James Comey, the former prosecutor, high-ranking official and author, is now a federal defendant
Updated: Former FBI Director James Comey has many connections to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia. He served as managing assistant U.S. attorney in charge of its Richmond Division, where he prosecuted terrorism cases, and it’s where his son-in-law until recently worked as a federal prosecutor. The family member quit that position in September, after Comey was charged with making a false statement to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding.
On Wednesday, Comey pleaded not guilty in the Alexandria federal court, the Associated Press reports. The hearing was moved up a day due to security concerns, according to court documents.
According to the two-page indictment, Comey “willfully and knowingly [made] a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement in a matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the government of the United States, by falsely stating to a U.S. senator during a Senate Judiciary committee hearing that he, James B. Comey Jr., had not ‘authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports’ regarding an FBI investigation concerning Person 1,” the filing reads.
Additionally, it claims Comey knew “he in fact had authorized Person 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning Person 1.”
As FBI director, James Comey ignited passion on both the political left and the right for his handling of the investigation into presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. The next year, he was fired by President Donald Trump.
Comey compared Trump to a mob boss in his 2018 memoir, A Higher Loyalty. After Comey’s indictment, Trump called him a “dirty cop” on Truth Social. Comey, meanwhile, responded that he had “great confidence in the federal judicial system.”
Other lawyers have concerns, including Ty Cobb, who served as White House special counsel during the first Trump administration.
The “vindictiveness and selectivity of the indictment are palpable,” says Cobb, a former assistant U.S. attorney and partner at Hogan Lovells.
When contacted by the ABA Journal, the White House referred comments to the Justice Department. Neither the Justice Department nor the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia responded to requests for comment.
Ray Brescia, an Albany Law School professor and the author of Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present and Future of the American Legal Profession, says that the indictment was brought in the Alexandria courthouse because Comey testified remotely from his McLean home.
Known as the “rocket docket,” the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has four locations. The Alexandria courthouse—the site of high-profile terrorism, espionage and national security cases—is perhaps the most well-known.
Brescia says it “wouldn’t surprise him” if there was also a concern that a grand jury drawn from Washington, D.C., residents would be less sympathetic to the government than the individuals drawn from an Alexandria grand jury pool.
Familiar connections
Comey is also a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and his defense lawyer is Patrick Fitzgerald, another former Southern District of New York prosecutor who went on to lead the Northern District of Illinois’ U.S. attorney’s office, overseeing various prosecutions involving elected officials. Fitzgerald declined comment about his client’s upcoming court appearance or the indictment.
Fitzgerald was at the Southern District of New York’s U.S. attorney’s office from 1988 to 2001, while Comey worked there between 1987 and 1993, with another stint running from January 2002 to December 2003.
When Comey first worked as a New York federal prosecutor, Rudy Giuliani, who advised Trump on his 2016 presidential election and early administration, served as the U.S. attorney there. At the time, Comey looked up to Giuliani. It was his “dream job” to work under Giuliani, and he initially found his “brash style exciting,” Comey wrote in A Higher Loyalty.
The book notes that he later became disillusioned with Giuliani, according to his memoir, finding that Giuliani’s confidence wasn’t “leavened with a whole lot of humility.”
Miriam E. Rocah, an adjunct professor at the Fordham School of Law and former district attorney for Westchester County, New York, served in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York under Comey. She says that when he arrived, the office was “reeling from the 9/11 attacks” and the imminent departure of U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White.
As the office gathered, they heard White express her confidence in Comey and his response. They “left that room inspired as they were by past leaders to live up to the traditions of the office,” Rocah says.
Also, Comey’s daughter, Maurene, was recently fired from her job as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. Maurene Comey was one of the lead prosecutors in the federal sex trafficking case against Jeffrey Epstein, has sued the federal government over her termination.
Besides his work in New York and Virginia, Comey served as second-in-command of the U.S. Justice Department for the George W. Bush administration between 2003 and 2005. President Barack Obama’s administration appointed him to head the FBI in 2013.
If convicted on the charges of making a false statement to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding, Comey could face up to five years in prison.
Updated Oct. 8 at 10:39 a.m. to report on James Comey’s plea of not guilty.
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