An FBI agent has been relieved of duty after refusing to arrange a public “perp walk” for former FBI Director James Comey, according to four people familiar with the matter.
The dispute arose after Comey was charged late last month with making a false statement and obstructing a congressional investigation.
The FBI declined to comment on personnel issues, and Comey’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment. Comey has denied wrongdoing.
The reported request for a high-visibility booking ran up against the basic facts of the case so far.
Prosecutors obtained a summons rather than an arrest warrant, and defendants summoned to court typically report to an FBI field office for routine processing without a media staging.
Comey is scheduled to appear in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, this coming week, according to court records and Justice Department statements.
The episode lands in a charged moment for the Bureau and the Justice Department, which face renewed scrutiny over political pressure and the optics of high-profile cases.
Public arrest scenes are rare for defendants who have been cooperating or were not taken into custody, and law-enforcement veterans say the practice can risk turning a judicial process into a spectacle if the underlying circumstances do not require it.
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The question is not only whether a perp walk is permissible, but whether it is necessary in a summons case.
The stakes extend beyond inside-the-Beltway score-settling. Markets watch institutional stability because legal uncertainty can influence risk appetite, particularly around regulatory and national-security-sensitive sectors.
When law-enforcement norms become a political story, investors start gaming out the downstream effects, from potential turnover in senior leadership to shifts in investigative priorities that could touch social media, cybersecurity, and government contractors.
None of that is priced in yet, and there is no evidence that the Comey case has changed the enforcement posture on corporate matters.
But the tug-of-war over optics highlights how quickly the narrative can move from legal process to governance risk.
Court filings show a grand jury returned an indictment on September 25 that includes a false-statements count under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 and an obstruction count under 18 U.S.C. § 1505.
A separate filing reflects that jurors declined to concur on an additional charge sought by prosecutors, an unusual but lawful outcome in grand jury practice.
The Justice Department said last week that Comey will answer the charges in the Eastern District of Virginia. He has publicly insisted he did nothing wrong.
For now, the practical question inside the FBI is whether the agent at the center of the dispute returns to duty or faces further discipline. The Bureau has not publicly described the status, citing personnel privacy rules.
Without official details, it remains unclear who ordered a public booking or how widely the plan was discussed. What is clear is that agents had a summons, not a warrant, which limited the procedural need for a public arrest scene.
That appearance will set a timetable for motions and discovery that could reveal more about the evidence underlying the false-statement and obstruction counts.
Those filings, rather than the theater of an arrest, will determine the strength of the case.
Until then, the fight over a perp walk is a proxy for a deeper battle about how federal law enforcement balances transparency, deterrence, and spectacle in cases that carry political freight.
