Third Case. Same FBI Director.

James Comey has been charged a third time. At this point the former FBI director doesn't have a legal record so much as a punch card, and the third stamp just landed: transmission of national defense information and conspiracy to transmit it, over an alleged disclosure to a reporter on October 5, 2016.

The case had been playing out under seal since October 5, which means that while everyone was arguing about everything else, this one was quietly waiting in a drawer. Last week his defense filed a motion to dismiss it. Then it unsealed, and Comey took to Instagram with the weary cheer of a man who has done this video before: they're back again. He's still innocent.

Two important distinctions, because the internet will blur both within the hour. First, this is a charge, not an indictment — NBC News is explicit that Comey has not been indicted in this case, whatever the aggregator headlines say. Second, every charge here is an allegation. Nothing has been proven, nobody has been convicted in this case, and the punchline is the count, not a verdict.

The count is doing a lot of work, though. His two prior federal cases are separate matters — a false-statements case dismissed in November 2025, and the '86 47' seashell-post threat case awaiting trial in January 2027 — which means the man who ran the FBI now has three distinct federal cases to his name, spanning three distinct theories of what he did wrong. Most people get one case and learn a lesson. Comey got three and a content calendar.

He ran the Bureau. Now he collects cases. The Bureau, presumably, has notes.

Sources: NBC News (Oct. 26, 2026); Reuters (Oct. 26, 2026).