Lawyers for the former FBI director James Comey will ask a federal judge on Friday to block the US justice department from pursuing its third criminal case against him.

Comey is an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, in open feud since the US president fired him from that post early in his first term, and he is a frequent target of Republican outrage.

Court documents unsealed on Monday showed that the Trump administration this month bypassed a grand jury and filed a charging document known as a “criminal information” over allegations of a decade-old and previously investigated news media leak.

The justice department defended the maneuver as an effort to extend the legal time limit for seeking a grand jury indictment, but Comey’s lawyers have called the case legally invalid.

US district judge Trevor McFadden in Washington, DC was expected to hear arguments on that question on Friday.…