{"id":67735,"date":"2026-08-19T18:58:21","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T18:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/67735\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T18:58:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T18:58:21","slug":"doj-defends-james-comey-prosecution-in-trump-threat-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/67735\/","title":{"rendered":"DOJ defends James Comey prosecution in Trump threat case"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Department of Justice is defending its prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey<\/a>, saying \u201cthere is no serious dispute\u201d that a social media post of seashells he made last year could be understood as a threat against President Donald Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors also called into question Comey\u2019s account that he had found the seashells in the numerical arrangement of \u201c86 47\u201d while walking on a beach in North Carolina and suggested that his May 2025 post on Instagram was an effort to generate attention for a forthcoming novel about a social media personality whose words inspire his fans to attack his foes. <\/p>\n

The arguments in motions<\/a> late Tuesday represent the government\u2019s most detailed explanation of its indictment and were filed in response to wide-ranging defense efforts to dismiss the case<\/a> on grounds including that it constitutes a vindictive prosecution and that Comey\u2019s post did not amount to a true threat. Comey\u2019s lawyers contend that investigators in the case misled judges, submitted documents containing false statements, withheld key facts and repeatedly came up empty in their efforts to prove that Comey intended a physical threat or knew that the number 86 could suggest violence.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Justice logo is seen on a podium before a news conference, May 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo\/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Justice logo is seen on a podium before a news conference, May 4, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo\/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)<\/p>\n

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The entry for \u201c86\u201d from Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by The Associated Press, says its meaning is \u201cto throw out,\u201d \u201cto get rid of\u201d or \u201cto refuse service to.\u201d Trump, a Republican, is the 47th president.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department maintains that the post constituted a real threat<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors maintain that the photo of the seashells, which Comey said he found on the beach, constituted a threat against Trump. Comey deleted the post shortly after he put it up, saying he did not know that anyone interpreted the numbers as a call to violence. His lawyers have said that the slogan has long meant to \u201cget rid of\u201d or \u201ceject\u201d and has been featured on thousands of items sold online and regularly displayed at protests.<\/p>\n

But the department sought in its filings to place the post against the backdrop of assassination plots or attempts<\/a> against Trump in the months before and after Comey\u2019s post. Prosecutors say that two minutes before the post was made, Comey\u2019s wife texted him a screenshot of a definition of \u201c86\u201d that said \u201cto get rid of or refuse service.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no serious dispute that an objective viewer of Comey\u2019s post could read it to mean \u2018Kill President Trump,\u2019\u201d prosecutors wrote.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A portrait of President Donald Trump is displayed at the Justice Department building in Washington, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo\/J. Scott Applewhite, File)<\/p>\n

A portrait of President Donald Trump is displayed at the Justice Department building in Washington, June 2, 2026. (AP Photo\/J. Scott Applewhite, File)<\/p>\n

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The photo was posted days before Comey was set to release a novel he wrote titled \u201cFDR Drive,\u201d in which a prosecutor pursues a far-right social media personality who has called out his adversaries by name and inspired violence against them by his fans, the department said. <\/p>\n

After the Instagram post provoked an outcry, according to the government\u2019s filings, Comey\u2019s publishing agent observed in a text message to him that he had \u201cgone viral.\u201d Comey responded that that was \u201cnot my intention, but I\u2019ll be OK if it sells books.\u201d The agent replied, \u201dMusic to an agent\u2019s ears.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prosecutors also asserted there was \u201creason to doubt\u201d Comey\u2019s account of having come upon the seashells while on a walk, saying they were located 4 miles (6 kilometers) \u201cdown from the beach from beachfront property where Comey was staying, in an area separated from the ocean by a sand dune.\u201d They said there was \u201cno evidence that anyone else arranged, photographed, or even saw the shells.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comey has called the case vindictive, but prosecutors deny that<\/p>\n

Comey\u2019s lawyers have called the indictment, which was filed months after an earlier and unrelated case against him was dismissed<\/a>, part of a Trump retribution campaign targeting one of the president\u2019s vocal critics<\/a>. Trump fired Comey as head of the FBI<\/a> in 2017 as Comey was overseeing an investigation into potential ties between Trump\u2019s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. Trump since then has called for him and other perceived adversaries to be jailed.<\/p>\n

But the Justice Department denied allegations of vindictiveness, saying the decision to indict Comey was made by the U.S. attorney in the area and did not stem from a directive from the president or the attorney general.<\/p>\n

To bolster their claims that Comey was unjustly targeted, defense team argued that investigators struggled to develop compelling evidence from witnesses that Comey had intended the post as a threat, but they concealed that from federal magistrates as they applied for warrants to search digital accounts associated with Comey and his wife <\/p>\n

For instance, defense lawyers have said, the FBI searched an internal database of information about open and closed investigations for any indication of an association between Comey and the term \u201c86\u201d but found inconclusive results. An FBI agent also requested a review of the FBI file for the case against reputed mobster John Gambino, which Comey worked on as a young prosecutor, but found no references to the term \u201c86.\u201d <\/p>\n

Investigators also interviewed a key government cooperator in the case, Salvatore \u201cSammy the Bull\u201d Gravano, who said he did not recall ever discussing the term \u201c86\u201d with Comey or hearing it in connection with the trial.<\/p>\n

The latest filings made clear that the administration was standing behind the premise of the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo Government theory was disproved at that time, or now. No intentionally false omission exists, much less one made with reckless disregard for the truth,\u201d prosecutors wrote. \u201cThe evidence still supports that Defendant acted at least recklessly by consciously disregarding a substantial risk that his coded message of \u201c8647\u201d that he sent to his 200,000 or so Instagram followers, and the millions of secondary social media users who would view this as threatening violence against the President of the United States.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The Department of Justice is defending its prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, saying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[61,1783,1790,38,50,8,162,12307,35321,762,9,735,67,35320,198,7,2631,2464,54,917,69],"class_list":["post-67735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-ap-top-news","tag-dc-wire","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-trump","tag-general-news","tag-headlines","tag-indictments","tag-james-comey","tag-john-gambino","tag-nc-state-wire","tag-news","tag-north-carolina","tag-politics","tag-sammy-gravano","tag-social-media","tag-top-stories","tag-u-s-department-of-justice","tag-u-s-federal-bureau-of-investigation","tag-u-s-news","tag-violence","tag-washington-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/117123711240042548","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67735","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=67735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}