The former director of the US Federal Police FBI, James Comey, has been charged with endangering the life of US President Donald Trump, according to the acting Attorney General of that country, Todd Blanche.
Comey, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump, has also been charged with threatening to kill the president.
Newsroom CBS sources say the complaint stemmed from a photo Comey shared on Instagram last year that showed shells arranged in sand to form the numbers 86 and 47, which the Justice Department read as a death threat against the president.
Todd Blanche, acting United States Attorney General.
AFP/Tasos Katopodis
Believe that Comey wanted to remove the president
Comey is now facing charges for the second time, but the first criminal case was dismissed as a result the prosecutor of the case, Lindsey Halligan, was found to have been illegally appointed.
The indictment states that “an ordinary recipient with knowledge of the circumstances” would interpret the photo Comey shared on Instagram as “a serious statement of intent to harm President Trump.”
The president and other members of the cabinet have interpreted the post as a threat against the president, who is the 47th in a row, because the number 86 can be interpreted as slang for “eject,” or remove.
It never occurred to me that the shells might represent violence
Comey was questioned by US intelligence officials about the photo in May last year, but after he deleted the post from Instagram, he said he didn’t realize anyone was linking the numbers to violence. He himself assumed that the shells contained political messages.
“It never occurred to me but I am against violence of any kind so I took the post down,” he added.
