Former FBI director James Comey indicted on two charges
Former FBI Director James Comey has maintained he is innocent after being charged with making false statements to Congress.
President Donald Trump welcomed the indictment against a high-profile figure who has long drawn his ire. Mr Comey is accused of lying to a Senate committee in 2020 about whether he authorised a leak of classified information to the media.
The indictment in Virginia comes days after Trump called on the country's top law enforcement official to more aggressively investigate his political adversaries, including Mr Comey.
Mr Comey said he had "great confidence in the federal judicial system". If found guilty, he could face up to five years in prison.
An indictment in the US justice system is a formal accusation issued by a grand jury after they review evidence to determine if a case should proceed.
Mr Comey's arraignment - where charges are formally read out in front of a defendant in court - has been set for 9 October in Alexandria, Virginia.
The probe is being led by Lindsey Halligan, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who was previously Trump's personal lawyer and took over her new role on Monday.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, urged by Trump at the weekend to pursue Mr Comey, said in a statement that the indictment "reflects this Department of Justice's commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people".
The two-page indictment is short on detail, but it says Mr Comey has been charged with one count of making false statements and another of obstruction of justice.
The five-year statute of limitations for charges would have expired next week.
The first count relates to Mr Comey telling the congressional committee he had not authorised someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about an FBI investigation into what the indictment describes as "PERSON 1", believed to be Clinton.
The second count alleges that Mr Comey "did corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct and impede" the panel by making false statements to it.
The jury rejected a third count of making false statements.
Mr Comey said in a video statement after the indictment was filed on Thursday: "My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump."
"We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn't either," he continued, adding: "And, I am innocent. So, let's have a trial."
Both charges relate to Mr Comey's appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020.
He was questioned about the FBI's handling of two investigations - one on pro-Trump election interference by Russia and another on Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.
During that hearing, Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, asked Mr Comey about testimony three years earlier when he denied approving an FBI official to be an anonymous media source about the agency's investigations into Trump or Clinton.
In his 2020 remarks, Mr Comey told the senator he stood by his earlier testimony.
But a lawyer for Andrew McCabe, who served as deputy FBI director under Mr Comey, said that in 2018 when Mr McCabe leaked information about the Clinton probe to a Wall Street Journal reporter it was done with Mr Comey's knowledge.
According to a 2018 justice department inspector general's report, Mr McCabe also said Mr Comey had authorised the leak. The same report, however, found that Mr McCabe had made a number of misleading statements.
The case had recently been handed over to a new prosecutor after Erik Siebert, the original US attorney overseeing the case, departed amid concerns he would be forced out. Trump later said he fired Mr Siebert, who was replaced by Ms Halligan.
The case is considered to be the highest-profile indictment of a public figure during Trump's second term.
On Friday morning, the president called Mr Comey "a dirty cop".
"He got caught lying to Congress," he said.
"It's about justice," Trump added. "Not revenge."
"I think there will be others," the president told reporters, though he denied having a list.
Trump recently voiced his frustration that prosecutions of his antagonists, such as Mr Comey, Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James, were taking so long.
Asked about Mr Comey hours before the indictment was unsealed, Trump said he had no advanced knowledge of the prosecution.
Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, said it will be a very challenging case to prosecute.
"It's often the defendant's word against someone else's and you're gonna have to look at the credibility of both," she told BBC News.
"And even if James Comey got things wrong, that doesn't mean that he knowingly or intentionally lied to Congress. So proving that is going to be the heart of the case."
Ms Levenson also said this prosecution and Trump's public pressure to move forward on it suggests that the traditional firewall between the White House and the US Department of Justice had "collapsed with this case".
Several Democrats condemned the charges, with House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries denouncing them as "a disgraceful attack on the rule of law", vowing "accountability" for "anyone complicit in this malignant corruption".
Mr Comey served as the FBI's director between 2013-17.
He had a tumultuous tenure that included overseeing a high-profile inquiry into Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's emails just weeks before the 2016 election, which she lost to Trump.
He was fired by Trump amid an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
This is not the first probe into the former FBI boss to be launched this year.
He was investigated by the Secret Service after he shared and then deleted a social media post of seashells spelling the numbers "8647", which Republicans alleged was an incitement to violence against Trump.
The number 86 is a slang term whose definitions include "to eject, dismiss or remove (someone)", according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
According to US media, Mr Comey's son-in-law, a federal prosecutor, reportedly resigned on Thursday from the office that is prosecuting his father-in-law.
Troy Edwards Jr quit the Eastern District of Virginia, addressing a brief letter to the new US attorney, Halligan, saying he was leaving "to uphold my oath to the Constitution and the country".
In July, Mr Comey's daughter Maurene Comey was fired from her role as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.
She was given no reason for being removed from the office where she had worked for 10 years, according to media reports.
Earlier this month, she sued the Trump administration over her dismissal.
The justice department has been firing lawyers who worked on cases that angered the president, including a special prosecutor investigation of Trump.
Additional reporting by Sumi Somaskanda