DOJ Files for Automatic Six-Month Extension on Prosecuting James Comey

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department confirmed Monday that it beat the 10-year deadline to charge former FBI Director James Comey the way millions of Americans beat April 15: by filing for an automatic extension at 11:58 p.m. and promising the real paperwork later.

Court papers unsealed Monday show prosecutors filed a “criminal information” on Oct. 5, exactly a decade after the 2016 leak they accuse Comey of directing, instead of getting a grand jury to sign off. Staff described it as a tax extension form where the line for “estimated amount owed” just says “something.”

“We had all ten years blocked out on the calendar,” said Garrett Lastminute-Hobbs, a deputy assistant paralegal in the department’s Office of Getting To It. “Then year nine got busy. Then it was October 4th and somebody in the break room goes, ‘Wasn’t there a Comey thing?’”

The department said in a statement that filing a criminal information to toll the statute of limitations “is a widely recognized practice in federal court,” which Lastminute-Hobbs said is also what he tells his landlord.

Comey’s lawyers want the case tossed, arguing the law required a real indictment. It is the department’s third case against Comey, after one a judge dismissed and another over a photo of seashells spelling “8647,” which staff now keep in a binder labeled “Comey, Misc.”

Tax preparer Delphine Schedule-Cee of Falls Church, Virginia, called the filing familiar. “Every spring a man walks in with a shoebox and asks me to make it look official,” she said. “Usually it’s a guy named Gary. This time it was the federal government.”

As of press time, the department had asked the court for a second extension, explaining that the grand jury’s email had gone to spam.