The Justice Department has found another troublesome figure standing between it and a prosecution of James Comey: the calendar. Ten years have passed, and apparently even time needs to be more cooperative with this administration.

The Associated Press reports that newly unsealed documents reveal an attempt to prosecute the former FBI director over an alleged 2016 disclosure of classified information. DOJ filed a criminal information to stop the ten-year limitations clock. Comey’s lawyers dispute the maneuver’s validity and say the case is out of time. He maintains his innocence.

This is the third criminal case the administration has attempted against him since Trump returned to office. At some point, “again” stops being a scheduling detail and starts demanding its own oversight hearing.

DOJ says using an information to preserve the deadline is an established practice supported by appellate courts. That claim deserves an actual judicial answer, not the liberal equivalent of shouting “technicality” whenever a procedural rule proves inconvenient. The government can have a legal argument. It still has to win it.

But a deadline is not a decorative border around prosecutorial ambition. It limits how long the state can leave someone exposed to a particular accusation. If the government wants an exception, it should explain the exception rather than expect the defendant to admire its persistence.

Make powerful people uncomfortable.
Subscribe to Democrawonk.

The history makes the urgency especially interesting. AP reports that earlier investigations ended without charges; Comey’s lawyers point to a 2018 recommendation against prosecution and a second inquiry closed in 2020. Those outcomes do not establish innocence by themselves. They do make “we have been meaning to get around to this” an inadequate explanation for a ten-year-old allegation suddenly arriving with political sirens attached.

Imagine a government office where every closed file has a little button marked TRY AGAIN AFTER THE NEXT ELECTION. Nobody has to invent that office to insist that the real one account for its decisions.

The test here is not whether anyone likes James Comey. Civil liberties do not come with a customer-satisfaction survey, and the Justice Department is not supposed to maintain a prosecution rewards program in which the third visit earns a conviction.

It needs a valid case, brought through a valid process, supported by evidence. Comey can contest all three. A court, not a campaign audience, gets to decide.

The calendar has no partisan affiliation. That may be why it is proving so difficult to appoint a replacement.