The United States Department of Justice has resubmitted charges against former FBI director James Comeywhom the president, Donald Trump, considers one of his great enemies. This time, for alleged death threats against the president. In a press conference, the acting Secretary of Justice, Todd Blanche, confirmed that an arrest warrant has been issued for the former senior official.
Months after the courts dismissed the case that accused him of perjury and obstruction of justice, prosecutors from the department headed by Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer, now accuse him in an investigation into Comey’s publication of an image on his social networks in which some shells on the beach form the numbers 86 and 47, in what they assure is a code incitement to violence against the president. 47 is the number Trump occupies on the list of presidents in the history of his country, and 86 is, in hospitality jargon, a reference to sold-out dishes on a menu. In popular language it can be used as a verb to indicate, for example, kicking a drunk person out of a bar. In his message on social networks, the former head of the federal police explained that he had found the shells while taking a walk on the beach during a getaway to North Carolina.
According to the statement of objections, “any reasonable person” would deduce from Comey’s message on social networks an “intention to cause harm to the president.” The judicial district where the case has been processed is eastern North Carolina; Last year, the first charges were filed in the State of Virginia.
Prosecutors will have to prove, if they want to secure a conviction, that the former FBI director clearly intended to threaten the president with death by publishing that photo. A priori, it appears to be a difficult objective: Comey denies knowing that these numbers can be interpreted that way, and the expression itself is ambiguous, since it can also refer to mere expulsion from a place or position.
Secret Service agents had interviewed Comey in May of last year about the image that the former senior official published on his social networks. At that time, the then Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, denounced that by releasing that photo the former FBI director “had just called for the assassination” of Trump, and had demanded that the agency responsible for presidential security open an investigation.
Trump supporters maintain that the photo of the shells sends a coded message, in which the number 86 means “to eliminate” or “remove” in a violent way and the 47 is an unmistakable reference to Donald Trump.
As a result of those complaints, Comey then declared in a message on social networks that he had assumed, upon seeing the shells during a walk on the beach, that it was a political message, but that he was unaware that anyone could interpret it as a call to violence. He also immediately deleted the image from his account.
“I didn’t imagine that some would associate those numbers with violence,” the former official wrote then. “It never occurred to me to think about it, but I am opposed to any type of violence, so I have deleted the message (with the photo).”
In September of last year, prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia charged Comey with perjury and obstruction of justice just days after Trump insulted the then Secretary of Justice, Pam Bondi, on social media, to force charges against some of his most hated adversaries.
That case had its origins in a sworn statement by Comey before Congress on September 30, 2020. Then, the former senior official appeared at a hearing to testify whether he had authorized a leak of information regarding the investigation of the president into possible links with Russia in the 2016 election campaign.
Comey headed the FBI when Trump came to power in his first term in 2017, but he was fired that same year, just days after the senior official announced the opening of an investigation into possible Russian ties. Since then, the former high command has become one of the president’s constant political targets for this investigation.
After the first accusation, a court dismissed the case in November of last year after it was determined that the prosecutor who had taken on the case after Trump’s anger at Bondi, Lindsay Halligan, also a former Trump lawyer, had been unlawfully appointed to the position.
The new presentation of charges against Comey comes on the same day that a federal judge has ruled in favor of former prosecutor Maurene Comey, daughter of the former FBI director, and has allowed her to move forward with a lawsuit in which she accuses the Department of Justice of having removed her from her position simply because of who her father is and her alleged political ideas. Until her termination last year, Maurene worked at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
