Sakshi Venkatraman
Live reporter

The case against James Comey may be seriously threatened by Trump's Truth Social posts, a legal expert tells me.

"There's a possibility that the president tweeting could undercut this indictment," said Carl Tobias, a federal courts expert at the University of Richmond School of Law. "It's inappropriate for the president to comment on somebody's guilt. Everyone is entitled to their day in court."

What also complicates things is the recent resignation of Erik Siebert, former US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who quit under pressure from Trump. After Siebert failed to bring charges against Trump opponents like Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, Trump said, "I want him out."

"It's troubling," Tobias said of Trump's "instigation" of this case.

James Comey's lawyer Patrick J Fitzgerald has issued a short statement to media.

Annmarie McAvoy from the Columbia School of International Public Affairs tells BBC News that it's "certainly a first" for someone "at that level" to be indicted.

But she says there have been other indictments against officials in the past for lying to Congress and for obstruction of justice.

Two senior officials from Trump's first term - Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro - were convicted and sent to prison for not complying with congressional subpoenas.

McAvoy also highlights the ticking clock that explains why Comey was indicted this week.

A statute of limitations would have expired on 30 September, five years after Comey addressed Congress. After that time period, charges could no longer be brought.

"So they got in just in the nick of time before it would have been time barred," McAvoy said.

Earlier, we told you about Lindsey Halligan, the federal prosecutor who brought the charges against Comey.

She was stepping in to a role vacated last week by Erik Siebert, who resigned. Trump had been pressuring him to leave after his criminal investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James did not bring about any charges against one of Trump's major political foes.

Trump told reporters: "I want him out.”

Halligan had never worked in a prosecutor's office and, before working for Trump, she handled insurance claims at a law firm in Florida.

Read more: US prosecutor resigns after Trump says 'I want him out’

The indictment against James Comey relates to statements he made to Congress in 2020.

Specifically, he is accused of making "false statements within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the United States government" when he testified during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on 30 September 2020.

You can watch some moments from that testimony in the video above.

Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu
Live reporter

Image source, Reuters

We just heard Comey mention his family, and talk about fear being "the tool of a tyrant".

Two months ago, in July, his daughter Maurene Comey was fired from her role as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. According to media reports, she was given no reason for being removed from the office where she had worked for 10 years.

The day after, Maurene Comey, who worked on the cases against sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and hip hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs, told former colleagues that "fear is the tool of a tyrant, wielded to supress independent thought".

Since Trump returned to office, the justice department has been firing prosecutors who worked on cases that angered the president, including a special counsel investigation of Trump's alleged involvement in the 6 January 2021 capitol riots.

Earlier this month, Maurene Comey sued the Trump administration over her dismissal.

Comey has spoken. The former FBI director posted a video to Instagram asserting that he is innocent and comparing Trump to a "tyrant".

"My family and I have know for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump," he said. "We will not live on our knees."

He said that "fear is the tool of a tyrant", and that he is not afraid. Though his "heart is broken" for the justice department, he said he still has faith in the judicial system.

"I'm innocent," he said. "So let's have a trial."

Hours before news of Comey's indictment, Trump spoke to reporters at the White House and called the former FBI director "a bad person".

When asked if an indictment of Comey was imminent, the president said he was leaving that decision to Attorney General Pam Bondi and her team.

"They’re going to make a determination. I’m not making that determination. I think I’d be allowed to get involved if I want, but I don’t really choose to do so," he said.

"I have no idea what's going to happen."

As part of Comey’s ongoing feud with Trump, he published several claims about the once and current president in his 2018 book.

He likened Trump to a mob boss and detailed how Trump had focused on claims that he consorted with prostitutes in Moscow.

In an interview with ABC News to promote his book, Comey said Trump was "morally unfit" to be president.

Trump at the time said that Comey was an "untruthful slime ball".

Is this a one-off or a sign of things to come?published at 01:08 BST

01:08 BST

Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent

The other shoe has dropped. Less than a week after Donald Trump fired off a Truth Social post specifically calling for a handful of his critics to be prosecuted, one of those targeted – James Comey – has been indicted.

It doesn’t take much to connect the dots, even if Trump’s justice department insists there is a solid case against the former FBI director and that this is an example of the powerful being held to account.

If there had been anything left of the once-strong firewall between the department and the White House – long considered sacrosanct by presidents of both parties – it is now gone.

The Comey case is also poised to unearth long-buried drama from the Russian election-meddling investigation of Trump’s first term, even though the perjury and obstruction charges – which relate to congressional testimony about a leak to a news outlet – are quite tangential and small-bore.

Trump and his supporters are sure to treat the prosecution of Comey as an avenue to undermine the credibility of the entire Russia investigation. While that probe found ample evidence of attempts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election, it produced no concrete evidence tying Trump directly to those efforts.

Perhaps the biggest question hanging over all of this is whether this is just an individual event – a move that might placate a clearly angry president – or a sign of more prosecutions to come.

Ali Abbas Ahmadi
Live reporter

The Secret Service launched an investigation into Comey earlier this year after he shared then deleted a social media post with seashells spelling out "8647", which Republicans regarded as an incitement to violence against US President Donald Trump.

Comey had posted the photo to Instagram with the caption: "Cool shell formation on my beach walk."

The number 86 is a slang term whose definitions include "to reject" or "to get rid of", according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which also notes that it has more recently been used as a term meaning "to kill".

And Trump is the 47th US president.

Comey deleted the post, saying in a follow-up that he "assumed [the sea shells] were a political message".

"I didn't realise some folks associate those numbers with violence," he added. "It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down."

But Trump argued that even "a child knows what that meant".

Read more: Ex-FBI boss James Comey investigated for seashell photo seen as threat to Trump

In order for the charges to be filed against Comey, federal prosecutors had to convince a grand jury that there was enough evidence against him to possibly lead to a conviction.

A grand jury is a group of citizens set up by a prosecutor to determine whether there is enough evidence for charges to be filed. In legal terms, it determines whether probable cause exists to believe a crime has been committed.

Grand juries do not decide if an accused person is guilty or not.

After they okay an indictment, the case is tried before a jury of peers in court that makes a verdict and can convict a suspect.

In the case against Comey, the grand jury was seated in Virginia, where the former FBI director resides.

The Justice Department asked a grand jury to consider three charges against Comey, but the the jury could only agree that two of them were backed by enough evidence to be tried in court.

The third count was another charge of making false statements.

These statements related to Comey telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that he did not remember “being taught” of an unnamed person's “approval of a plan concerning” another person in the 2016 presidential election.

We've just seen the indictment laying out the charges against Comey.

The first count accuses the former FBI director of making "false statements within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch of the United States Government" when he testified during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on 30 September 2020.

The alleged false statement relates to telling a senator on the committee that he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports" regarding an FBI investigation, presumably the one into whether Russia meddled with the 2016 election.

The second count, obstruction of a congressional proceeding, alleges that Comey "did corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct and impede the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which an investigation was being had before the Senate Judiciary Committee by making false and misleading statements" before that committee.

Image source, Getty Images

Lindsey Halligan, one of president Trump's former defence lawyers, just took over a key federal prosecutor's office in Virginia earlier this week.

She takes the helm as interim US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia days after Erik Siebert, the former top federal prosecutor for the region, resigned over fears he would be forced out for failing to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud.

Almost immediately after taking office, Halligan brought the Comey case to a grand jury, which agreed there was enough evidence to prosecute.

Earlier this week Trump threw his support behind Halligan saying he has confidence she can "get things moving".

Before this, Halligan was part of an effort by the White House to remove "improper ideology" from the Smithsonian Institution and its museums, education and research centres, and the National Zoo.

Trump in his second term has often turned to his personal attorneys for key government roles, most notably putting his former defence lawyer, Alina Habba, in the same posting as Halligan's for New Jersey.

David Willis
Reporting from Los Angeles

James Comey has become the first former FBI Director to be indicted for an alleged crime.

The charges against him relate to testimony he gave to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020.

Addressing Republican criticism of the FBI investigation into Russian election interference, Comey denied allegations that he had authorised the disclosure of sensitive information to the media.

Donald Trump has been a fierce critic of Comey, and at the weekend called once again for the former FBI’s leader’s prosecution.

Following his dismissal Comey branded Trump "morally unfit" for public office.

In a social media post the US Attorney General Pam Bondi said nobody was above the law, and added that the indictment reflected the US Justice Department’s commitment to hold those who abuse positions of power accountable.

Image source, EPA

The US president has reacted to news of Comey's indictment on his Truth Social platform, calling the former FBI director "one of the worst human beings".

"JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI," Trump wrote.

"Today he was indicted by a Grand Jury on two felony counts for various illegal and unlawful acts. He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

We're starting to see some reaction from Democrats about Comey's indictment.

Virginia Senator Mark Warner, the vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, accused President Trump of intending to "turn our justice system into a weapon for punishing and silencing his critics".

He pointed to Trump's firing last week of US Attorney Erik Siebert for refusing "to deliver the outcome Trump demanded" and recommending against bringing charges against Comey and then condemned Trump for installing one of his personal lawyers in the post.

“This kind of interference is a dangerous abuse of power," Warner said.

Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, who was Hillary Clinton's running mate in her 2016 election campaign against Trump, described Comey's indictment as a "malicious prosecution".

"I’ve had my differences with James Comey in the past, but I can spot trumped-up charges a mile away. Trump said he’d go after him, then fired a superb, ethical prosecutor when he refused to bring frivolous charges against those whom Trump perceived to be his enemies," Kaine said.

"Now he has installed yet another one of his personal lawyers as the interim U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia—this one a Florida insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience and no connection to Virginia—to do his bidding. The rule of law must prevail.”

Image source, Reuters

Moments after Attorney General Pam Bondi reacted to the indictment, FBI Director Kash Patel posted a similar statement, promising to hold "corrupt leadership" to account.

"Today, your FBI took another step in its promise of full accountability. For far too long, previous corrupt leadership and their enablers weaponized federal law enforcement, damaging once proud institutions and severely eroding public trust," he wrote on X.

He referred to Comey's 2016 investigation into whether Trump's first presidential campaign colluded with Russia as "a disgraceful chapter in history".

"Everyone, especially those in positions of power, will be held to account - no matter their perch. No one is above the law," he added.

Before he became director, Patel was a conservative podcaster and activist who published the book Government Gangsters in 2023, with a list of 60 people in the "deep state" that has since been referred to as his "enemies list". Comey is on that list.

US Attorney Lindsey Halligan has just made the announcement official.

In a statement, she said that a federal grand jury returned an indictment that charges Comey with making a false statement and obstructing a congressional investigation, both relating to testimony he gave to a Senate committee hearing on 30 September 2020.

“The charges as alleged in this case represent a breach of the public trust at an extraordinary level,” Halligan said.

If convicted, Comey faces up to five years in prison.