A rumor that federal charges against former FBI director James Comey were dropped because the prosecutor misspelled his name as "Homey" circulated online in October 2025. For example, an Oct. 9 Facebook post featuring the claim began:
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA—A federal judge dismissed all charges against former FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday after Donald J. Trump's handpicked US attorney misspelled his name as "Homey."
Variations of the rumor spread on X, as well, and some readers seemed to interpret the supposed news as a factual recounting of real-life events.
The rumor about Comey was not true, however. It originated with The Borowitz Report, a publication created by the comedian Andy Borowitz that describes its output as satire. The site's About page stated:
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.
The fictional story spread following Comey's indictment by a grand jury in Virginia on two charges — making a false statement and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. Both charges were in reference to testimony from Comey during a 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which he said he did not approve leaking information to the press, according to NBC News. (The administration claims he did approve a leak of information.)
Comey was in charge of the FBI when it launched an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, including potential ties to U.S. President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. In May 2017, months into his first term, Trump fired Comey as FBI director.
When Trump retook office in 2025, he began pressuring his Justice Department, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, to charge Comey. He forced the acting head for the U.S. District Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia to resign. Then, he appointed Lindsey Halligan, a former insurance lawyer who has personally represented Trump in the past and has no experience as a criminal prosecutor, to the post.
On Oct. 8, Comey pleaded not guilty to both charges, according to NBC News.
Snopes has addressed similar satirical claims from The Borowitz Report in the past, including the assertion that California Gov. Gavin Newsom had won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.