Former FBI Director James Comey has pleaded not guilty to lying to Congress in a case that President Donald Trump demanded the Justice Department take, regardless of the evidence, against his longtime enemy.
Comey made his first appearance in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday, where he was charged over his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020 when he denied authorizing leaks to reporters.
“Thank you, your honor,” Comey said in court after the indictment was read. “Thank you very much.”
A trial date is tentatively set for January 5, 2026, but Comey’s lawyers are expected to seek to have the case dismissed altogether, citing Trump’s “vindictive” prosecution and the president’s appointment of his personal attorney to prosecute the case against him.
Comey’s lawyers are preparing a motion to disqualify Virginia U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, and his counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said his legal team will also accuse the government of abusing the grand jury process and “outrageous” conduct.
To find him guilty of making false statements to Congress, a jury would have to agree that they believe he knowingly misled senators on an issue relevant to a question at the heart of the 2020 Senate hearing.
The hearing focused on the FBI’s role in the Trump-Russia investigation, although the accusation that Comey made false statements to the committee implicates a separate investigation into Hillary Clinton’s 2016 establishment.
Two months into Trump’s first term, Comey announced that the FBI was investigating Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, and was trying to determine whether there were “any ties between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government,” Comey testified at the time.
Comey is now accused of lying about whether he authorized anyone at the FBI to serve as a source The Wall Street Journal, which published a story about an investigation into Trump’s former Democratic opponent that was published in October 2016, shortly before the presidential election, which Trump won.
During the hearing, Republican Senator Ted Cruz asked Comey if he had ever authorized “anyone else at the FBI” to be an anonymous source, although Comey said he stood by previous testimony saying he had not authorized a leak.
The indictment alleges that his testimony was false and that Comey allowed another person — not named in the indictment — to “serve as an anonymous source in news reports” about the FBI’s Clinton investigation.
In 2018, an inspector general report backed Comey’s story after finding that then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe had authorized FBI personnel in 2016 to The Wall Street Journal, and then “lacked candor” when Comey and other officials approached him about the source of the leak.
McCabe was fired from the FBI the following month, just days before his planned retirement.
Last month, McCabe told CNN it was “incredible” that police never contacted him about the case.
“All I can say is what my own experience has revealed, and that is that I have never seen Jim Comey authorize other people to leak information,” McCabe said.
Comey — whose firing by Trump during his first administration led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller — has long been a target of the president and his allies following his investigation into whether Trump’s associates coordinated with Russian figures to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
“I’m not afraid, and I hope you aren’t either,” Comey said in a video message last week in response to his indictment. “My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal justice system.”
The Russia investigation consumed the president’s first term and cast a shadow over his 2024 campaign and the current administration, fueling a campaign of retaliation he promised against his perceived political enemies. The case against Comey marks the most significant prosecution of Trump’s alleged opponents to date, after the president explicitly ordered his Justice Department to investigate Comey and others.
Trump, his Attorney General Pam Bondi and her radically reformed Justice Department — now stocked with loyalists and lawyers to dominate agencies the president claims are weaponized against him — are also targeting prominent Democratic officials, progressive fundraising groups and a range of ideological opponents the administration says are linked to acts of terrorism.
Comey, a registered Republican who has worked for the Justice Department since the 1980s, is the first former senior administration official to face criminal charges in Trump’s retaliation campaign, which the president celebrated at his Truth Social by labeling him “one of the worst people this country has ever been exposed to.”
Prosecutors investigating his 2020 appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee have repeatedly declined to file criminal charges against him, citing insufficient evidence that he gave false testimony.
According to an internal memo in which career prosecutors explained why they would not file charges, prosecutors determined that a central witness — Comey’s longtime friend Daniel Richmond, a law professor at Columbia University — would prove “problematic” and likely deter them from pursuing a case. to ABC news.
Richman’s testimony would result in “likely insurmountable difficulties” for the prosecution, the memo said.
But Comey was ultimately charged after Trump successfully pressured the acting head of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia to resign.
He then brought in another of his former personal attorneys for the role, despite her lack of prosecutorial experience.
In a highly unusual move, Lindsey Halligan himself presented the case to a grand jury, and the grand jury voted last month to indict him.
Halligan initially sought three charges against Comey, but twelve or more jurors found no probable cause to indict him. If convicted on the two remaining charges, he faces up to five years in prison.
John Bowden contributed reporting from Alexandria
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