Did a federal judge in Virginia drop charges against former FBI Director James Comey because the prosecutor misspelled Comey's last name as "Homey"? No, that's not true: The rumor on social media originated from a satire website. As of October 10, 2025, the trial date was set for January 5, 2026; however, the former FBI Director's legal team stated that it would file a motion to dismiss the case on the grounds of selective prosecution.
The claim originated from an article (archived here) published by the Borowitz Report on October 8, 2025:
Comey's Charges Dismissed After Trump's Handpicked Prosecutor Misspells his Name as 'Homey'.
It continued:
The attorney, Lindsey Halligan, begged the judge to overlook the error, which she blamed on 'frickin' autocorrect.'
This is what the article looked like on the Borowitz Report website:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of article at borowitzreport.com)
The Borowitz Report is a project run by comedian Andy Borowitz (archived here). Previously, he wrote a satire column of the same name for The New Yorker (archived here), but that came to an end (archived here) in December 2023.
The About page (archived here) on BorowitzReport.com read at the time of writing:
I've been writing satirical news since I was eighteen. This represents either commitment to a genre or arrested development.
In high school, I became editor of the newspaper solely because it produced an annual April Fool's issue. Later, as president of The Harvard Lampoon, I published parodies of the college newspaper, which got me hauled into the office of Dean Archie C. Epps III, which was his actual name.
For the next two decades, I took a break from news satire while I waited for the Internet to be invented. Then, in 2001, I started emailing made-up news stories to friends. One suggested that creating a "website" would make it easier to "blast" my "posts." Soon, The Borowitz Report was live at BorowitzReport.com, and my free newsletter was reaching untold dozens of people.
I thought that the column would be a fun pastime and might entertain my friends. But they shared my posts with their friends, and the newsletter attracted more subscribers.
In 2012 The Borowitz Report moved to The New Yorker, which published it for the next eleven years. The column acquired readers around the world, including in the Chinese media, who believed a story I published about Donald Trump wrapping the White House's phones in tinfoil.
The claim reviewed in this fact check spread on social media after former FBI Director James Comey (archived here) was indicted on September 25, 2025.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of PACER)
He denied any wrongdoing in a post on Instagram and later pleaded not guilty (archived here) on both charges, false statements and obstruction.
As of this writing, a docket report available via PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) indicated that the case against Comey was still ongoing.
