The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) filed criminal charges against James Comey on Tuesday for a second time, accusing the former FBI director of threatening the president, Donald Trump, by posting a photo of shells arranged to display the numbers “86 47.”
The charges, filed in the federal court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, accuse Comey of threatening the life of the U.S. president and of transmitting a threat across state lines.
The case relates to an Instagram post Comey published last May while vacationing in North Carolina, showing the arrangement of shells. In the United States, the number 86 can be used as a verb meaning to eject someone from a bar, while 47 can be interpreted as a reference to Trump, the 47th president
The charges mark a new push by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice to target the president’s political enemies with criminal prosecutions.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche acted quickly to fulfill Trump’s demands regarding criminal prosecutions, after his predecessor, Pam Bondi, was partly ousted for not acting quickly enough in relation to them.
At the time, Trump and his allies said they interpreted Comey’s post as a threat to violently remove Trump from power.
Federal authorities investigated Comey in the days following the posting, but he was not charged.
Comey deleted the message after it sparked controversy.
“I did not know that some people associated these numbers with violence. That never occurred to me, but I am against any form of violence, so I removed the post,” Comey said shortly after posting it.
In an online video commenting on the indictment, Comey said that he remains innocent and that he continues unafraid. The former FBI chief’s lawyer declined to comment.
Since Blanche took the helm in April, the DOJ has filed criminal charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center, released a report alleging misconduct in previous challenges by antiabortion activists, and indicted a former NIH official for allegedly concealing records related to Covid-19 research.
For years, Trump has railed against Comey for supervising an FBI investigation into alleged ties between Trump’s initial presidential campaign and Russian authorities in 2016. The DOJ opened a separate case against Comey in September, accusing him of lying in testimony before Congress about authorizing disclosures to the media regarding FBI investigations.
A federal judge dismissed the case after concluding that the prosecutor who secured the indictment was not legally appointed. The DOJ is appealing the decision.
The first case against Comey faced several legal hurdles. A federal judge concluded that the lead prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, may have committed serious legal errors before the grand jury that approved the indictment. Subsequently, another judge prevented the DOJ from using crucial evidence in the case, finding that prosecutors had violated the Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful searches and seizures in the U.S. Constitution.
It is likely that the latest case will also be challenged on First Amendment grounds. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides robust protections for political speech, even those that may be considered offensive.
