Judge Assigned to Fired FBI Director James Comey’s Case

Former FBI Director James Comey now faces mounting legal pressure on multiple fronts as the Justice Department intensifies its investigations into the longtime Trump adversary, with a federal judge officially assigned this week to oversee the latest criminal case against him.

U.S. District Judge Louise W. Flanagan of the Eastern District of North Carolina was randomly assigned Tuesday to preside over Comey’s newly unsealed federal case. Flanagan, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2003, is generally regarded as right-leaning, according to Ballotpedia.

The case stems from a grand jury indictment accusing Comey of threatening President Donald Trump through a controversial Instagram post made in May 2025. The post featured seashells arranged to form the numbers “86 47” — a message prosecutors argue carried violent implications directed at Trump, the 47th president of the United States.

Federal investigators contend the phrase “86” is widely recognized slang meaning “to eliminate” or “get rid of,” and prosecutors allege the post crossed the line into criminal conduct given the heightened threat environment surrounding the president.

Judge Flanagan brings decades of federal judicial experience to the case, having overseen thousands of matters during her tenure on the bench. Before becoming a district judge, she served as a federal magistrate judge and previously worked at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal before its later merger with Dentons, according to the ABA Journal.

Meanwhile, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche made clear during a recent Fox News interview that the indictment was not based solely on Comey’s social media activity.

“Every case requires an investigation, and what you just showed is one part of that investigation. What you just showed is the Instagram post,” Blanche said.

“Rest assured that the career Assistant United States Attorneys in North Carolina, the career FBI agents, the career Secret Service agents that investigated this case didn’t just look at the Instagram post and walk away,” he continued.

Blanche stressed that the grand jury reviewed substantially more evidence during the year-long investigation.

“That’s why you saw an indictment last week, notwithstanding the fact that it was last May that the post was made. So I am not permitted to get into details of what the grand jury heard or found, as you know, but rest assured that it’s not just the Instagram post that leads somebody to get indicted,” Blanche added.

At the same time, Comey is reportedly facing renewed legal scrutiny in another major federal investigation involving allegations that he improperly leaked classified information during President Trump’s first term in office.

According to sources familiar with the matter, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia have revived a previously dormant investigation centered on Comey’s handling of sensitive memos documenting his private conversations with then-President Trump.

The investigation focuses on Comey’s decision to provide those memos to Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman, who subsequently shared details with The New York Times. The disclosures fueled a major front-page story in May 2017 that intensified the now-discredited Trump-Russia collusion narrative during the early months of Trump’s first administration.

If prosecutors ultimately pursue charges, it would represent the third major criminal case targeting Comey since last fall.

Sources told reporters that senior officials within Blanche’s office have recently held meetings with prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia regarding the case. Authorities are reportedly weighing whether any potential indictment should be brought in Virginia, where Comey resides, or in New York, where Richman is located.

No final charging decision has been announced, but the renewed investigation signals increasing pressure inside the Trump Justice Department to revisit matters President Trump has repeatedly described as examples of politically motivated “deep state” activity against his administration.

The revived leak investigation also carries major legal implications because it could potentially turn previous arguments made by Trump’s political opponents against Comey himself.

During Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution involving documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago, the Biden-era Justice Department and FBI aggressively argued that any material designated as classified by the executive branch remained protected from disclosure or independent judicial review.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld that position, effectively reinforcing broad executive authority over classification determinations.

Critics now argue that the same legal standard could create serious problems for Comey if federal authorities determine his Trump memos contained classified information involving national security or presidential communications.

Under that interpretation, Comey’s longstanding claim that the memos were not classified could face substantial legal challenges using the very precedent his allies previously defended in other cases involving President Trump.

As multiple investigations continue unfolding simultaneously, the former FBI director now finds himself at the center of one of the most politically explosive legal battles inside the Trump administration’s Justice Department.