Washington, DC (September 26, 2025) – The federal indictment of former FBI Director James B. Comey, Jr. on two felony charges of making a false statement to Congress and obstruction of a congressional proceeding, filed in the Eastern District of Virginia just days before the statute of limitations expired, has drawn a rebuke from the nation's legal defense bar. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) decried the indictment of Comey as politically motivated retribution that subverts the independence of the Justice Department.
The sparse, two-page indictment, stemming from Comey's September 30, 2020, testimony regarding the FBI's "Crossfire Hurricane" probe, is widely seen as a political coup for President Donald Trump, who had publicly pressured the Attorney General to prosecute the former FBI Director and other perceived political enemies. The charging document alleges, without speaking of any evidence, that Comey lied when he denied authorizing anyone at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about a related investigation.
NACDL President Andrew Birrell stated:
"This prosecution appears to be an astonishing and corrosive assault on the rule of law. The Justice Department's foundational principle of independent prosecutorial decision-making has been upended. The charges appear legally tenuous, even as the president pressured the U.S. Attorney’s office to rush a case to the grand jury against the reported judgment of career prosecutors. "The question isn't whether an apparently trumped-up charge will prevail, but why the prosecutor, a former personal lawyer for the president, with no prosecutorial experience, thought fit to present an allegation whose legal gravity would scarcely trouble the scales of justice without the downward pressure of a thumb. We also note that a grand jury reportedly rejected a third count sought by the government, signaling the weakness of this entire effort. This is especially notable given that Lindsey Halligan abruptly replaced the former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia just days before the five-year statute of limitations was set to run out on the underlying allegation: that Comey had lied in his September 2020 testimony to Congress about whether he had authorized media leaks concerning the Russia investigation."
Lisa Wayne, Executive Director of NACDL, stated:
"This is not justice; it is the weaponization of the criminal process for political vengeance. NACDL stands confident that the federal judicial system will expose this indictment for the political travesty it is."
Contacts
Jonathan Hutson, NACDL Senior Director of Public Affairs and Communications, 202-480-5343 or jhutson@nacdl.org
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is the preeminent organization advancing the mission of the criminal defense bar to ensure justice and due process for persons accused of crime or wrongdoing. A professional bar association founded in 1958, NACDL's many thousands of direct members in 28 countries – and 90 state, provincial and local affiliate organizations totaling up to 40,000 attorneys – include private criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, military defense counsel, law professors and judges committed to preserving fairness and promoting a rational and humane criminal legal system.
