{"id":26006,"date":"2026-05-08T04:09:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T04:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/26006\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T04:09:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T04:09:16","slug":"comey-seeks-to-cancel-upcoming-court-appearance-in-trump-threat-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/26006\/","title":{"rendered":"Comey seeks to cancel upcoming court appearance in Trump threat case"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Former FBI Director James Comey<\/a> asked Thursday to cancel his upcoming court appearance<\/a> in North Carolina, saying it was unnecessary because he had already surrendered in Virginia and faced a judge on charges that he threatened President Donald Trump<\/a>. The Department of Justice is supporting the request.<\/p>\n

Comey was charged in a two-count indictment last week with \u201cknowingly and willfully\u201d communicating a threat against Trump by posting an Instagram photo of seashells in the numerical arrangement of \u201c86 47.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prosecutors allege the photo constituted a threat against Trump, the 47th president. Comey has said he assumed the seashell arrangement, which he says he found on a beach, reflected a political message \u2014 not a call to violence \u2014 and that he removed the post once he saw that some people were interpreting it as a threat.<\/p>\n

He is currently set to appear Monday in a federal court in Greenville, North Carolina, but his lawyers urged a judge on Thursday to cancel that appearance. They noted that he had surrendered and appeared last week before a judge in Virginia, where he lives, and that the Justice Department has consented to their request. <\/p>\n

Responding to the defense filing, the judge in the case said she would cancel the court date provided that Comey files a waiver of appearance on or before Friday.<\/p>\n

The case is the second brought by the Trump administration Justice Department against Comey, a longtime perceived adversary of the Republican president. An earlier unrelated prosecution accusing Comey<\/a> of making a false statement to Congress was dismissed by a judge who concluded that the prosecutor who filed the case was illegally appointed.<\/p>\n

Legal experts have questioned whether the Justice Department can meet the high legal standard of proving that Comey intended his Instagram post to be a threat. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has said investigators have evidence beyond just the post itself. He has not elaborated.<\/p>\n

Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by The Associated Press, says 86 is slang<\/a> meaning \u201cto throw out,\u201d \u201cto get rid of\u201d or \u201cto refuse service to.\u201d It notes: \u201cAmong the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of \u2018to kill.\u2019 We do not enter this sense, due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 Former FBI Director James Comey asked Thursday to cancel his upcoming court appearance in North…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[56,38,50,8,162,12307,762,9,735,67,198,3740,7,2631,2464,921,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-26006","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-courts","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-general-news","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-indictments","13":"tag-james-comey","14":"tag-nc-state-wire","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-north-carolina","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-social-media","19":"tag-todd-blanche","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-u-s-department-of-justice","22":"tag-u-s-federal-bureau-of-investigation","23":"tag-virginia","24":"tag-washington-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116536997510569018","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26006","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=26006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}