The Justice Department has indicted former FBI Director James Comey again after its initial attempts to prosecute the man who is high on President Trump’s retribution list were tossed out by a judge. The new indictment that the DOJ has secured against Comey — whom Trump has had beef with ever since his first term when he fired him as FBI director because he did not like that the FBI was investigating his campaign’s ties to Russian interference in the 2016 election — is related to a social media post Comey made.
Almost a year ago, Comey posted a since-deleted photo on his Instagram page that showed seashells arranged to spell out the numbers “86 47,” a seeming reference to removing Trump from office. While at the time Trump administration officials spun the message as a threat of physical harm against Trump — some claimed it amounted to an assassination threat — the term “86” is most commonly used as a slang term in the food service industry to get rid of something, often used when removing a food item from the menu. (“We’re out of buns, the burger is 86ed!”) Bartenders also use it when a customer has been overserved and needs to be kicked out or banned from the establishment.
The DOJ has spun that murky message into an allegation that Comey:
… did knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States, in that he publicly posted a photograph on the internet social media site Instagram which depicted seashells arranged in a pattern making out “86 47”, which a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States.
A grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina indicted him on two counts: Threatening to kill or harm the president, and transmitting that threat via interstate commerce.
Comey deleted the image last year, not long after it sparked outcry from Trump administration officials, saying he did not mean any harm by it. “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence,” he said at the time. “I oppose violence of any kind.”
The Secret Service reportedly tracked Comey’s location during his family’s vacation after the photo was posted and Comey even sat for phone and in-person interviews with Secret Service agents about the matter, which was eventually dropped by the DOJ, only to be “revived in recent months,” in the New York Times words.
My colleague David Kurtz has chronicled the drama that unfolded out of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia when Trump fired officials there after they found there was not enough evidence to charge Comey with a crime, last time. Trump then tried to have Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide, installed as U.S. attorney in that office. Halligan secured a grand jury indictment against Comey in September — accusing him of lying and obstructing a congressional investigation, supposedly related to testimony he gave before Congress in 2020. That indictment — as well as an indictment that Halligan secured against New York Attorney General Letitia James, another person Trump has long wanted to target — was thrown out by a federal judge in November after finding that Halligan had not been properly appointed.
The new indictment comes as Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer and previous deputy attorney general, leads the Justice Department in Pam Bondi’s wake, and is thought to be auditioning for Trump to nominate him as her permanent replacement. Bondi was recently fired as attorney general, reportedly because she did not secure enough indictments and launch enough investigations into Trump’s various perceived foes. Blanche is learning from his predecessor’s mistakes.
— Nicole LaFond
Trump Throws Power of Fed Gov’t at ABC Over Jimmy Kimmel
The Federal Communications Commission is gearing up to “call in all of the TV station licenses for Disney/ABC for early renewal,” CNN’s Brian Stelter confirmed on Monday, as reports popped up suggesting that federal regulators were going to review the numerous station licenses owned by ABC.
The review is officially, apparently, related to DEI policies, according to a new filing, which the Trump administration has targeted both inside and outside the government since he returned to office. But it also comes as Trump has called on ABC to fire its late night host, comedian Jimmy Kimmel. Trump professes to be angry about a joke Kimmel made last week, before the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, during a bit in which he pretended he was performing at the event and addressed Melania, saying she had a “glow like an expectant widow.” The joke, Kimmel explained this week, was of course not a call for someone to murder Trump but a reference to the president’s advanced age.
The new FCC action also comes as FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has repeatedly used his post to threaten broadcasters and news networks who cover the Trump administration in ways that Trump does not like.
It is extremely difficult for the government to take away stations’ rights to broadcast; it must be able to make a convincing case that the stations had shown a pattern of violating rules and regulations. Even if the F.C.C. ultimately decides to block the renewal of ABC’s station licenses, the network would have ample recourse in the courts. And it would be able to continue to broadcast as the fight played out.
The federal government has never before ordered such a sweeping review of a major television network’s licenses, which allow the companies to broadcast in local markets. All told, ABC owns eight of the more than 200 local stations that carry its programming across the country, in vital markets including New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
— Nicole LaFond
If You Thought Republicans’ Gerrymandering Was Bad Up Until Now …
The Supreme Court has announced it is likely to release at least one decision tomorrow, and so we undertake a TPM spring tradition that plays out dozens of time each year: preparing ourselves in case the justices rule on one of the cases we have been following closely.
Near the top of our list this year is Callais v. Louisiana, a decision that could remove one of the few tools left standing to protect minority voters in the repeatedly-gutted Voting Rights Act, opening the door for even more extreme gerrymanders.
As we’ve reported, the outcome to this case is to some extent inevitable — the Roberts Court has it out for the Voting Rights Act. The only question is how thoroughly it’ll finish the job in 2026.
The big unknown, then, is timing — a factor that is extremely important. The later in the year this almost-certainly-bad decision comes, the harder it will be for states to jump on it to use the outcome in this year’s redistricting wars. Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri and, of course, Florida, would still have windows to act if the decision comes tomorrow, according to a report out today from the nonprofit good governance group Issue One. The closer to summer we get, the harder it will be for Republican states to use the ruling to their advantage in a way that will withstand legal challenges and be in place on Election Day. That fact has prompted speculation that liberal justices might be laboring a little extra over their (admittedly very important) dissents, holding up a potential ruling. We may never know if that theory has anything to it.
We’ll see what happens tomorrow.
— John Light
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Some credulous folks they’ve got out there in eastern N.C., it seems.
So is the CF-DJT administration claiming that use of the internet is interstate commerce?
Republicans are out of touch. They promise a fiction they have no interest in achieving.
Between fortified ballrooms and seashell indictments you might think there wasn’t anything else for the POTUS to be thinking about. Such as maybe a war of choice in the Middle East that is blowing up the world economy…. C’mon Donnie ! Show us some of the Art of the Deal razzamatazz !
Trump has said a bunch of people should be executed. This all so puerile.