Comey enters not guilty plea ahead of January trial

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (CN) — Former FBI Director James Comey pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges that he wrongfully told a U.S. Senate committee that he did not authorize a colleague to leak information used in a Wall Street Journal article.

During the hearing, Comey’s lead attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, entered his client’s plea and added that he planned on challenging the case as politically motivated. The charges center around Comey’s testimony before a Senate committee probing whether President Donald Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

Comey wants a speedy trial, Fitzgerald explained. But the attorney sought time to get the charges tossed out with motions characterizing it as “egregious government conduct” and retaliation by Trump. Comey’s legal team also plans on exploring whether the government abused the grand jury process.

U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff, a Joe Biden appointee, set the trial for Jan. 5, 2026.

The Trump administration accuses Comey of lying during a U.S. Senate judiciary committee meeting in September 2020. Comey said he had not authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning “Person 1,” as they are identified in the indictment. This was false, according to federal prosecutors, because Comey “had authorized Person 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding Person 1.”

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe had a different recollection, according to Senator Ted Cruz, who was part of the committee. “Mr. McCabe says that he told Mr. Comey of the leak and that Mr. Comey approved — effectively authorizing the leak after the fact. Mr. Comey, on the other hand, has said that he neither authorized the leak nor knew of Mr. McCabe’s involvement,” the Texas Republican recounted in a press release online.

The administration also claims that by making purportedly false statements, Comey intended to “corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct and impede the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry.”

While Fitzgerald said he regarded this as a simple case, he hadn’t received discovery documents from the government. “We still have not been told who Person 3 and Person 1 are,” he added.

The Department of Justice attorney, Nathaniel Lemons, responded that his side is “just getting our hands around the discovery issue,” noting that some documents may be classified.

Nachmanoff was skeptical that trial should be delayed because of the case’s complexity. The judge said he also sees the case as straightforward and urged the government to expedite security clearances for Comey’s legal team.

Fitzgerald will also challenge the lawfulness of Trump appointing former White House aide Lindsey Halligan as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Nachmanoff said the issue involving Halligan would have to be referred to a different district court.

Onlookers and reporters packed two courtrooms for the proceeding in Alexandria, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Comey, who proclaimed his innocence in a video last month, stood once during the hearing when the judge read him his rights.

After Nachmanoff finished telling the former FBI director that he had the right to remain silent, Comey thanked him. He was released without conditions.