Michael Ben’Ary, a top national security prosecutor, both at one point had worked under Lisa Monaco, a top official in the justice department under the Biden administration. Trump has also put pressure on the office to file charges against James over specious allegations that the New York attorney general committed mortgage fraud. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump told Bondi in a brazen 20 September [post](https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115239044548033727) on Truth Social, asking her to bring charges against Comey, James, and California senator Adam Schiff. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” Elizabeth Yusi, a top prosecutor in the office, [plans to present](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/06/us-attorney-letitia-james-trump) the case to Halligan soon that there is no probable cause to file charges against James. Colleagues expect Yusi to be fired.

Madeline Halpert and Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu and Brandon Drenonin court, in Alexandria, Virginia Watch: James Comey's brief, but significant court appearance Former FBI director James Comey has pleaded not guilty to two charges of making false statements to lawmakers and obstructing a congressional proceeding. His lawyer entered the plea on his behalf in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday morning. Patrick Fitzgerald said he would seek to have the case dismissed for several reasons including that his client, a critic of US President Donald Trump, was being targeted. Mr Comey was indicted a few days after Trump urged his attorney general to take action against him. After Mr Comey's lawyer requested a speedy trial, the judge set a date of 5 January. Both the prosecution and defence expected the trial to last just two or three days. In court on Wednesday, Mr Comey's lawyer Patrick Fitzgerald told the judge that they planned to file several motions to dismiss the case before a trial, arguing the prosecution was vindictive and that a US attorney had been unlawfully appointed to take over the case. Mr Comey was fired as FBI director in 2017, about four months into Trump's first term as president. At the time, Mr Comey had been leading an investigation into Russian election interference and whether there were any links between Moscow and Trump's campaign. The federal government alleges Mr Comey lied to Congress during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September 2020, when he was being questioned about both the Russia election probe and an investigation into Trump's 2016 election rival Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. He told the hearing that he had not authorised someone at the FBI to leak information about the investigations - a statement the Justice Department alleges was untrue and therefore misleading. Prosecutors also accuse Mr Comey of "corruptly endeavor\[ing\] to influence, obstruct and impede" the panel by making false statements to it. * [What is Comey accused of?](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj07ndrnr34o) Mr Comey's case was originally overseen by Erik Siebert, a Virginia prosecutor who resigned under pressure from Trump after his investigation into another political adversary - New York Attorney General Letitia James - failed to bring criminal charges. Trump then appointed Lindsey Halligan to replace him, who secured a grand jury indictment against Mr Comey less than a week into the job. Prosecutors before her had declined to take on the case due to a lack of evidence. Mr Comey appeared in good spirits as he entered the courtroom on Wednesday, chatting with his attorneys and making jokes. He was joined by his wife, Patrice Failor, and daughter Maureen Comey, a federal prosecutor whom the Trump administration recently fired. After listening to the judge read his rights and the two counts against him in court on Wednesday, Mr Comey was asked if he understood the charges. "I do, your honour. Thank you very much," he told the court. US District Judge Michael Nachmanoff said the two charges each carry a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to a $200,000 (£149,442). Ms Halligan's hasty ascent to the role of top federal prosecutor in Virginia's eastern district in September was reflected in Wednesday's proceedings, when defence lawyers complained they did not have access to classified documents that prosecutors intended to submit as evidence. "We feel the cart has been put before the horse," Mr Fitzgerald said. Judge Nachmanoff warned the government: "I will not slow this case down because the government does not promptly turn over information." During his tenure as FBI director, Mr Comey sparked a backlash from Democrats when he announced the investigation into Clinton's emails just days before the 2016 presidential election. Charges against Clinton were never brought, leading to criticism from Republicans as well. Since leaving government, Mr Comey has been an ardent critic of the Trump administration. In a video Mr Comey posted to his Instagram after he was indicted, he said he was innocent and accused Trump of acting like a "tyrant". "My family and I have know for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump," he said. "We will not live on our knees." "I'm innocent," he added. "So let's have a trial." The charges against Mr Comey came after Trump posted on social media demanding his attorney general, Pam Bondi, prosecute Mr Comey and others.

[Skip to main content](https://www.vox.com/today-explained-newsletter/464154/james-comey-indictment-pleads-not-guilty-trump#content) Former FBI Director James Comey [pleaded not guilty](https://www.npr.org/2025/10/08/g-s1-92516/comey-arraignment-justice-department) on Wednesday to the two counts of lying to Congress being brought against him by the Trump administration. On the same day, ABC News [reported](https://abcnews.go.com/US/central-witness-undermines-case-james-comey-prosecutors-concluded/story?id=126311648) that the prosecutors who were working on the Comey case — who were fired for their refusal to charge him — believed the key witness against Comey was fatally flawed. It’s a case that appears both flimsy and nonetheless loaded with meaning for the future of American justice. Vox senior correspondent Andrew Prokop has been covering Comey, President Donald Trump, and their increasingly embittered feud for years. I wanted to ask him four big questions as the case moves forward. **You’ve been covering Comey for so long — back to the Hillary Clinton email investigation. How surprising is it that we’ve ended up here?** I think the real change is from 2016 when Comey was announcing his findings on the Hillary Clinton email case. At that time, he got a lot of criticism, but it was considered politically unthinkable that his job would be at risk or that anyone would interfere with his management of the FBI in any significant way. When Trump won, he stayed in the job — until, of course, he ran afoul of Trump and was fired. But even the firing of Comey then resulted in Trump getting himself into more trouble, kickstarting the Robert Mueller investigation. Fast forward to the present, and the independence of the Justice Department and FBI has completely collapsed, and Trump has essentially emerged triumphant in this long-running feud. He finally got the payback and the indictment that he wanted. It’s a pretty stunning turn of events that just goes to show how successful Trump has been in a way that really would’ve been pretty far-fetched to imagine back then. **That’s the meta-narrative. Let’s talk about the case. Comey pleaded not guilty on Wednesday morning. What’s next?** It looks like things are going to move very quickly, because the case is in the Eastern District of Virginia, commonly called “the rocket docket.” The judge set some very fast-approaching deadlines today for pre-trial motions later in October.But this case may never reach trial, because Comey’s attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said in court today that he was going to file several motions: to have the case thrown out for vindictive prosecution, to argue that the crony Trump put in as the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was unlawfully appointed, and to argue the grand jury process was used in an improper way. They are going to try to get this thrown out before it even goes to trial, and the judge seems to be disposed to acting very quickly on it. **Then, how can there be an indictment in the first place?** When a case is presented to a grand jury, prosecutors get full control over the information they present. It is not an adversarial process, and the defendant has no say whatsoever. So a prosecutor could give the grand jury a very misleading, incomplete, or one-sided version of events that completely ignores exculpatory evidence. The grand jury process is secret and behind closed doors, so we don’t know exactly what they were presented with. But we do know that the grand jury rejected one of the three counts that they tried to charge, which is very rare. The other two counts they approved, but they were split on it. They had a notation that, on both counts, only 14 out of 23 grand jurors approved of those counts, and that is with the very skewed, selective information they were getting. So even the grand jury, with its limited information relying entirely on prosecutors, is mixed on whether it’s worth an indictment. With an actual jury, which requires unanimity for conviction, there’s no way they’re going to convict. It’s basically unthinkable if the case is that weak, even in the grand jury stage. The ordinary process at DOJ would hold that this case should not have been brought, because you are not supposed to bring cases that you think will not end in conviction. But, of course, Trump circumvented the ordinary process. He pushed out the US attorney. He installed Lindsay Halligan instead, and she seems to have rushed this forward just before the statute of limitations was about to expire. **So what are the stakes here, in the longer term? What will this case tell us about the country we’re living in?** I think this case reveals paradoxically both the dangers of what Trump’s doing and the limitations. He proved that he can fire enough people and appoint enough hacks to get a grand jury indictment of somebody. But then, once that happens, it could get thrown out by a judge. It could be rejected by a jury. There are many more steps before an actual conviction, and this case looks extraordinarily weak and unlikely to end in a conviction. But that might not be the case for every other case that Trump’s people are considering bringing against his political enemies. What if they managed to get the case before a very far-right Trump judge? What if it’s in a red district where a lot of people are more predisposed to convict? This is still dangerous. But if the Comey case ends in a big embarrassment for the administration, with either the charges being thrown out or Comey being acquitted, I do think it will be seen as pretty revealing that Trump tried to lock up Comey and failed. It sends a message that anybody can resist Trump and that there’s no reason to obey in advance or to fear that he’s going to actually be able to make good on the threats and intimidation he’s trying to bring to bear against any of his critics and opponents.

Former [FBI](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/fbi) director [James Comey](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/james-comey) has formally asked a federal judge to dismiss criminal charges against him, arguing he was the victim of a selective prosecution and that the US attorney who filed the charges was unlawfully appointed. “The record as it currently exists shows a clear causal link between President Trump’s animus and the prosecution of Mr Comey,” Comey’s lawyers wrote in their request to dismiss the case, calling a 20 September [Truth Social post](https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115239044548033727) in which he disparaged Comey and called for his prosecution [“smoking gun evidence”](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136.59.0.pdf). They continued: “President Trump’s repeated public statements and action leave no doubt as to the government’s genuine animus toward Mr Comey.” Comey’s [lawyers attached an exhibit](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136.59.4.pdf) to their filing on Monday, which contains dozens of public statements from Trump criticizing Comey. Comey was [indicted](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/25/james-comey-fbi-director-indictment) on 25 September with one count of making a false statement and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding. The charges are related to Comey’s September 2020 testimony before Congress, and are connected to Comey’s assertion he had never authorized anyone at the FBI to leak information. The precise details of the offense have not been made public and Comey has [pleaded not guilty](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/08/james-comey-court-indictment). He has forcefully denied wrongdoing. Charges were filed against Comey even though career prosecutors in the justice department determined that charges were not warranted. Trump forced out [Erik Siebert](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/19/us-attorney-letitia-james-erik-siebert), the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, in September and installed [Lindsey Halligan](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/22/white-house-aide-erik-siebert-office), a White House aide. The Comey charges were filed days later. “In the ordinary case, a prosecutor’s charging decision is presumptively lawful and rests within her broad discretion. This is no ordinary case,” Comey’s lawyers wrote. “Here, direct evidence establishes that the president harbors genuine animus toward Mr Comey, including because of Mr Comey’s protected speech, that he installed his personal attorney as a ‘stalking horse’ to carry out his bidding; and that she then prosecuted Mr Comey – days before the statute of limitations expired, with a faulty indictment – to effectuate the president’s wishes.” Comey’s Monday filing said the fact that career prosecutors did not believe there was sufficient evidence to bring a case bolsters the argument that he was selectively prosecuted. His lawyers also argue that the indictment mischaracterizes the question Comey was asked that prompted an answer prosecutors say was a lie and the basis of his criminal false statement. According to the charging indictment, Comey told a US senator he “had not ‘authorized someone else at the [FBI](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/fbi) to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation concerning PERSON 1”. Comey’s lawyers wrote in their filing on Monday that “Person 1” was Hillary Clinton. The accusation relates to a question from Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. During the 2020 hearing, Cruz noted that in 2017 congressional testimony, Comey denied “ever authoriz\[ing\] someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton administration”. Cruz went on to note that Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, had said Comey authorized him to leak information to the Wall Street Journal. In response, Comey said he stood by his prior testimony. Comey’s lawyers argued on Monday that the indictment was defective because Cruz’s question had been focused on McCabe, but the government informed them that the person Comey is alleged to have authorized to leak to the media is Daniel Richman, a friend of Comey’s and professor at Columbia University. “The indictment omits Senator Cruz’s words that explicitly narrow the focus of his questions to Mr McCabe and misleadingly implies that the questioning related to Mr Richman. In fact, Mr Comey’s September 2020 exchange with Senator Cruz made no reference whatsoever to Mr Richman, who ultimately appears in the indictment,” they wrote. They also note that Cruz asked about the “Clinton administration” and not “Hillary Clinton”. Career prosecutors interviewed Richman as part of their investigation into Comey and found him not helpful to making a case, [according to the New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/us/politics/trump-comey-justice-department.html). John Durham, a special counsel appointed to investigate the FBI’s inquiry into Russian meddling, also told investigators [he did not uncover evidence](https://abcnews.go.com/US/special-counsel-john-durham-undercut-case-james-comey/story?id=126164120) to support charges against Comey. Comey’s lawyers also argued on Monday that the case should be dismissed because Halligan was not lawfully appointed. “The United States cannot charge, maintain, and prosecute a case through an official who has no entitlement to exercise governmental authority,” [they wrote](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136/gov.uscourts.vaed.582136.60.0.pdf). US attorneys must be confirmed by the Senate and can only serve for 120 days on an interim basis unless their appointment is extended by the judges overseeing their district. Siebert, Halligan’s predecessor, served for the 120-day limit and Halligan [does not appear](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/white-collar-and-criminal-law/trump-strategy-relies-on-acting-interim-us-attorneys-explained) to have met other exceptions that would allow her to continue to serve. “The period does not start anew once the 120-day period expires or if a substitute interim US attorney is appointed before the 120-day period expires,” Comey’s attorneys wrote. Halligan has also overseen criminal fraud [charges](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/09/criminal-charges-letitia-james-new-york-attorney-general) against New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, in connection to allegations she lied on mortgage documents. James has said she is not guilty. Legal experts have said [that case does not appear to be strong](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/letitia-james-mortgage-fraud).

The New York attorney general, [Letitia James](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/letitia-james), on Thursday revealed that her legal team plans to ask a federal judge to dismiss the criminal charges against her on the grounds that the US attorney in eastern Virginia who obtained the indictment was unlawfully appointed, according to a court filing. James’s legal team made the move the day before James is scheduled to be arraigned in the US district court in Norfolk, Virginia, where she is expected to plead not guilty to one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution. Lindsey Halligan was appointed by [Donald Trump](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/donald-trump/) last month as US attorney for Virginia’s eastern district, after her predecessor was forced out of his job after he expressed concerns with the strength of the evidence against both James and the former FBI director James Comey. Comey has also since been indicted in the same district on charges of obstructing Congress and making a false statement. Trump has promised to seek retribution against people he alleges used the justice system against him in an effort to prevent him from returning to power, including Comey and James. Halligan previously worked as Trump’s personal lawyer and has no prosecutorial experience. She obtained the indictments against Comey and James on her own, without any assistance from other career prosecutors in the office. Comey is also in the process of challenging Halligan’s appointment as interim US attorney. Oral arguments on that case are already scheduled for 13 November in South Carolina. That challenge is being heard outside Virginia to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. The James and Comey challenges could be consolidated, as has happened in other districts where criminal defendants have challenged the appointments of other US attorneys in New Jersey and Nevada. James’s attorneys on Thursday separately asked the court to enforce its rules prohibiting prosecutors in the case from making extrajudicial statements. The motion comes after a reporter for Lawfare reported that Halligan had reached out to her on the encrypted messaging application Signal to complain about social media posts the reporter had made about the James case.

Donald Trump’s intense pressure on the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to charge key foes with crimes based on dubious evidence and his ongoing investigations of other political enemies is hurting the rule of law in the US and violating departmental policies, which scholars and ex-prosecutors say may help scuttle some charges. They also voice dismay about charges filed against ex-FBI director [James Comey](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/james-comey) and [Letitia James](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/letitia-james), the New York attorney general, by Lindsey Halligan, the ex-White House lawyer and novice prosecutor, who Trump installed in a key US attorney post after forcing out a veteran prosecutor who deemed the cases weak. Comey, charged with lying to Congress about an FBI leak and obstruction of Congress, and James, charged with bank fraud and false statements to a financial unit, have pleaded not guilty and are garnering hefty support from ex-DoJ officials and legal experts challenging the paltry evidence against them. Over 100 ex-DoJ officials filed an amicus brief on 27 October mirroring part of Comey’s legal defense that his prosecution was a “vindictive” one, and should be dropped given longstanding departmental policies barring such legal tactics. Trump’s animus against Comey stems from the FBI’s inquiry of Russia’s role in helping Trump’s campaign in 2016 when Comey led the FBI. James Pearce, an ex-DoJ lawyer and a senior counsel at the Washington Litigation Group who helped organize the amicus, said: “It explains that the justice department’s policies seek to ensure fair and impartial prosecutions – which the constitution’s due process clause requires. Unfortunately, the public record suggests that the Comey prosecution neither adheres to those policies nor comports with the constitutional obligations underpinning them.” Other amicus briefs supporting Comey were filed in late October by groups including the Protect Democracy Project and Democracy Defenders Fund. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/04/trump-department-of-justice-weaponization-enemies#img-2) James Comey, the former FBI director, is sworn in prior to testifying before a Senate intelligence committee hearing on Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election on Capitol Hill in Washington on 8 June 2017. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters Further contesting the Comey and James charges, Democracy Defenders Fund sent a letter to the DoJ inspector general signed by ethics advisors to presidents Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama blasting Trump’s move to make Halligan an interim US attorney and file charges against them, and seeking an investigation of the prosecutions. “After Watergate, no precept was more central to the re-professionalization of the justice department than distancing the White House from decision making about individual prosecutions,” said Peter Shane, who teaches constitutional law at New York University “Trump’s conspicuous public involvement in triggering prosecutions against his enemies along with the seemingly paltry ‘evidence’ against Comey and James, in particular, is likely to mean that at least some of these cases will be dismissed before trial. There is also a serious legal question whether Halligan has been legitimately appointed to the USA position in Virginia.” Other legal experts say the justice department has been “weaponized” to further Trump’s revenge drive against Comey, James and other current and former officials who Trump blames for his legal problems including two impeachments and federal charges that he tried to subvert his 2020 election loss. “The overt and explicit ‘weaponization’ of the justice department, in defiance of the professional judgment of career prosecutors that the criminal prosecutions are unwarranted, is the worst type of corruption of the rule of law,” said Philip Lacovara, who was counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/04/trump-department-of-justice-weaponization-enemies#img-3) New York attorney general, Letitia James. Photograph: John Clark/AP “The department’s principles of federal prosecution explicitly prohibit federal prosecutors from considering partisan and political factors in deciding whether to pursue criminal charges. But Trump has made these considerations a primary motive for bringing down the weight of the federal law enforcement apparatus on the heads of his political enemies.” Lacovara’s points were underscored by how the DoJ has seemed to move in lockstep with Trump’s suggestions that foes he’s publicly attacked on Truth Social and in other public and private ways should be prosecuted or investigated. Notably, Trump implored [Pam Bondi](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/pam-bondi), the attorney general, in late September on Truth Social to bring charges against Comey, James and Adam Schiff, a Democratic senator, not long before the DoJ indicted the first two. Just a day after Trump had forced out the Virginia prosecutor who declined to indict key Trump foes, Trump upped the pressure on Bondi “What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia???” Trump wrote. “They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” stressing that “we can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.” In his missive addressed to “Pam”, Trump hyped the stakes for him: “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! > The overt and explicit ‘weaponization’ of the justice department ... is the worst type of corruption of the rule of law Philip Lacovara A person familiar with the inquiry of Schiff, and reports suggest that pressures from some DoJ leaders have increased on the US attorney in Maryland who has been exploring charging Schiff with mortgage fraud, but has lacked sufficient evidence to do so. Schiff and his attorney have attacked the investigation as vindictive and politically driven. The weekend before Comey’s indictment, Schiff hit back at Trump’s Truth Social posts targeting him. “There’s no hiding the political retaliation and weaponization. It’s all out in the open.” Trump’s ire at Schiff stems from when Schiff was a member of the House and served as manager during Trump’s first impeachment. Similarly, Trump’s hatred of James, who the DoJ charged soon after Comey, was fueled by a successful civil fraud case that her office brought against Trump’s real estate empire in 2024 that initially had a hefty $500m penalty. The penalty was overturned last month, but Trump and his two eldest sons remain barred for a few years from holding leadership posts with the family real-estate behemoth. Another Trump foe, John Bolton, ex-national security adviser, who has been a vocal Trump critic, was charged last month by Maryland’s US attorney with mishandling classified information. Legal experts note the investigation of Bolton began during the Biden administration and may be stronger than the cases against other Trump enemies. Bolton has pleaded not guilty. [](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/04/trump-department-of-justice-weaponization-enemies#img-4) John Bolton, the former US national security adviser, leaving federal court on 17 October 2025 in Greenbelt, Maryland. Photograph: Alex Kent/Getty Images Within the DoJ, a key figure in pushing hard for charges against some of Trump’s avowed enemies has been Ed Martin, a combative lawyer with strong Maga credentials including promoting bogus claims of election fraud in 2020 and legal work he did for some of the January 6 rioters. Martin displayed his Maga bona fides the day before the Capitol attack, when he told a rally of fervent Trump backers: “Thank you for standing for our president. But remember, what they’re stealing is not just an election. It’s our future.” Martin was originally tapped by Trump to be US attorney for DC, but after serving in that role on an interim basis, Trump withdrew his nomination for Senate approval after a key Republican senator indicated he wouldn’t support him. Soon after moving to the DoJ in May, Martin was put in charge of a “weaponization working group”, to go after alleged weaponization by DoJ under Democratic presidents. Martin’s radical views about prosecuting or publicly shaming Trump foes were palpable when he told reporters while exiting the US attorney’s post that if people “can’t be charged, we will name them … and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed”. Bondi tapped Martin over the summer to investigate the Schiff allegations, and to that end he met with Bill Pulte, the federal housing finance agency director, who had sent a criminal referral in May for Schiff to the DoJ, according to NBC. > \[Martin’s\] chief value to the administration is to go after people Trump has identified as enemies ... Mike Gordon Boosting his stature at the DoJ, Martin has also been given the titles special attorney for mortgage fraud, associate deputy attorney general and pardon attorney. Former prosecutors raise strong concerns about Martin’s various DoJ roles including spurring some indictments of Trump’s foes. “His chief value to the administration is to go after people Trump has identified as enemies by any means or tactics he can find, whether legally sound or not,” said Mike Gordon, a senior DoJ prosecutor on January 6 cases and one of about 20 prosecutors ousted by Trump’s DoJ. Other ex-prosecutors see Martin’s modus operandi as dangerous. “Ed Martin’s role as both the pardon attorney and head of the weaponization working group is concerning in light of a long list of public comments he has made,” said Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan who now teaches law at the University of Michigan. “His letter writing campaign while he was serving as interim US attorney, demanding answers to questions from Democratic politicians, members of the media, and university leaders also suggests a political agenda that is antithetical to the independence of the justice department.” More broadly, Lacovara calls DoJ’s compliance with Trump’s demands to charge his enemies “a truly Orwellian shift in generations-long justice department tradition: Trump has managed to condemn investigations into his personal conduct by non-political professional prosecutors, while simultaneously and expressly commanding his political appointees in the justice department to prosecute his perceived political enemies.” Democrats in Congress too are irate over Trump’s use of DoJ for revenge against foes. “When Richard Nixon conducted retaliation against his political enemies, he did it in secret and tried to cover his tracks,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democratic representative of Maryland. “But Trump’s campaign of political persecution to bully, prosecute, punish and silence his political foes is taking place in broad daylight and on TV … I have faith, however, that judges and juries at the district level, unlike Bondi and Halligan, will uphold the rule of law.” Looking ahead, Michael Bromwich, ex-DoJ inspector general, said: “The flimsy cases being brought against people who Trump considers his enemies will fail, but the damage to the system of criminal justice and the Department of Justice will endure. That will be the legacy of the people who currently run the DoJ as a subagency of the White House.”

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered prosecutors in the criminal case of the former FBI director [James Comey](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/james-comey) to produce a trove of materials from the investigation, saying he was concerned that the justice department’s position had been to “indict first and investigate later”. Magistrate judge William Fitzpatrick instructed prosecutors to produce by the end of the day on Thursday grand jury materials as well as other evidence that investigators seized during the investigation. The order followed arguments in which Comey’s attorneys said they were at a disadvantage because they had not been able to review materials that were gathered years ago. Comey is charged with lying to Congress in 2020 in a case filed days after [Donald Trump](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/donaldtrump) appeared to urge his attorney general to prosecute the former FBI director and other perceived political enemies. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyers have argued that it is a vindictive prosecution brought at the direction of the Republican president and must be dismissed. At issue at Wednesday’s hearing were communications seized by investigators who in 2019 and 2020 executed search warrants of devices belonging to Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law professor and close friend of Comey who had also served as a special government employee at the [FBI](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/fbi). Richman factors into the case because prosecutors say Comey had encouraged him to engage with reporters about matters related to the FBI and that Comey therefore lied to Congress when he denied having authorized anyone at the FBI to serve as an anonymous source. But Comey’s lawyers say he was explicitly responding to a question about whether he had authorized the former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe to serve as an anonymous source. Comey’s lawyers told the judge they had not reviewed the materials taken from Richman and thus could not know what information was privileged. “We’re going to fix that, and we’re going to fix that today,” the judge said.