Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, on Sunday sought to contrast the Justice Department\u2019s indictment of the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey over a social media post with other instances in which people have shared the same message, saying that the department had gathered additional evidence during an 11-month investigation.<\/p>\n
Mr. Comey was indicted last week<\/a> over a photo that he posted on Instagram in May 2025 of seashells on a beach that spelled out \u201c86 47,\u201d which the department characterized as a threat to the president. The charge was the second attempt by the Justice Department under President Trump to prosecute Mr. Comey and the department\u2019s latest effort to pursue charges against the president\u2019s perceived enemies.<\/p>\n Asked on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet The Press\u201d whether others who displayed the same numbers, or bought or sold T-shirts with the same message, would face the same prosecution, Mr. Blanche said no.<\/p>\n The \u201c86 47\u201d message, Mr. Blanche said, is \u201cposted constantly \u2014 that phrase is used constantly.\u201d He added, \u201cEvery one of those statements do not result in indictments.\u201d What makes Mr. Comey\u2019s case different, he argued, is other evidence collected, which he said he could not describe.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course the seashells are part of that case,\u201d said Mr. Blanche, who acknowledged that proving Mr. Comey\u2019s intent would be crucial to his prosecution. \u201cYou prove intent with witnesses; you prove intent with documents,\u201d he said, adding that there was \u201ca body of evidence\u201d that led to Mr. Comey\u2019s indictment. The three-page indictment<\/a>, secured on Tuesday, was focused only on the seashell post.<\/p>\n Mr. Comey has insisted he is innocent and will fight the charges. He has said he did not associate the phrase \u201c86\u201d with violence, and pointed to its origins in the restaurant business, where it has for decades been used to refer to removing something from the menu or throwing out an unruly customer.<\/p>\n Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, appeared later on the show and said there was only one thing that distinguished Mr. Comey\u2019s case from other examples of people using the phrase: \u201cthe fact that James Comey is a political opponent of the president; it\u2019s the fact that the president has called on him for prosecution; it\u2019s the fact that Todd Blanche wants to keep his job.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Schiff called the charges against Mr. Comey \u201cdeeply illegitimate\u201d and said he expected the case to be thrown out of court before it ever gets to a jury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, on Sunday sought to contrast the Justice Department\u2019s indictment of the former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[12338,13219,6238,8,13220,1505,9,12339,7,1071,11259],"class_list":{"0":"post-23949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-blanche","9":"tag-comey","10":"tag-donald-j","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-james-b","13":"tag-justice-department","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-todd-attorney","16":"tag-top-stories","17":"tag-trump","18":"tag-united-states-politics-and-government"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116511607453636680","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}