After a previous impeachment effort prompted by President Trump failed last year, the Justice Department accused former FBI Director James B. A new indictment has been secured against Comey.
The new case represents another twist in the department’s torturous efforts to meet Mr. Trump’s demands to bring criminal charges against Mr. Comey, a longtime target of the president’s ire.
The charges stem from an incident nearly a year ago, when Mr. Comey, vacationing off the North Carolina coast, posted a photo on social media of seashells arranged to say “86 47,” a combination of the words “86” often used to denote the dismissal or removal of Mr. Trump, the country’s 47th president.
Members of the administration, as well as Mr. Trump’s family, declared that “86” meant assassination, and that the message was tantamount to a threat to assassinate the president.
After the image was posted, the Secret Service went so far as to track the location of Mr. Comey and his wife as they traveled from their vacation spot to their home in Northern Virginia.
When Mr. Comey learned of the uproar, he removed the post, saying he did not know it had any violent connotations and that he opposed violence of any kind. The Secret Service interviewed him by phone that evening and Mr. Comey said that he had no intention of harming the President. The next day, he sat for a personal interview. The Justice Department eventually dropped the case, but it was revived in recent months.
Mr Comey was indicted by a grand jury in Virginia in September, charging him with perjury and obstruction of a congressional investigation over testimony he gave in 2020. The indictment came after Mr Trump fired the US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia after he and career prosecutors in the office determined the evidence did not support criminal charges against Mr Comey.
The President replaced that prosecutor with White House aide Lindsey Halligan, who had no prior prosecution experience. Ms Halligan immediately secured a grand jury indictment against Mr Comey, and then in an unrelated case against New York Attorney General Letitia James, another long-term target of Mr Trump.
Both lawsuits were dismissed in November, when a judge ruled that the Trump administration’s appointment of Ms. Halligan did not comply with federal law for such positions.
Despite an additional legal setback, in which a judge ruled some evidence in the Comey case off limits to prosecutors, the Trump administration has signaled its intention to continue pursuing Mr. Comey.
The new effort to impeach Mr. Comey comes less than a month after the president fired his attorney general, Pam Bondi, over her handling of files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and what advisers said were disappointments about the department’s effectiveness in cases against his alleged enemies.
