Former FBI Director James Comey has been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida as part of a wide-ranging investigation into former intelligence officials, according to Axios, which first reported the development. The subpoena was issued the week before March 19, 2026, according to multiple sources, and relates to Comey’s alleged role in the drafting of a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment concerning Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The investigation is being led by Jason A. Reding Quiñones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida. More than 130 subpoenas have been issued since the probe began the previous year, as reported by multiple outlets including NBC News. The sheer scale of the investigation signals one of the most aggressive federal efforts to scrutinize the conduct of former intelligence and law enforcement leaders in recent memory.
At its core, the probe targets top officials who served under former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Investigators are examining whether those officials allegedly conspired to undermine Donald Trump from 2016 through his federal indictments in 2023, a sprawling timeline that encompasses some of the most politically charged episodes in modern American governance.
Comey is far from the only high-profile figure caught up in the investigation. Former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and former FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page have also been subpoenaed, according to The Hill. Strzok and Page had exchanged text messages about Trump during the 2016 investigation, communications that became a lightning rod for Republican criticism of the FBI’s handling of the Russia probe.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly directed Justice Department prosecutors to investigate actions surrounding the 2016 election, according to NBC News. FBI Director Kash Patel received a criminal referral and opened investigations into both Brennan and Comey, according to Fox News. CIA Director John Ratcliffe also sent a criminal referral for Brennan to the FBI after declassifying records that Brennan pushed for the anti-Trump dossier to be included in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, Fox News reported.
The grand jury was impaneled by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee who dismissed the federal classified documents prosecution against Trump in 2024. Brennan’s attorneys protested Quiñones’ investigation the previous year in a letter to the chief judge of the Florida district, according to Axios. In recent weeks, new subpoenas were sent to former intelligence officials seeking documents on the same subject matter but broadening the date range from 2016 through the present day, according to lawyers for the subpoena recipients who spoke to CBS News.
This is not the first time prosecutors have attempted to bring charges against Comey. A previous prosecution — in which he was charged with making false statements to Congress by a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Virginia — was dismissed by a judge who ruled that prosecutor Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully appointed to her DOJ position. An earlier prosecution of Comey failed in the Eastern District of Virginia, and an investigation of Brennan stalled in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
However, the statute of limitations to prosecute Comey for his alleged false statements in 2020 has passed, according to Axios. Brennan, by contrast, is accused of lying in a congressional deposition concerning the Steele Dossier in 2023, which would still fall within the five-year statute of limitations.
Comey served as the seventh Director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017, having been appointed by President Obama. Trump fired him in May 2017 while Comey was heading an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, as Sunday Guardian Live noted. His daughter, Maurene Comey, was a federal prosecutor before being fired by the Trump administration in late 2025.
The broader context of the investigation remains deeply contested. A 2020 bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee review found evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election, and then-co-chair Marco Rubio signed off on it. Then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe similarly found that Russia intervened in the election to disadvantage Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, though it did not find evidence that Trump’s team colluded with Moscow.
Perhaps most notably, special counsel John Durham, appointed by Attorney General William Barr during Trump’s first term, found no evidence that Obama administration officials carried out a criminal conspiracy to fabricate intelligence about Russia’s actions. That conclusion stands in tension with the current investigation’s apparent premise, as reported by Bloomberg.
The subpoena of Comey marks a significant escalation in the Florida probe, which shows no signs of slowing. With more than 130 subpoenas already issued and the scope of the investigation widening, former intelligence officials and their legal teams are bracing for what could become one of the most consequential federal investigations in years.
