Mr. “86 47” is facing more federal legal trouble, this time on charges related to the alleged leaking of national defense information to The New York Times a decade ago.
According to court documents filed earlier this month and made public on Monday, former FBI Director James Comey on or about Oct. 5, 2016 “knowingly and willfully” passed along or caused national defense information to be transmitted to The Times. The charges involve a story the corporate media outlet published about Yahoo’s use of a surveillance system to scan emails for child pornography and spam. The authority was meant to meet the demands of a court order directing Yahoo to track communications of a state-sponsored terrorist organization, the newspaper reported at the time.
The Obama administration’s Department of Justice obtained permission from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge. Yahoo was barred from disclosing the matter, according to The Times.
Prosecutors allege the disgraced former FBI director authorized James Baker, the agency’s general counsel at the time, to provide the corporate media outlet with classified national security details. Comey, the DOJ alleges, wanted to “correct misinformation” published the previous day by Reuters.
Comey faces charges of violating the Espionage Act by transmitting classified information not authorized receive it — presumably The Times reporter.
In a post Monday evening, the DOJ said it had filed a “waiverless criminal information to toll the statute of limitations as it relates to allegations concerning former FBI Director Comey.” The legal avenue enables the Justice Department to charge Comey without initially obtaining a grand jury indictment.
“Filing a criminal information to toll the statute of limitations is a widely recognized practice in federal court and has been approved by multiple Circuit Courts of Appeals,” the post states, adding that the criminal investigation is ongoing. The DOJ had no further comment Monday evening.
“The investigation has uncovered evidence that Mr. Comey directed staff to speak to [Times reporter Charlie] Savage about specific accuracy concerns related to the Reuters article, and thereby illegally transferred classified information,” DOJ officials wrote in the filing.
The case has been assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden, nominated by President Donald Trump in 2017 to serve the District of Columbia federal court. He ruled to unseal the proceedings.
‘I’m Still Innocent’
Comey, already facing federal charges of threatening the president for his “86 47” seashell photo stunt on a North Carolina beach, claimed again that he is just a poor victim of Trump political vendettas.
“Well, they’re back again. It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice,” Comey, who helped lead some of the most appalling abuses at the DOJ, said in a video declaring his innocence. “Nothing changed with me. I’m still innocent and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary.”
His lawyers, according to the New York Times, had sought to have the charges dismissed. They have yet to succeed.
Federal investigators have previously recommended against filing charges in The Times leak case.
Comey’s friends in the accomplice media, again, sprung to his defense, characterizing the DOJ’s actions as the latest example of prosecutions that have “seemed to be motivated by presidential animus.”
“In an unusual twist, the new charges were unsealed hours after a federal judge in New York ruled that the Trump administration had unlawfully fired Mr. Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, from her job as a prosecutor in that city,” The Times reported. “The administration, the judge found, had acted in violation of the Constitution and federal law when it claimed that the president had wide latitude to fire civil servants.”
Judge Jesse Furman, nominated to the U.S. Southern District of New York bench by President Barack Obama, ordered Maurene Comey reinstated with back pay.
It’s not clear whether the DOJ will appeal. The Supreme Court’s Trump v. Slaughter decision earlier this year affirmed the president’s power to dismiss agency leaders who indeed serve at the pleasure of the president.
“For the third time in little more than one year, the Department of Justice has attempted to charge Mr. Comey with a federal crime. Mr. Comey steadfastly maintains his innocence,” the former FBI director’s attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, said in a statement.
Unsealed documents show Comey was integrally tied to the Russia collusion hoax, driven in late 2016 by a departing Obama and members of the deep state. Comey escaped prosecution on charges he lied to Congress about his role in the hoax after another federal judge decided the U.S. attorney in that case had been unlawfully appointed.
