The action followed the president's recent escalation of his pressure campaign against the Justice Department, in which he publicly called for senior officials to bring charges against Mr. Comey.
President Trump's unrelenting demands for vengeance after the FBI looked into his 2016 presidential campaign over potential ties to Russia culminated in the indictment of former F.B.I. director James B. Comey by a federal grand jury on Thursday.
In September 2020, Mr. Comey testified before a Senate committee and was charged with one count of obstruction of a congressional procedure and one count of providing a false statement.
The indictment was filed in Alexandria, Virginia, despite the Eastern District of Virginia's career prosecutors' objections that there was not enough evidence to support the accusations. Lindsey Halligan, a Trump supporter who was personally chosen by the president to lead the office just days ago, disregarded their objections.
At the expense of procedural protections meant to protect the Justice Department from political meddling and personal grudges, it is the most serious legal action taken by the Trump administration to date to harass, punish, and degrade a former official whom the president designated as an adversary.
Only Ms. Halligan, a former Mr. Trump defense attorney who directly presented the case to the jury despite having no prior prosecutorial expertise, signed the plain, two-page indictment. Usually, career prosecutors who have acquired the case's evidence also support such filings.
According to court documents, Ms. Halligan also attempted—but was unsuccessful—to have the grand jury indict Mr. Comey on a second allegation of making false statements.
Mr. Comey affirmed his innocence and welcomed the chance to defend himself in a trial in a video message. "You should not live on your knees, just as we won't."
"Someone that I love deeply recently said that fear is the instrument of a tyrant, and she is true, but I am not scared, and I hope you are not either," he continued, referring to his daughter Maurene, who was fired this summer from her own position at the Justice Department.
Shortly after the indictment was made public, Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social to applaud the action. "AMERICAN JUSTICE!" he wrote.
The submission was not very illuminating for a charging document as important as an indictment of a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It claims that during the Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, Mr. Comey made a false statement claiming that he had not given permission for another F.B.I. employee to serve as an anonymous source in news reports about an investigation into "Person 1," which seems to be a reference to Hillary Clinton.
According to the indictment, Mr. Comey "had in fact allowed PERSON 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports discussing an F.B.I. investigation concerning PERSON 1," therefore "that assertion was false."
Although neither Person 1 nor Person 3 are named in the document, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz questioned Mr. Comey during the hearing about whether he had ever given his former deputy, Andrew McCabe, permission to speak with a reporter about an investigation. Mr. Comey denied doing so and defended his responses from previous sessions.
According to persons familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity, career prosecutors who reviewed the evidence against Mr. Comey believed it was far too weak to support an indictment. The important exchange was short, to start. Additionally, it made reference to testimony that was given three years prior, and Mr. Comey stated that he stood by those responses without providing further details.
A different occurrence from that era might possibly fit the ambiguous definition of allowing someone at the FBI to share information with a journalist. When Mr. Comey named Daniel Richman, a college professor he trusted, a special federal employee, he then spoke to a reporter for The New York Times, drawing criticism from Republicans.
Though investigators have reportedly re-interviewed Mr. Richman in recent days, it is unclear from the wording of the indictment which of those two circumstances is at issue.
Despite the fact that many current and former prosecutors think the case will be hard to establish, Mr. Comey faces up to five years in jail if found guilty.
Troy A. Edwards Jr., Mr. Comey's son-in-law, quit his position as a prosecutor in the office that filed charges against the former F.B.I. director shortly after the indictment was made public.
In an email to his boss, Mr. Edwards, who assisted in the prosecution of Jan. 6 rioters, including members of the far-right Oath Keepers, stated that he departed in order to "uphold his responsibility to the Constitution and country."
In a statement, Virginia Democrat Senator Mark Warner cautioned that the indictment highlighted the president's plans to use the legal system. He declared, "This type of intervention is a grave abuse of power." "Our system relies on prosecutors making choices based on the law and the evidence, not on the petty resentments of a politician looking to make amends."
In recent days, Mr. Trump has stepped up his public pressure campaign on the Justice Department, claiming that his actions are driven by the weaponization of government against him. He has publicly urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to use her position to target opponents he has labeled as "scum," such as Mr. Comey and Letitia James, the attorney general of New York who sued Mr. Trump for exaggerating the value of his assets.
According to current and former officials, Ms. Bondi and her top deputy have subtly expressed concerns that the case against Mr. Comey was not strong enough to lead to convictions. However, she seemed to support the action in a social media post that read, "No one is above the law," without specifically naming Mr. Comey.
On social media, F.B.I. director Kash Patel hinted that the indictment would not be the administration's final move against "past corrupt leadership and their enablers." "Everyone, especially those in positions of power—regardless of their position—will be held accountable," he continued.
Many Justice Department officials, both past and present, expressed their grave concern over the criminal allegations brought against Mr. Comey. They contended that the ramifications might be extensive, including the resignation of further prosecutors due to the Trump administration's attempts to utilize the agency and the decline in public confidence in American lawyers.
Mr. Trump pushed out Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney in charge of those investigations in the Eastern District of Virginia, last week because he was frustrated that two of his most frequent targets had not been charged. The president replaced him with Ms. Halligan, a longtime defense attorney and White House associate.
One aspect of Mr. Comey's probe has been whether or not he misled legislators about the Russia investigation when he testified in September 2020. The time was ticking on potential connected charges since the statute of limitations on that testimony expires on Tuesday.
The fact that Mr. Comey appeared virtually during the pandemic from his Virginia home served as the rationale for ordering Virginia prosecutors to look into his congressional testimony.
For a long time, Mr. Trump has attempted to use the criminal justice system against anyone who have looked into him. In contrast to his first term, Mr. Trump has filled the highest echelons of the Justice Department with fervent supporters, who have sought a criminal investigation into Mr. Comey, John O. Brennan, the former director of the C.I.A., and other people who, according to Mr. Trump, have conspired against him.
On Thursday evening, Ms. Halligan, accompanied by a group of almost a dozen prosecutors, including her senior subordinate, Maggie Cleary, went into a courtroom to inform a magistrate judge of the indictment she had secured at the federal courthouse in Alexandria.
The grand jury decided to prosecute Mr. Comey on two counts but did not indict him on one, according to the judge, Lindsey R. Vaala. She remarked, "I am a little perplexed." "Never before has this occurred."
Given that prosecutors arrived at Judge Vaala's chambers much beyond the regular hour at which grand juries are dismissed, she also acknowledged the odd hour.
Judge Vaala said to one juror, "I do not believe we have ever convened this late."
Mr. Comey is hardly the first former FBI chief to be charged with a crime. L. Patrick Gray, the acting chief of the agency during Watergate, was charged in 1978 with conspiring to violate Americans' constitutional rights.
In an effort to find fugitive members of the far-left militant organization Weather Underground, prosecutors claimed he gave agents permission to enter residences without a warrant. Two years later, Mr. Gray's allegations were withdrawn.
As his bureau looked into whether members of Mr. Trump's campaign had colluded with Russian intelligence agents attempting to meddle in the 2016 election, Mr. Comey, who was confirmed as the seventh head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2013, was abruptly fired by Mr. Trump four years later.
The appointment of Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel to lead the Russia investigation—a tense two years from which Mr. Trump emerged with his presidency mostly intact—followed Mr. Comey's dismissal.
Over the years, Mr. Trump's animosity only grew as he denounced what he saw as a "witch hunt."
In response, Mr. Comey became one of the president's most well-known detractors, likening him to a mafia boss. Mr. Comey cautioned that a second Trump administration constituted "a danger to all Americans" as he ran for a second term and was the target of numerous criminal indictments.
By that point, there was little question that Mr. Comey was especially at risk from Mr. Trump's return to the White House.
According to sources familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity, the Trump administration has opened three cases against Mr. Comey, including the one in the Eastern District of Virginia.
Several former FBI personnel have been examined by federal prosecutors and investigators in the Western District of Virginia in recent weeks over the discovery of sensitive materials linked to the Russia investigation in specific areas of FBI headquarters in 2025.
The investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, is based on an unproven theory advanced by Trump supporters that top intelligence officials at the FBI and other agencies attempted to conceal or destroy classified documents that could raise questions about the investigation.
Many current and former law enforcement officers have been perplexed by the question because computers have been backing up paper versions of secret material for decades.
According to persons familiar with the situation, Justice Department officials have internally defended locating a large portion of that inquiry in western Virginia since the FBI has a document storage facility in Winchester, west of the suburbs of Northern Virginia.
Because of worries that jurors and grand jurors in the predominately Democratic city will be opposed to cases against Mr. Trump's alleged enemies, some Trump administration officials have been hesitant to assemble grand juries in Washington in politically sensitive matters.
Just one month after being appointed, Todd Gilbert, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, abruptly resigned during the summer. The workplace has refused to provide an explanation for Mr. Gilbert's abrupt departure.
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